Latest news with #Homer
Eater
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
The 2025 Bite of Seattle Is Here
The Bite of Seattle, the city's most famous food festival, has returned right now, this weekend, to Seattle Center. From Friday, July 25, to Sunday, July 27, you'll be able to sample food from hundreds of vendors, watch live cooking demos and competitions, and take in dozens of musical acts, including a funk band called Montlake Traffic. Best of all, admission to the Bite is free. The Bite of Seattle was founded all the way back in the 1980s but has undergone some recent changes. From 2020 to 2022, when pandemic lockdowns put the kibosh on large gatherings, the Bite was cancelled. In 2023, digital payment startup Cheq bought the festival, but that year's event was marked by confusion and long lines as vendors and attendees struggled to use the Cheq app. Cheq then sold the Bite to an events company called Foodieland, which put on a snafu-free Bite last year. This year attendees can expect the usual mix of street food, stunt food (you can buy a huge baby bottle of juice), food from well-known Seattle restaurants, and food from small operations you might never have heard of. And when you're done eating, you can browse the vendors selling arts, jewelry, and other non-food treats. The Bite of Seattle at Seattle Center runs from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, July 25, and Saturday, July 26, and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, July 27. For a full list of vendors, musical acts, and live performances, go here. Homer home again Two months after being forced to closed due to a fire, beloved Beacon Hill restaurant Homer is reopening on August 1. 'What a roller coast the last couple months have been,' the owners wrote on Instagram. 'Thank you for all of the check-ins, well wishes, gift card purchases, and reassurances that you'll still be here come August and beyond (but not all at once, please!).' If you're planning a visit to celebrate its return, remember that Homer doesn't accept reservations except for large parties. Sun Sui Wah rebrands Last year, famed dim sum establishment Sun Sui Wah, which has two locations in British Columbia, Canada, opened in Bellevue to a lot of hype, one of several hot new dim sum openings in 2024. The Seattle Times reviewed Sun Sui Wah this week and found it to be lacking. 'From the beginning, the word from dim sum aficionados was that the quality and execution was inconsistent,' the Times wrote, adding that Sun Sui Wah's struggles may stem from a lack of skilled dim sum kitchen workers in the local labor pool. Restaurant management apparently agrees with some of this assessment — owner Ken Tan told the Times he's bought out his Canadian partners and plans to 'rework and rename the restaurant this fall.' Redmond gets a Momoji More Eastside news: The Puget Sound Business Journal reports that Momoji, a Japanese restaurant with two locations, has opened a third in Redmond, specifically in the mixed-used Eastline development, near the Downtown Redmond light rail stop. Owner Steven Han, who founded Momoji in 2011, also owns Umi Sake House. The new Momoji, like the other Momojis, is serving sushi and sashimi plus karaage, yakisoba, and other classic Japanese dishes. Eater Seattle All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
The Odyssey Is Making Movies Feel Like a Concert
How far in advance do you make plans to go to the movies? A day or two? A week, perhaps, if there are dinner reservations and a babysitter involved? Well, Universal asked the fans of Christopher Nolan to think a little farther out than that — a year out, to be exact. The Oppenheimer director's hotly anticipated new film, a big-budget adaptation of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, is set to open on July 17, 2026. But last Thursday at midnight tickets went on sale for the first screenings in IMAX 70mm, which is Nolan's preferred format. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it's the first time in film history that movie tickets have gone on sale so far in advance.
