The Nativity Story See trailer

Opens Today, Dec 1
Rated: PG (some violence)

Running Time: 1:42

Principal Cast:
Mary – Keisha Castle-Hughes
Joseph – Oscar Isaac
Anna – Hiam Abbass
Joaquim – Shaun Toub
King Herod – Ciaran Hinds
Elizabeth – Shohreh Aghdashloo

Today, we took our whole staff to see The Nativity Story, starring Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary and Oscar Isaac as Joseph. My instant review is that it is faithful to the Biblical story, given that there is not a lot of scriptural text to work with in making the film. I agreed with Peter Chattaway of Christianity Today who said ” Castle-Hughes was a bit of a blank”.

Overall, I felt the strongest character was Joseph, who faced a cultural uncomfortable situation, (pregnant fiancée), yet continually showed us that he would do the right thing and make the right decision, in leading and guiding his family. In this film, Joseph is freed to show us the struggles that he faced – no whitewashing of the strain he felt in his home village and the sense of betrayal by Mary. Yet he shows us a sense of humor on the journey.

I think this was brilliantly filmed in Morocco, Italy, Nazareth and France and served as an authentic story-telling of the Nativity story when the God of the universe stepped into our reality and allowed His son to be born of a human mother.

Tip of the Hat to Tech Crunch, who gives us a timely headsup on some free movies downloads for the Christmas season this Saturday:

AOL Video has decided to spread some holiday cheer by giving away over 30 free movie downloads for one day only on Saturday.

Several of the titles are, appropriately, Christmas movies such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Jack Frost, but there will be some non-spirited ones available such as Spiderman 2 as well. The free offering begins at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time and customers are limited to one movie per person, but not one per computer.

Normally, movie downloads from AOL Video are priced from $9.99 to $19.99 per title. We reviewed AOL Video in October and found it to be lacking in selection and high in price compared to the other movie downloading services. But on Saturday, we would argue that it will be one of the better ones. After all, who can argue with free?