THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS... TWXN 80 06/30/97 Monday Brought to you by XENA: MEDIA REVIEW (XMR): http://xenafan.com/xmr All back issues of XMR and TWXN are available at the above site. We herein give praise and thanks to Tom Simpson for the space he has graciously donated from his spectacular, TOM'S XENA PAGE (http://xenafan.com). TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR, an annotated world press review of reports regarding the internationally syndicated television show XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995 - 2000+?) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor. TWXN is not available for subscription, however it is posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on the XenaVerse, Hercules-Xena, and Chakram Mailing Lists (thank you Lucia!), the MCA NetForum, the Xenite Message Center, and alt.tv.xena. For a free e-mail subscription to XMR subscribe by e-mail to ktaborn@lightspeed.net by stating somewhere in the subject or text "sub xmr". Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future issues of XMR. From the editor: 1. WANTED: World Wide Web Wiz for WHOOSH! Are you an XWP fan who knows HTML and the inner workings of Web site creation? Want to use your many skills for a worthy cause? WHOOSH! needs you! Come join our team and be a part of our well-oiled Web site machine. We need two detail-oriented persons with previous HTML experience. Unfortunately, this is not a "paid" position (you think *we* get paid for this? ha!), but you do get all the fame, glory, and honor that comes with being a staff member and, hey, you even get to have your photo on the credits page every month. All interested parties should send an e-mail to both Betsy (bsquared@interport.net) and Kym (ktaborn@lightspeed.net) and URLs of Web sites you have worked on. 2. In TWXN #79 we cited a XWP reference from a Hong Kong paper. Reader rseid@nmaa.org offered more information about the state of Xenamania in Hong Kong (currently in the news, you know there is more to life than just XWP!): "They [the Hong Kong station that carries XWP] aired TIES THAT BIND (#20) on May 24th. There was a special on for May 31st that was noted during the show so it at least skipped a week. Of course, this is assuming they show it in the order it was shown in the U.S. It was in English and was subtitled. They did not squish the end credits nor did they seem to have edited anything." On other topics he reported that "They had the Olympic series of Hercules Action Figures at Toys 'R' Us in Kowloon for $59.99 HK each (about $7.79 US) and I must say that Salmoneus looked pretty good with a battery-powered Olympic Flame. Alas, I did not purchase any as I was concentrating on other items. I do not know when the series will be available in the U.S. A couple of interesting things was that on the trip to Hong Kong, we had a stopover at Vancouver May 18th. One of the newsstands had a lot of the Yahoo Internet Life issues with Xena on the cover. And in Hong Kong, they were still selling the Playboy issue with Claudia Schiffer on the cover that had the twenty questions for Lucy." 3. This Monday is media reference day here at TWXN! We have references of XWP along with references of NIKITA, MEN BEHAVING BADLY, and STAR WARS. 3. On Wednesday TWXN will boldly list what Lucy Lawless has been been listening to on cd recently, show evidence where XWP was called a "hare-brained action-adventure", mention the Bonanza Bride syndrome, cite the prevalence of XWP promos on tvs across the country, and offer much more Xenatrivia to momentarily sate anyone suffering from late June XWS! And now, the cites: [ ] 02-19-97 THE RECORD. Wednesday. Page Y01. 1054 words. "This Nikita Sure Packs Heat" By Wire services COMMENTARY: EXCERPT: Finally, somebody who can kick Xena's butt. "Xena: Warrior Princess"is one of the hottest shows in syndicated television. And it seems everyone is jumping on the action-adventure bandwagon. But no new show of that sort has as much potential as"La Femme Nikita"on the USA Network. The show (10 p.m. Mondays) is based on the 1991 film of the same name (no, not the American version, thankfully). It has a lot of style and verve going for it and is something you don't see on network television. Shows like this on cable aren't done with the same hipness. The world might be flipping for Lucy Lawless as Xena, but she'd take a bullet to the head in a battle with Nikita. Yeah, it's nice to see all that horseback riding and myth-making in"Xena: Warrior Princess,"but Nikita is decidedly a modern girl. She packs heat. She kicks some serious behind. She's a babe. And she's just this side of totally ruthless. Of course, it's this fragment of humanity that makes her character engaging.... ...Maybe one day, Xena will time-travel and meet up with her newest action peer. Put your money on the leggy blonde with the high-caliber pistol. [ ] 02-10-97 THE ATLANTA JOURNAL AND CONSTITUTION. Monday. Page 07D. 797 words. "Channel Surfer. 