Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, news services and the nation’s press.

MOVIES

Welcome Home, Billy: Will he parody Tom Cruise’s slick sex guru in “Magnolia,” Tom Hanks’ prison guard in “The Green Mile,” Christopher Plummer’s take on Mike Wallace in “The Insider,” or Mena Suvari’s rose petal-covered blond from “American Beauty”? Expect some of those, plus a lot more. Billy Crystal, one of Oscar’s most popular hosts, has agreed to return for a seventh stint at the show’s helm. The Oscar show’s new producers, Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck, had made it clear that Crystal was their first choice. He sat out last year’s awards, which were hosted by Whoopi Goldberg.

*

Time to Move On: The Directors Guild of America’s national board has voted unanimously to retire the guild’s highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award, because its namesake, though a “brilliant pioneer filmmaker,” also “helped foster intolerable racial stereotypes.” Recipients of the award--given for lifetime achievement since 1953--included Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola. The guild said Tuesday that it plans to create a new career achievement award “that better reflects the sensibilities of our society” as the “ultimate honor for film directors.” The late Griffith is often called the father of the motion picture. But his 1915 epic, “The Birth of a Nation,” remains controversial because of his presentation of the Ku Klux Klan in a heroic light.

*

‘Sexo’ Gets U.S. Distribution: Latin Universe, a newly formed Spanish-language film distribution company, has picked up the Mexican movie “Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas” (Sex, Shame and Tears) for U.S. distribution, with a February release planned. The highest-grossing film in Mexico’s history, “Sexo” was seen by more than 5 million Mexicans and took in more than $12 million in its six-month run there. It also played to a packed house in Los Angeles in October at this year’s Latino Film Festival. The contemporary romantic comedy, set in Mexico City and directed by Antonio Serrano, deals with six couples and their romantic upheavals. Latin Universe will also release the romantic comedy “Santitos” in January and the comedy “India Maria 2000” around Easter. Said company President Ted Perkins: “It’s a very compelling slate for the Spanish-language market in the U.S., and some of these films have a clear cross-over potential.”

MUSIC

Top 100 Songs: National Public Radio on Tuesday released its list of the 100 “most important American musical works of the 20th Century,” with George Gershwin the most-represented composer with three works, while Irving Berlin, Bob Dylan, Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein and Otis Redding each filled two spots. The alphabetical list, which does not give individual rankings, includes classical selections such as Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and John Cage’s “4:33”; rock classics such as Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”; R&B; favorites such as the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”; Broadway shows such as “A Chorus Line” and “Oklahoma!”; movie scores including “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz,” and even Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” NPR will explore each of the listed works throughout 2000 in a weekly Monday night series on “All Things Considered.”

TELEVISION

Showtime Gets Theatrical: Cable’s Showtime will tape Thursday’s performance of “Bash”--Neil LaBute’s trio of “Latter Day Plays” starring Calista Flockhart, Ron Eldard and Paul Rudd--for TV broadcast in the spring. The production continues through Sunday at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, Showtime has set Jan. 9 (8 p.m.) as the air date for “Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman,’ ” starring Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman. The Tony-winning production was taped in New York last month.

Cease-Fire: After 33 years as the conservative beachhead on television, “Firing Line” is declaring a cease-fire. William F. Buckley was to tape the final episodes Tuesday of the PBS debate series, with the last show to air the last week of December. The show started at conservatism’s ebb and provided a forum for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. “You’ve got to end sometime and I’d just as soon not die onstage,” said Buckley, 74. “That it ends at the millennium gives it a poetic touch.”

QUICK TAKES

In a highly successful auction of Andy Warhol prints Monday night at Christie’s in Beverly Hills, all 97 works found buyers, with the auction house racking up $1 million in sales. “Double Mickey Mouse,” a 1981 screenprint, brought the sale’s top price of $74,000, about twice its pre-sale estimate. . . . The National Endowment for the Arts will announce today nearly $20 million in new grants in its first funding round for fiscal year 2000. Some 128 grants, totaling $2.8 million, will go to California arts organizations and writers. . . . The ACLU will honor “ER” producer John Wells, VH1 President John Sykes and the so-called Hollywood 10 group of writers jailed during the blacklist era at its annual Bill of Rights dinner tonight at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The honorees were selected for “fostering the ideals that support liberty and justice”. . . . Time magazine has named Pedro Almodovar’s “All About My Mother” as the best movie of the year. The film has already been named best foreign film by two critics groups.