National Geographic
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
The original sirens in mythology weren't the seductresses we know today
Sirens torment Ulysses with their enchanting song in Herbert James Draper's 1909 painting titled 'Ulysses and the Sirens.' Draper portrays the Sirens as sexualized mermaids, consistent with other Edwardian era depictions of the creatures. © Ferens Art Gallery / Bridgeman Images For thousands of years sirens have lured sailors, haunted coastlines—and shapeshifted through myth and media. Here's how they evolved to the seductive mermaids of our modern imagination. The Greek hero Odysseus famously faces many travails as he attempts to return home following the Trojan War, from giant cannibals to enigmatic enchantresses. But one challenge stands out as perhaps the most evocative, dangerous, and enduring of them all: the sirens, with their hypnotic and mesmerizing song, who call to passing sailors. To stop is certain death. They're powerful and mysterious figures and even now, of all the creatures from Greek myths, audiences simply can't get enough of them. Sirens have been a fixture of the Western imagination since the time of Homer and the composition of The Odyssey in the 8th century B.C. They appear in the works of ancient Roman writers like Pliny the Elder and Ovid, and one even appears in Dante's Divine Comedy. They fascinated painters of the 19th century and now lend their name to television shows and the "siren-core" fashion aesthetic touted by social media creators. (Dante's 'Inferno' is a journey to hell and back.) But these mythological creatures have shifted forms dramatically over the centuries, transforming with the times to reflect society's complicated and ever-changing relationship with desire. In modern popular culture, sirens are alluring creatures of the sea, most commonly women, often sporting shimmering mermaid tails. But their ancient Greek roots weren't fishlike at all; instead, they were bird-bodied creatures associated with death. Here's how sirens have evolved over time, and why their song stays so loud in popular culture. A attic terracotta status from Greece 300 BCE shows Sirens in their original, bird-woman form. Photograph by Peter Horree, Alamy Stock Photo This artwork titled 'A Siren and a Centaur' shows how classical mythology and artistic imagination have blended together to reshape Sirens iconography. The piece portrays a bird-like siren (left) and centaur (right) in an imaginative and dynamic scene. Photograph by ART Collection, Alamy Stock Photo Homer's Odyssey is the sirens' earliest appearance. Thought to have been composed sometime in the 8th century B.C., the poem follows the winding path of the hero Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca and his long-suffering wife from the Trojan War. Along the way, he faces Greek gods, marvels, and monsters, including the sirens. The sorceress Circe warns him about the creatures, telling him that they 'bewitch all passersby. If anyone goes near them in ignorance, and listens to their voices, that man will never travel to his home.' Odysseus plugs his men's ears with wax, so they won't be lured—but he leaves his own ears free and commands his men to bind him to the ship's mast, so he's able to hear their promises as they tempt him with the prospect of knowledge and tales of heroic deeds. (The Odyssey offers monsters and magic—and also a real look into the ancient world.) But the Odyssey is far from the only story featuring the sirens. They also appear in the Argonautica, a 3rd century B.C. epic poem following Jason and the Argonauts in their search for the Golden Fleece, where sirens are described as daughters of the river god Achelous and the muse Terpsichore. The musician Orpheus snatches up his lyre to drown out their song—but not before one member of the crew throws himself in the ocean. Tradition has it that the names of those sirens were Parthenop, Ligeia and Leucosia. Perhaps the siren's most important distinguishing feature—and the one that remains to this day—is their voice. 'It's a hypnotic voice, it lures people, makes them forget everything, in a lot of cases makes them fall asleep,' says Marie-Claire Beaulieu, associate professor of classical studies at Tufts University. 'Essentially, people become so hypnotized that they forget everything.' What do sirens symbolize in Greek culture? 'When the ancients say sirens, they mean a bird-bodied woman,' says Beaulieu. Closely associated with death, sirens' bird legs and wings show that they're liminal creatures who dwell betwixt and between. Their connection with the sea, which the ancient Greeks considered profoundly dangerous, and their wings, situate them somewhere between earth and air. Sirens were a fixture of ancient Greek funerary art, such as stele, a type of grave marker. For example, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts holds a funerary plaque from the 7th century B.C. depicting a mourning scene, in which two women flank a funeral couch that holds a corpse. Crouched underneath is a siren. Some sources, including Euripides' 5th century B.C. play Helen and Ovid's 8th century A.D. poem Metamorphoses, associate the sirens with Persephone, the goddess of spring carried off by Hades, god of the underworld, to become his queen. Some stories say they were given wings to seek Persephone. According to Beaulieu, som e sources, including the Argonautica , show sirens as the daughters of one of the Muses. 