'La Femme' resuscitates female sleuth archetype" By Lyle V. Harris COMMENTARY: EXCERPT: Not since Diana Rigg donned a black catsuit as the cool and deadly Emma Peel on "The Avengers" has television done justice to female super sleuths. There was the long-suffering Agent 99 in "Get Smart" in the mid- '60s, the '70s jigglefest of "Charlie's Angels" and the sclerotic adventures of Jessica Fletcher in "Murder, She Wrote" in the '80s. But overall the tube has given hardcore femmes fatale fans little to sink their teeth into. USA's "La Femme Nikita" (10 p.m. Mondays, but pre-empted tonight) could change all that.... ...But for viewers who can't stomach the campiness of "Xena: Warrior Princess" and are hankering for a contemporary heroine who cares more about saving the world than chipping her fingernails, "La Femme Nikita" has the makings of a quirky cult hit.... [ ] 02-11-97 THE VILLAGE VOICE. Page 52. 1371 words. "Exile in Guycom: Guess What. Male Chauvinism Is Making a Comeback" By Tom Carson COMMENTARY: EXCERPT: Once again, the sitcom world is overrun with guys who just cannot help being guys. Even though they re savvy enough to know better, which is supposed to be what puts them one up on Ralph Kramden, they still get off on doing those comical guy things-- hogging the remote, treating women as the enemy, whatever. An attack on their guyish ways is a threat to their whole identity--and no wonder, since even by sitcomland s sketchy standards they ve been given no other personalities to speak of. They re just coatracks hung with magazine-quiz truisms about male behavior. As soon as you see a sitcom actor playing couch potato in a sweatshirt, you can be pretty sure what s coming: another dumb men-are-from-Mars-women-are-from-Venus joke... ...Even so, Ink looks as swank as the D'Oyly Carte next to its guycompetitor, Blobs--more formally, NBC s Men Behaving Badly, which centers on poor Kevin (Ron Eldard), a dope-on-a-rope who's trying to balance between his girlfriend (Justine Bateman), who wants him to act like a human being and/or grown-up, and Jamie (Rob Schneider), the happy-go-lucky buddy who wants him to put off mutating into either so there'll be two slobs watching the next time Xena: Warrior Princess comes on. In other words, it s the sort of premise that can only be stretched much past the opening credits by making the characters real-ly stupid, so they can get the same circuits crossed week in and week out. What's too bad is that all three leads are plainly meant for better things than gags about guys finding moldy sandwiches in their bathrobe pockets. I don't think I ve ever seen such an acute look of suffering on a performer's face as the one Eldard popped during the aforementioned Xena episode, when he was obliged to show guy solidarity with Jamie by nudging him to mutter, Look at the rack on her. Among other things, that line shows that sitcom writers can't even get the slob details right: as redundancies go, it's on a par with turning to one's seatmate at the Super Bowl to remark that a football game appears to be underway. But the bottom of the guycom pit--at present, let me grimly add--is Men Behaving Badly s Wednesday-night stablemate Chicago Sons, which seems to be about three brothers working up the nerve to watch Xena together... [ ] 02-12-97 NEWSDAY. Wednesday. Page A34. 831 words. "Star Wars' as Modern Epic" By Peggy Brown (Staff Writer) and Bill Zimmerman (editor) COMMENTARY: EXCERPT: On the run from the evil Emperor's starfighters, the Millennium Falcon - Han Solo's rust bucket of a spaceship - bursts into hyperspace, leaving its enemies in the dust. The movie audience watching "Star Wars" sighs in relief: Our heroes are safe. For now. But, in just a minute . . . The villainous Darth Vader. The evil Emperor. The noble Luke Skywalker. The wily Han Solo. The wise Obi-Wan Kenobi. The spunky Princess Leia. These characters echo others going back thousands of years, particularly those in "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" - ancient Greek epics recited some 28 centuries ago by the poet Homer.... ...GRAPHIC:...(3) Wonder Woman, Superman and Xena: Humans need heroes scholars say, because their struggles reassure us of the heroic qualities in us all....