If you're going to be in Miami from January 5th to 8th, you might want to stop by the Art Miami Fair at the Miami Beach Convention Center and behold a new painting of the Virgin Mary -- actually, make that the Virgin Angelina. Artist Kate Kretz is presenting a new oil and acrylic painting on linen entitled "Blessed Art Thou." It presents Angelina Jolie and her three children as the Virgin Mary and offspring, hovering in heavenly repose over a typical American Wal-Mart with flags draped from the rafters and plus-sized shoppers obliviously gazing at the merchandise. A sickly green hue fills the air over the shoppers, one of whom seems to be staring in the general direction of a copy of Us Weekly, which is wedged in the magazine rack next to a "For Dummies" book. A frothy cloud cover forms a dividing line between the serene celebrity heaven above and the hell below.

In conjunction with the unveiling, Kretz has been keeping a blog on her website, detailing the step-by-step creation of the painting. The blog seems to be in the same "too much information" spirit as the painting itself, giving us an excess of detail about her artistic process. Here's a sampling: "hair and sash are not the only dark values, so the grouping is more unified against the clouds. I think the clouds have lost some impact, as the blue dress is stronger than the blue of the clouds...."

New Line's Virgin Mary project - entitle Nativity - has come together incredibly quickly: between the purchase of Mike Rich's spec script and the start of production this spring, less than six full months will have passed, and the studio plans to have the movie in theaters by December, not even 12 months after the script was bought. (If writers whose scripts are mired in development hell find out about this, we risk a rash of quiet suicides.) The film, which will be directed by the very unconventional Catherine Hardwicke, will tell Mary's story from a "strong female perspective," detailing her travels with Joseph, and the obstacles they encountered. According to today's Hollywood Reporter, Mary will be played by the world's only 15-year-old with an Oscar nomination under her belt, Whale Rider's Keisha Knight-Pulliam Castle-Hughes.

As I said in an earlier post on this movie, it's shaping up to be a promising project - when they hired Hardwicke, New Line made it clear that they were going to do more than pay lip service to the idea of examining the life of Mary from a new, feminine perspective. That choice was a great sign, as is the choice of Castle-Hughes for the role of Mary, because you know there were at least three execs pushing La Lohan.

As Erik reported a few weeks ago, New Line recently bought the rights to a spec script titled Nativity, which explores the life of Mary prior to Jesus' birth. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the screenplay "follows Mary and Joseph's life...as their love, faith and beliefs are tested." Over the course of their travels form Nazareth to Bethlehem, the couple interact with a slew of biblical figures, including John the Baptist and King Herod.

Having bought the script, New Line immediately turned to finding a director for the project, and they've settled on a rather surprising choice: Catherine Hardwicke. Hardwicke, whose two films to this point have been the raw, controversial Thirteen (which she also wrote), and Lords of Dogtown, a movie about the skateboarding and surfing culture in 1970s Venice, California, is not exactly someone who leaps to mind when you think of the best person to make a movie about the mother of Jesus Christ. According to New Line, though, they want Hardwicke to direct the film because they think she has the ability to give it a "strong female perspective." Good for them - this movie is actually starting to sound really interesting. It's a traditional story, obviously, but it's going to be helmed by a very untraditional director, and the studio seems to be quite willing to defy expectations about how Biblical stories are supposed to be told.