'Except that in a way, they're the Muses of death, instead of the Muses of life, because they lure people to death with this singing,' says Beaulieu. This mural from the 14th century shows a Siren playing music. During this period, the enchantresses were depicted as both bird-women and mermaids. Photograph by Heritage Image Partnership Ltd, Alamy Stock Photo How the iconography of sirens has evolved Sirens retained their bird bodies into the time of the Roman Empire and well beyond; Pliny the Elder includes them in the 'Fabulous Birds' section of his Natural History, written around A.D. 77, claiming they lull men to sleep with their song and then tear them to pieces. (Though he's a skeptic that they exist.) But over the course of the Middle Ages, the siren transformed. More and more they began exhibiting fishtails, not bird bodies. The two types coexisted from the 12th through 14th centuries at least, Beaulieu explains, but eventually the mermaid-like creature emerged as dominant. That shift is probably thanks in part to the strong Greek and Roman tradition of unrelated sea gods like Triton, as well as the sirens' association with water. But it's also thanks in no small part to the influence of Celtic folklore traditions. 'The blending is a super interesting syncretism of cultures,' says Beaulieu, pointing to 14th century tradition about St. Brendan the Navigator, an early Irish Christian whose journeys parallel those of Odysseus. Naturally, he encounters a siren on his odyssey—only this one is wholly recognizable to modern audiences as a mermaid. How Christianity has shaped Greek mythology As the physical appearance of the sirens began to shift, so did their symbolic meaning. The sirens of ancient Greece were considered beautiful—but they tempted Odysseus with songs of glory, not simply sex. Ancient Greeks were more concerned with power dynamics, so a man having sex with a subordinate woman wasn't a problem. 'You get into trouble when you have a goddess having sex with a mortal, for instance,' explains Beaulieu. "That's part of what would have given the sirens their menace." But medieval Christianity saw sex and sirens differently. They became symbols of temptation itself, a way to talk about the lures of worldly pleasures and the deceptive, corrupting pull of sin. Hence the appearance of a siren in Dante's 14th century Divine Comedy. The very same creature who tempted Odysseus comes to Dante in a dream and identifies herself as 'the pleasing siren, who in midsea leads mariners astray.' In the end, his guide and companion through the underworld (the epic poet Virgil) grabs her, tears her clothing, and exposes the 'stench' of her belly showing the medieval siren is sexually alluring but repulsive. Those medieval temptresses are unmistakably the roots of modern sirens, with their dangerously attractive songs. The association between sirens, mermaids, and temptation only grew tighter in the 19th century, when painters returned again and again to creamy-skinned, bare-breasted sirens with lavish hair. There is no better example than John William Waterhouse's turn-of-the-century painting The Siren, where a lovely young woman gazes down at a stricken, shipwrecked young sailor who looks both terrified and enthralled. The sirens of modern-day popular culture Millennia later, the sirens continue to resonate. They're even inspiration for a fashion aesthetic: sirencore, a beachy and romantic look with just a little hint of menace. Modern creatives, meanwhile, are still turning to the sirens as a source of inspiration and a rich symbol for exploring power, gender, and knowledge. Netflix's new release Sirens, which adapts Molly Smith Metzler's 2011 play Elemeno Pea and stars Julianne Moore, explicitly grapples with the mythological figure. Director Nicole Kassell told The Hollywood Reporter, 'I love the idea of analyzing the idea of what a siren is, and who says what a siren is—the sailor. It's very fun to get to go back and consider it from a female lens.' Black sirens navigate the challenges of modern-day sexism and racism in Bethany C. Morrow's 2020 A Song Below Water; a Puerto Rican immigrant falls in love with a merman on turn-of-the-century Coney Island in Venessa Vida Kelley's 2025 When The Tides Held The Moon. For many writers, sirens are an opportunity to turn old tales and stereotypes on their head, using characters who've long been reviled and distrusted for their controversial power. The Sirens by Emilia Hart is one such modern-day retelling, which weaves between the modern day, and the 19th century transportation of Irish women convicts to Australia. 'I thought this mythological creature was the perfect way to give my female characters some power back into this historical narrative,' she explains. 'I wanted to make this general comment on how we think about women and how we have this idea of women as being temptresses, and we demonize them and we overly sexualize them, as a way of trying to explain or perhaps diminish their power,' she says. In the hands of modern-day writers, the sea can become a place of transformation, freedom, and potential. And sirens can be restored to a place of power and wisdom—and, yes, a bit of danger too.
