Take this cup...?

Since two or three of my presumed teeming hordes of devoted readers have expressed interest in The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's cinematic depiction of the Crucifixion and related events, this story may be of some interest to them. Apparently Gibson recently withdrew the film from a planned showing to Vatican officials, saying that he had second thoughts about some scenes and wanted to re-edit it.

I hope he doesn't lose confidence or distributors. The movie industry produces too few films that display any personal conviction or intellectual courage on the part of the filmmaker, and good or bad, this film sounds like an exception to that rule. I wouldn't mind if he relaxed his self-imposed rules far enough to include a translation of the Aramaic and Latin dialogue, though.

P.S. I don't know what popup ads may be displayed on others' screens, but I found it moderately amusing that when I went to the official English-language home page for The Passion of the Christ and selected the link marked "story", the sponsor's popup that appeared was from "Clean Films", a purveyor of edited, "family-friendly" videorecordings, and featured an image of a DVD of Braveheart, one of Gibson's best-known films, apparently dropping through the air toward a trash can. I guess that's irony for ya.