- LOS ANGELES (AP) --
Mel Gibson's passion-stirring Biblical epic "The Passion of Christ"
will open in the United States on Feb. 25 - Ash Wednesday on the Roman
Catholic calendar.
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- The Oscar-winning "Braveheart" director and
Newmarket Films announced a deal Thursday to distribute Gibson's embattled
film about the last hours of Jesus Christ's life.
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- The film has drawn complaints from some Jewish leaders,
who say it suggests Jews were responsible for Christ's death. Conservative
Catholics who have seen the film have called it a powerful rendering of
Christ's crucifixion.
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- Gibson spent a reported $30 million to produce the movie,
which he has defended as faithful to the Gospels. In response to worries
by Jewish groups, he has said the film is intended "to inspire, not
offend."
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- In 1965, the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic
Church formally rejected Jewish culpability in Christ's death. But Gibson
belongs to an ultraconservative Catholic movement that rejects the reforms
of the Second Vatican Council and the legitimacy of the current Vatican
leadership.
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- "The Passion of Christ" stars Jim Caviezel
as Christ and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene. The dialogue is in Latin,
Hebrew and Aramaic with English subtitles.
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- While seeking a distributor, Gibson's Icon Productions
company screened the film for many faith-based groups, like church leaders,
scholars and religious charities among others, in a grass-roots efforts
to promote the film.
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- That effort will now join with Newmarket, an independent
distribution company that specializes in publicizing and securing theaters
for such art-house films as "Memento," "Real Women Have
Curves" and "Whale Rider."
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- Gibson will distribute the film himself through Icon
in the United Kingdom and Australia.
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- The film's Ash Wednesday debut places it in Lent, the
40-day religious period preceding Easter observed by Christians as a season
of fasting and penitence.
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