Barack Obama is about to embark on his own Feats of Strength…In the next six weeks, he will have to successfully complete a number of tasks..

Because Obama started from scratch a year and a half ago in his amazing presidential odyssey, he has to swiftly and convincingly perform the political equivalent of the Labors of Hercules.

Cleaning the Augean stables in a single day seems like a cinch compared with navigating the complexities of Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine and Jordan in a few short days.

Instead of slaying the nine-headed Hydra, he must bedazzle three European countries without causing Middle America to begrudge his popularity with a bunch of foreigners.

Instead of obtaining the girdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hippolyte, Obama has to overcome the hurdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hillary.

Obama must capture his own equivalent of the Erymanthian Boar, deciding how much to grovel to get Bill Clinton in his corner, and he has to calculate whether the Big Dog will be help or hindrance, or both, as he was with his wife, and how to use him, if at all.

Obama’s last summer labor should be the simplest for him, nailing his Denver convention speech. Not half as hard as getting past that 100-headed dragon to steal the Apples of the Hesperides.

“War of the Gods!”

The first is they have landed director Tarsem Singh (”The Fall,” “The Cell”) to helm “War of Gods!” They say it’s another Greek film like “300″ was. They say they’re going to use the stuff they learned on “300″ to make the film and they said it’s going to start filming in the first quarter of next year. For more info…watch the interview.

“299″ and “301″?

The other bit of news is on “300.” They announced they’re working on a new Blu-ray edition of the film and they dropped a bomb…they’re trying to make a sequel/prequel to the film.

At first I didn’t believe them, but later in the night I spoke to Zack Snyder again and he confirmed what they said. He said Frank Miller is working on a new story of some kind and if they all really like it they’ll make it! Crazy news….I know!

as Ellen DeGeneres told John McCain on her show recently, “We are all the same people, all of us.”

That’s what the California Supreme Court said when it ruled that gay couples should have the right to marry as a matter of basic equality. Before you could say “Jonathan and Andrew request the honour of your presence,” opponents were suggesting that civilization would crash and burn if two guys could register at Pottery Barn and raise kids in a ranch house. All those wailing that gay marriage is an invention of amoral modernism might want to consider these lines from a Roman poem of the second century A.D.:

“The bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer/Under the same law by which a woman takes a husband./Torches were carried before him, a bridal veil covered his face.” And afterward everyone sat down to salmon, rice pilaf and chocolate mousse. Well, actually, I made up that last part just as surely as some people are making up the dire consequences of same-sex troth-plighting.

Speaking to Esquire magazine, Kruger said: “You can’t tell whether or not I can act from Troy. It kind of sucked to be honest.”

Kruger played Helen of Troy in the 2004 Illiad epic opposite Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana and wasn’t happy with the type of roles offered to her after its release.

“I was just starting out and didn’t want to play all the parts I was subsequently offered in these big movies. I had to get out,” Kruger explained.

A flamboyant archeologist known worldwide for his trademark Indiana Jones hat believes he has identified the site where Cleopatra is buried.

Now, with a team of 12 archeologists and 70 excavators, Zahi Hawass, 60, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has started searching for the entrance to her tomb.
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Hawass has discovered a 400ft tunnel beneath the temple containing clues that the supposedly beautiful queen may lie beneath. “We’ve found tunnels with statues of Cleopatra and many coins bearing her face, things you wouldn’t expect in a typical temple,” he said.
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Work on the site has been suspended until the summer heat abates and is due to resume in November, when Hawass will use radar to search for hidden chambers.
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If Hawass is right, he could make the greatest archeological discovery in Egypt since Tutankhamun’s tomb was uncovered by the British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922.

Filmmaker David Lynch is all set to make a new horror movie based on a Greek tragedy. Lynch, who has directed hits like “Blue Velvet” and “Mullholland Drive”, will team up with Werner Herzog to make “My Son, My Son”. It’s a story of a San Diego man who becomes obsessed with Sophocles and kills his mother, reports thesun.co.uk.

Lynch will flash back scenes of the murder to tell the killer’s story. The shooting for the film, which was announced at the Cannes film festival, will begin in March 2009.

Classic Moms
The meddler and the martyr. That’s what Achilles and Odysseus had to deal with.

On Achilles’ mother Thetis, who lobbies Zeus on behalf of her son and helps to secure his future glory:

consider Thetis only as Achilles’ mother — the meddling type who has difficulty cutting the apron strings. First, worried that her precious boy has been sullied by mortal blood, she tries to render her infant son immortal by dipping him either into the water of the River Styx or into fire, depending on which myth you prefer. Either way, she holds him by the heel, which doesn’t get the treatment; hence Achilles’ weak heel.

But she’s not done trying to manipulate her son. A prophecy states that if he fights at Troy, Achilles will gain renown but also surely perish. Thetis tries to keep him away from the war by dressing him as a girl. Yes, Achilles’ mother turns her warrior son into the Cpl. Klinger of Bronze Age Greece, 3,000 years before “MASH.” Thetis fails in her endeavors, and Achilles spends part of his life impersonating a woman and then dies young.

Nevermind the fact that Thetis helps Achilles attain immortal fame by lobbying Zeus on his behalf–the only part of the Achilles story that’s actually portrayed in the Iliad.

Apparently Odysseus’ mother Antikleia exists solely to make her son feel bad:

Anticleia, falls, unlike Thetis, in the martyr camp. In one of his lesser-known episodes, Odysseus ventures to the land of the dead to consult an inconveniently deceased prophet. While there, he runs into a great many famous people, including … Anticleia!

…it turns out that in his long absence his mother has died — from grief, missing him: “It was my longing for you, my shining Odysseus … that tore away my life that had been sweet.” A thousand guilt-inducing-mother jokes leap to mind: “No, no, Mr. Big Shot, you go out and have your war, fight your giants, you’re very important: I’ll just stay home alone and die!”

It’s hilarious and perfect, especially because immediately after comes the heartbreak: Odysseus, “desperate to hold her,” tries to embrace his mother three times — and each time her phantasmal form “fluttered through my fingers … dissolving like a dream.” He pretty much hurries home to his wife after that.

Goodness, that *is* hilarious. Apparently it’s not important that Odysseus’ encounter with his mother reaffirms that he even has a wife and home to go back to.

You can read the whole thing here.

(Thanks, Sarah!)