Margaret Atwood is adapting her book, The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, for the stage in a format that the producers are calling a "cabaret." The Penelopiad will premiere in July 2007 at Stratford-upon-Avon's Swan Theatre, then open the 2007-2008 season in English theatre at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa next September.
In 1977, a woman making burritos in Lake Arthur, N.M., saw the face of Jesus in the pattern of skillet burns on a tortilla. She built a shrine to house the Jesus tortilla, which was blessed by a priest, and thousands of people from across the country came to gaze and pray for its divine assistance in healing their ailments.
"In the case of Diana, Princess of Wales this was an obvious culmination. As her brother pointed out at her funeral, Diana — or Artemis, if we are going to stick to the Greeks — was the goddess of hunting, herself hunted to death.
Or you could say that, pursued by the Furies for much of her public life, those foul harpies finally got their girl. She could be Prometheus, stealing fire (or fame) from the gods (or the royal firm), and giving it to mortals for their own use; or Cassandra, predicting her own fate in a series of tapes and telephone calls; a female Narcissus, gazing doomed and entranced upon her own reflection in magazines."
Athena has consistently shown herself to be one of the most powerful Olympians, but was overthrown by Hades in the closest struggle for Mount Olympus to date. Defeated and ashamed, Athena steps down from Mount Olympus to make room for Dionysus.
The movie is reportedly about a professor in an English university, whom, after a failed experiment, becomes obsessed with Crowleys soul. Crowley himself was very much into redhaired women, and obviously the professor becomes enchanted by a very beautiful, red-haired student.
Read more at Maiden Norway.
"The message? The end is near and the savior has come. Gibson's efforts at authenticity of location and language might, for some viewers, mask his blatantly colonial message that the Maya needed saving because they were rotten at the core. Using the decline of Classic urbanism as his backdrop, Gibson communicates that there was absolutely nothing redeemable about Maya culture, especially elite culture which is depicted as a disgusting feast of blood and excess."
Read Tracy Ardren's review at archaelogy.org.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden. For 40 years it has been torched, vandalized, had its legs cut off and even been run over by a car. But officials in the Swedish city of Gävle are guaranteeing that this year's giant straw Christmas goat - the victim of Sweden's most violent yule tradition - will survive unscathed.
Officials think they have finally outsmarted the resourceful vandals by dousing the battered ram with flame-resistant chemicals normally used on airplanes.
While the origins of the Christmas goat are unclear, the symbol is believed to date back to Norse mythology and the two goats that drew the carriage of Thor, the god of thunder.
Source: boston.com
"There are several humorous cameos in this film, including an uncredited actress who plays the Greek Goddess Artemis working undercover on Earth as a gym teacher. This actress is gut-bustingly funny in a role that is far too brief when compared to the time spent on Heat-miser and Snowmiser. In fact, her role is part of the underlying, richer story about the role that myth and story plays in cultures, even modern ones."
Belinda Acosta reviews The Year Without Santa Claus
Having cracked the time-slip device with Labyrinth, Mosse's new work, Sepulchre - a time-slip adventure novel set in fin-de-siecle France and the present day - may well be even better. "It's about a woman writing a biography of Debussy, who was very interested in the occult, which was very popular in France at that time. Labyrinth was a Grail story. This one is the real Tarot."
Read the interview at The Sydney Morning Herald
"SOCRATES: LOST IN OLYMPIA", the feature-length 3d animated English-language film, planned as a European & Chinese co-production, is in the initial phases of preproduction. Twelve fresh and exciting characters have been added to Socrates' group of friends and this time the mission is next to impossible: to save the planet and the Olympic Games. "SOCRATES" is scheduled for a 2007 theatrical release.
Read more at Dimitri Vorris' web site.
"Necropants are part of a complicated sorcery for gaining money,” Atlason explains. “The owner of necropants had to make a deal with a male friend while still alive about digging up his body after a natural cause of death, skinning it below the waste and wearing the skin as necropants."
Read about the Museum of Sorcery & Witchcraft in the Iceland Review.