India Today
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
How Rhapsodes became human libraries of Ancient Greece
Most of us today rely on sources like books, phones or cloud drives to remember things. We click 'save' and move on. But there was a time, thousands of years ago, when memory lived inside people. If no one remembered a story, it vanished. In that world, memory wasn't just helpful, it was Ancient Greece, a special group of people took that job seriously. They were called were not just storytellers. They were performers and memory holders. Their task? To carry the great epics of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey, not in scrolls, but in their heads. A long history and record of events have been passed down using methods like those of the rhapsodes to convey stories to larger Indian civilisation to China, this was a common practice. Today, we face some uncertainties, and many records of events are India, the tradition of folk fairs has been famous, where real stories were once told in such formats, though over time, many have taken exaggerated WERE THE RHAPSODES?The word 'rhapsode' comes from two Greek words: rhaptein (to stitch) and ode (song). So, quite literally, a rhapsode was someone who stitched songs travelled from town to town, performing at festivals and gatherings. They did not need instruments or props. The tool that was utilised by them was the human would gather in large open areas, sometimes in thousands, to listen. Imagine standing in a dusty public square, no stage lights, no microphones, and someone begins to speak. Within minutes, the crowd is rhapsode pulls them in with tales of gods and battles, love and loss. And for hours, that voice holds everyone rhapsodes likely added their own flavour. They adjusted stories to the crowd, the mood, the moment. But as Greek society began to write things down, the rhapsode's role faded. Precision became key. They were expected to get Homer right, exactly people in Ancient Greece couldn't read. For them, the rhapsode was their book. Through these performances, people learned about bravery, betrayal, loyalty, and fate. .THAT'S WHAT MADE THEM DIFFERENTIn the early days, a rhapsode could add his own flavour. He could shift words, change details, move things around. He performed what he remembered, and what he remembered might grow or shrink depending on the crowd, the mood, the things changed. As Greek society began writing its words and building its libraries, the role of the rhapsode narrowed. Now, his job was not to shape the story, but to preserve it room for error. Homer's words were sacred, and the rhapsode had to get every one of them right. He became a guardian of fixed didn't make him any less powerful. If anything, it made the responsibility heavier. He was no longer just a performer -- he was a vessel for cultural memory. He spoke for those who could not read, and often for those who could not him, Greece's values, its heroes, its defeats, and its hopes were kept when people later sat in rooms to study Homer -- picking apart metaphors, checking for meanings, debating context -- they were doing a new version of what the rhapsode once the difference was stark. The rhapsode didn't dissect. He delivered. No footnotes. No references. Just the moment, the memory, the rhapsode was a bridge. Between past and present. Between silence and speech. Between a story nearly lost and a crowd that remembered it live in a different time now. We store everything but remember little. We trust servers and screens to hold our stories. But memory isn't just about rhapsodes knew that the only way to preserve something was to make it matter -- to speak it in a way that people didn't just hear it, but felt maybe that's what we've started to forget -- that the human voice, armed only with memory and meaning, is still one of the strongest forces for keeping things didn't need to say, 'This is important.' They just told the story. And if it was told well enough, people remembered it. Then they told it how cultures through archives, but through voices that refuse to let the story go quiet.- Ends
News18
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
Tickets for Christopher Nolans The Odyssey sell out in minutes
Agency: PTI Los Angeles, Jul 18 (PTI) The tickets for the upcoming film 'The Odyssey" from the acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan were sold out in minutes after going live for the first screening shows, a year before its release. Featuring a star-studded cast comprising Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Anne Hathaway, and Charlize Theron, the film is slated to hit the big screen on July 17, 2026. IMAX shared the news of the pre-sale of the tickets for the first screenings on Thursday, on its official Instagram handle. The post featured the schedule of the first screenings. 'Get tickets now to experience the first IMAX 70mm screenings of #TheOdysseyMovie – A film by Christopher Nolan. In theatres 7 17 2026. Link in Bio," read the caption. According to the entertainment news outlet The Hollywood Reporter, the July 17-19 weekend and preview showings have been entirely sold out at AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York City, the Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood, and the Regal Irvine Spectrum in Orange County. The tickets in San Francisco, Dublin and Ontario are about the get sold out. The project is an adaptation of the ancient Greek epic poem 'Odyssey" by Homer. Homer's 'Odyssey" follows Odysseus, who spends years travelling back home from the Trojan War while battling mythical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods in his journey. Nolan's film is not the first adaptation of the epic. It has previously been adapted in the 1954 movie 'Ulysses". Directed by Mario Camerini, the film starred Kirk Douglas. Coen Brothers' 2000 directorial 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?" was also based on 'Odyssey". PTI ATR ATR ATR (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI) view comments First Published: July 18, 2025, 15:30 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
