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<\/a>Two things about The Nativity Story<\/a><\/i>, which opens this Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n
First, at the junket two weeks ago, producer Marty Bowen said at one roundtable interview, \u201cFrankly, what I hope is controversial about this film is the lack<\/i> of controversy. I really do. I think this is a movie for families, and I hope that people embrace it for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But controversy can<\/i> help a movie\u2019s box-office chances \u2014 just look at The Passion of the Christ<\/a><\/i> \u2014 so it may or may not be a good thing, from a marketing standpoint, that a genuine controversy, however isolated, has emerged in connection with this film.<\/p>\n The Associated Press<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n CHICAGO \u2013 A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film \u201cThe Nativity Story\u201d might offend non-Christians.<\/p>\n New Line Cinema, which said it was dropped, had planned to play a loop of the new film on televisions at the event. The decision had both the studio and a prominent Christian group shaking their heads. . . .<\/p>\n An executive vice president with New Line Cinema, Christina Kounelias, said the studio\u2019s plan to spend $12,000 in Chicago was part of an advertising campaign around the country. Kounelias said that as far as she knew, the Chicago festival was the only instance where the studio was turned down.<\/p>\n Kounelias said she finds it hard to believe that non-Christians who attended something called Christkindlmarket would be surprised or offended by the presence of posters, brochures and other advertisements of the movie.<\/p>\n \u201cOne would assume that if (people) were to go to Christkindlmarket, they\u2019d know it is about Christmas,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Victor Morton at Rightwing Film Geek<\/a> responds, and Joe Leydon at MovingPictureBlog<\/a> writes: \u201cLadies and gentlemen, boys and girls: I give you Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s next great crusade. (And for once, I must admit, I will share his scorn for the PCers involved.)\u201d<\/p>\n Second, as a movie-music buff, I have been a wee bit frustrated by how it is often very difficult to get review copies of the original scores for films that are pitched to the religious market, yet the publicists will gladly pass out review copies of so-called \u201cinspired by\u201d albums \u2014 collections of songs, many of them by CCM<\/a> musicians, that don\u2019t actually appear in the film, but they may or may not have something to do with the film\u2019s subject matter.<\/p>\n Thus it was that, at the Nativity Story<\/i> junket, filled with happy memories of getting the CD of James Horner\u2019s score for The New World<\/a><\/i> at that<\/i> film\u2019s junket last year, I asked the New Line publicists if the goodie bag would include this<\/i> film\u2019s \u201csoundtrack\u201d \u2014 I should have been more specific \u2014 and they said, \u201cYes,\u201d and I opened the bag, and I saw that what the bag actually<\/i> contained was The Nativity Story: Sacred Songs<\/a><\/i>, a CD that consists mostly of Christmas carols. And I already<\/i> had a copy of this album!<\/p>\n Now, to be fair, this album\u2019s cover does not contain the words \u201cinspired by\u201d, even though it is obviously meant to be that type<\/i> of album. If anything, the process worked in reverse this time, and the movie was inspired by the Christmas carols themselves \u2014 it even begins with \u2018O Come, O Come Emmanuel\u2019 and ends with \u2018Silent Night\u2019, both of them sung in Latin \u2014 though presumably it was not inspired by the versions<\/i> of those carols that appear here.<\/p>\n However, it turns out that one of the non<\/i>-carols on this album had a somewhat direct influence on the film. Sr. Rose Pacatte\u2019s article on the film in the current issue of the St. Anthony Messenger<\/a><\/i> includes this interesting tidbit on screenwriter Mike Rich:<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to write during the Advent season so I could be immersed in its spirit,\u201d Rich tells me over the phone. \u201cShortly after Thanksgiving in 2005, I made my way through my home office\u2014there is barely a path to get from the door to my desk because it is surrounded with research and junk,\u201d he says with a laugh\u2014\u201cwith a sense of peace and purpose. This is not always the case, because scripts are difficult to write. But I began each day by playing Amy Grant\u2019s song \u2018Breath of Heaven,\u2019 what she calls \u2018Mary\u2019s Song,\u2019 about Mary contemplating the wondrous thing that had happened to her. I also surrounded myself with figurines from the cr\u00e8che to visualize what I wanted to write.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reading this, I get flashbacks to Philip Glass<\/a>\u2018s score<\/a> for The Hours<\/a><\/i> (2002; my interview<\/a>), which recycled elements of a few of his earlier scores and albums, and which came out on CD with a liner note by author Michael Cunningham, who, IIRC, said that he had listened to Glass\u2019s music while writing the original novel.<\/p>\n Anyway, I still hope someone, somewhere gets me a review copy of Mychael Danna<\/a>\u2018s score<\/a> for The Nativity Story<\/i>.<\/p>\n Because that\u2019s the only music that counts, really.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two things about The Nativity Story, which opens this Friday. First, at the junket two weeks ago, producer Marty Bowen said at one roundtable interview, \u201cFrankly, what I hope is controversial about this film is the lack of controversy. I really do. I think this is a movie for families, and I hope that people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n