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.
