The Hollywood Reporter needs a fact-checker.

The Hollywood Reporter needs a fact-checker. November 23, 2006

I just noticed this now, but The Hollywood Reporter‘s review of The Nativity Story also went up yesterday — and, like the Variety review, it manages to make two errors in a single sentence:

[Mary’s] aging cousin Elizabeth (Oscar-nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo) is experiencing a similar miracle, newly pregnant by her equally ancient husband Zechariah (Stanley Townsend), a priest. Mary convinces her parents to allow her to visit the pious couple to sort out her life. It is here she experiences the Immaculate Conception.

As with the Variety review, so here: the critic doesn’t have a clue what the immaculate conception actually is.

Plus, if I’m not mistaken, the virginal conception of Jesus is generally dated to the moment when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her she would bear a son — hence, the Feast of the Annunciation is on March 25, exactly nine months to the day before Christmas. Indeed, I would assume it is precisely because Mary is already pregnant with the Christ child that the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, as it were, when Mary arrives.


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