Just a few quick newsbites here.
1. More casting news from the makers of Nativity (which seems to have dropped the “The”). The Hollywood Reporter says Shohreh Aghdashloo, an Oscar nominee for House of Sand and Fog (2003) who also had a small role in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), will play Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.
The article describes Elizabeth as Mary’s “sister”, and therefore Jesus’ “aunt”, but that might be a mistake on the reporter’s part; in the original Greek, she is called Mary’s “suggenes“, a generic term for kinsfolk that is typically translated “cousin” or “relative“.
MAR 22 UPDATE: FWIW, this version of the Hollywood Reporter‘s story does, in fact, refer to Elizabeth as Mary’s “cousin”. It also refers to the angel that visits both of them, which suggests that this film will retain at least some element of the supernatural.
MAR 23 UPDATE: And now the original site posts a correction to the story, replacing “sister” with “first cousin”!
2. BBC News reports that a pirated copy of the Oscar-winning foreign film Tsotsi — with a different ending — is making the rounds in South Africa. Turns out director Gavin Hood shot three endings for the film. Hopefully we will see them all on the DVD.
3. The Hollywood Reporter says, “The final installment of Aki Kaurismaki’s Finnish trilogy, ‘Lights in the Dusk,’ also is assured a competition slot” at this year’s Cannes film festival. One year ago, the then-in-progress final installment was called Vartija (The Guard), but I guess the title has since been changed.
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