'The Nativity Story'  As Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the
Christ" powerfully demonstrated, lots of people are willing to
spend serious money to see films with Christian subject matter.
"The Nativity Story" is attempting to tap into that market by
Leaving to Mel the Things That Are Mel's and concentrating on
the uplifting beginning of Jesus' life rather than the violent
close.  Unfortunately for potential viewers, the trailer for
"The Nativity Story" has gotten this film's nature exactly
wrong. This is not a chance to "experience the most timeless of
stories as you've never seen it before" but just the opposite:
an opportunity, for those who want it, to encounter this story
exactly the way it's almost always been told.  For though one of
the film's producers has said that Catherine Hardwicke was hired
to direct "because she cuts across the grain of the picture-book
version of the movie that could have been made," that's just
what the filmmaker and her team have come up with.  Hardwicke,
whose work includes the