"The uncanny coincidences continue: Kal-El, Superman’s given name, actually means “Voice of God” in Hebrew and, growing up, Shuster and Siegel, second-generation Jewish Americans, heard old folk tales of “flying rabbis,” although we’re pretty sure that they couldn’t fly as fast as Superman could. Unless, of course, they were late for shul."
Rabbi Simcha Wienstein, author of Up, Up, and Oy Vey! talks about Jewish themes in comics.
Marilyn Belford is in the middle of her series on women of legends. This series stemmed from her work on biblical tales and now include women from mythology. She brought a work in progress on Medea, a women in Greek mythology who killed her two children.
Read more in The Citizen.
Most of us remember Cecil B. DeMille's classic film for its vibrant visual effects and Charlton Heston doing things masculine-style as Moses. So who is it that fills the shoes of the great Moses this time around? Look no further than Val Kilmer! The former Batman portrayer sings and dances his way across the stage in topless Egyptian costumes, and colorful robes. The tough guy actor really proves his musical talent...sort of.
Dodd Alley is moderately impressed with the musical version of The Ten Commandments.
Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids will feature preserved specimens from the Museum's collections, and fossils of prehistoric animals to investigate how they could have, through misidentification, speculation, and imagination, inspired the development of these legendary beasts. For example, visitors will discover how narwhal tusks introduced by northern European traders lent credence to the centuries-old belief in the unicorn (a beast that was probably originally a misunderstanding of a rhinoceros), and how dinosaur fossils uncovered by Scythian nomads may have been mistaken as the remains of living, breathing griffins.
Visit the American Museum of Natural History for more information.
Cage is to star in The Sadhu, the story of a soldier who travels to India during colonial times and becomes a spiritual warrior. The plot mixes action with mythology, and is meant as a starring vehicle for the US actor.
Cage is developing a comic book for Virgin Comics entitled Enigma, with an eye to developing it into a film. Billed as a voodoo-laced thriller, Enigma deals with a murder investigation set in New Orleans.
Source: The Guardian
Goddess: Divine Energy is the first major exhibition in Australia to explore the many manifestations of the divine female in Hindu and Buddhist art. Over 150 exquisitely carved sculptures and delicately composed paintings from India, Tibet and Nepal, dating from about 2000 BCE through to the 20th century, have been gathered from collections around the world for display.
Set in a very different London is writer-director Hadi Hajaig's Puritan, a bizarre mixture of film noir and occult horror flick. Nick Moran plays Simon Puritan (the name suggests Simon 'The Saint' Templar), a sad alcoholic student of the paranormal who lives in Whitechapel in an early-18th-century house designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor where Aleister Crowley once raised the spirit of Satan. This sad hero believes in the existence of a fourth dimension and appears to be drifting through time and space as he encounters a femme fatale, a sinister capitalist (David Soul), Crowley and the devil himself. The movie might have been directed by someone called Midnight Charlatan or Goodnight Chameleon, but there are hints of real talent and style behind this addled piece.
Source: The Observer
“The Greek goddesses are fascinating, not as idols, but as aspects of ourselves. You can see characteristics of the goddesses in yourself and others. For instance, if you are a direct person, you may identify with Artemis, known for her ability to get straight to the point while remaining true to herself,” said Marcel.
"The myths and stories will inspire the group to ask what particular resources they always carry with them in their handbags," she continued.
The Blue Room Theatre exposes the sexually perverted exploits of "Bluebeard," a deranged scientist on a mysterious island, in very graphic detail.
And I do mean graphic.
This melodrama by Charles Ludlam first appeared in a Manhattan bar in 1970. "Bluebeard" is based on H.G. Wells' "Island of Dr. Moreau" and an obscure fairy tale.
Read more...
The Indian epic poem Mahabharata , regarded as one of the longest works in all of literature, is about to become one of the longest works in all of cinema. Veteran Bollywood producer-director Ravi Chopra has told Indian reporters that the film, reportedly budgeted at $28 million -- an extraordinary amount for an Indian production -- will run more than 6 hours. "It will be unjust to tell the most beautiful story of the world in three hours," he said. Chopra said that his plan is to screen the first three hours of the film on one week, then screen the final three hours a week later.
Source: contactmusic.com
The story of our musical takes place at the end of the 16th century in Prague. These were the days of the reign of Emperor Rudolf II who was known to like mysticism. In the Jewish quarter, the ghetto of Prague, lived Rabbi Leib, known as the Holy Maharal. The legend tells how the Rabbi succeeded to give life to a creature he formed from Vltava River mud by writing secret holy letters on the creature's forehead. This is the Golem. The Golem went out to fulfill special important missions that you will see throughout the play. And of course there is a love story, laughs and tears, and a lot of good music.
Thai composer Somtow Sucharitkul and Dutch director Hans Nieuwenhuis team up in an attempt to transform the epic tale of the 'Ramayana' into an opera.
Ayodhya, the latest creation of Bangkok Opera's founder and artistic director Somtow Sucharitkul, is the first opera to chronicle the entire Ramayana epic, from the abduction of Sita to her final reunion with Rama and their ascent to Mount Krilash.
I'm kind of experimenting with an ancient pagan chant that I'm making up on the spot.
..after the queen is crowned, the Amazons go to meet a group of Greek soldiers for their annual mating. The king of the Greeks pretends to be a captain and has sex with the queen. Much to the queen's dismay, she quite enjoys having sex with a man...
...a conflict exploited by the governor of conquered Babylon, Arbaces, who convinces Samos to make himself king of Babylon and rebel against the rule of Sardanapolos, with the support of his faithful friend Hammurabi. Betrayals ensue, climaxing in a special-effects extravaganza as the gods of Babylon wreak their vengeance upon Assyria...
"I arrived a total sceptic, to a degree I still am, but there are things at the house you can't explain. I'm aware that, compared with where I'm from in Surrey, there's more superstition in this part of the world. It all became a bit more real when I came here, but it never put me off.”
"Do you love me?" asks Tommi Eronen on the big screen. Nothing new here – a Finnish man whining about his love again. But this time we are in ancient China, the actress is Zhang Jingchu, and the couple has just had a dance-like fantasy duel.
The film is called Jade Warrior. It is an ambitious combination of themes from the Finnish national Kalevala and Chinese mythology, and tells the story in the style of Wuxia – Chinese warrior films."
Read more in the Helsingin Sanomat or watch the Jade Warrior trailer.
"Oh man, it’s just awful what they did to one another, you know, chewing their fingers off, cutting your eyelids off and you lips, ripping your tongue out, hanging you up and stabbing you in the genitals, I mean, just horrific. Putting you up as a living target in the field like a firing range, firing arrows at you. At least we had our guys running when they were doing that. They used to just tie them up on boards and like, “hey, I think I can hit him right in the heart!” So they’d be doing target practice on real targets."
Mel Gibson talks about his new religious slasher flick, Apocalypto.
"But Alden's purpose is not merely sex: he is an adept of Aleister Crowley's early 20th-century occult faith of Thelema; and part of his research for a musical composition with which he hopes to attain enlightenment (and success on Radio 3) is based on recording Joan's physiological responses to sexual torture."
I had no idea that such a musical existed. You can read the synopsis here, or listen to some samples at Amazon. (Personally, I'm not impressed. It sounds very generic, somehow.)
"David Cunningham (The Path to 9/11) has been tapped to direct The Dark Is Rising, a fantasy film based on Susan Cooper's book series, Variety reported. The film is being produced under the co-financing alliance between Walden Media (The Chronicles of Narnia) and 20th Century Fox reached in August.
The Dark Is Rising is part of Cooper's five-book series, focusing on a youth who discovers at age 11 that he's a Sign Seeker, the last of a group of immortals dedicated to fighting a growing presence of dark forces.
Cunningham has already headed to Romania, where he'll prep the film for an early 2007 start and a Sept. 28, 2007, release, the trade paper reported."
Source: SCI FI Wire
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