THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS... TWXN 98 08/11/97 Monday The advance sheet of XENA MEDIA REVIEW (XMR): http://xenafan.com/xmr Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future issues of XMR. From the editor: 1. Okay, I lied. My busines trip is Tuesday not Monday so I am releasing XMR #24 today. If you do not receive it by e-mail within the next couple of days, you can assume you are not subscribed. I have started a policy of unsubbing ANY returned mail regardless of the reason it was returned. In the past I would wait a while and then re-try the address, but those days are no more. 2. I will be out-of-town on Wednesday, so TWXN #99 will be bumped to Friday. The incredibly momentous TWXN #100 will appear Monday along with XMR #25. Got that straight???? Here's the stories: [ ] 03-26-97 LOS ANGELES TIMES. Wednesday. Page E1. 758 words. "Guest Workout. Not Even a Horse Can Throw Xena for a Loop" By Candace A. Wedlan (Times Staff Writer) REPRINT: Fighting cruel mythological gods and evil monsters, nasty giants and blood thirsty warlords--pshaw, mere saber rattling for actress Lucy Lawless, who plays "Xena: Warrior Princess." Lawless had plenty of practice--she grew up with five brothers (four of them older) and one sister. "I had a fairly rough-and-tumble childhood," Lawless said in a soft voice. "I've got a good kick, I can throw a punch and I learned not to cry." The syndicated show is filmed in her native New Zealand, where Lawless, 28, learned to ride horseback as a kid. Last October, she was injured while taping a skit on horseback for "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno." "It just took me a long time to learn to walk again," Lawless said about the multiple pelvic fractures. "But I've got them good child-bearing hips"--daughter Daisy is 8--"and I did drink plenty of milk when I was a kid and that prevented me from snapping anything." Question: Are you back to doing all your own action shots? Answer: Running is not really on yet, but I'm doing all my fights--just toning down the kicks a little. And I'm ready to get back on the horse. There's no medical reason why I can't. It's just psychological now. Q: That has to be scary. You took a helluva spill. A: I don't think I'll ever get on a horse again without thinking of Christopher Reeve. See, I won't ski for that reason. I don't want to hurt myself and let people down, but I can't not do everything, so I'm going to get back on that horse. It's important for me to give myself that challenge. Otherwise, I'm forever going to be frightened. Q: What kind of an exercise program have you been on since the accident? A: I took up swimming. You put on a flotation belt so you've got full range of movement and then instead of using weights, you use floats--like polystyrene dumbbells--and push them down in the water, which gives you a good workout. Then I jarred something at work by running across uneven ground. So, now I also walk fast with hand weights. I go up around the mountains near my house for about an hour at a good clip. Q: Has your diet changed since the accident? A: Not much, no. I'm sitting here eating beans for breakfast. Q: Out of the can, right? A: Yep. With sausages. I went out last night for the first time in donkey's years and didn't get home till nearly 2, which is really late for me. I just had such a great time and now I'm just starving. I've got a garden here full of organic vegetables so what I should have done is gone out and picked some of that. I usually do. Q: You don't have to watch what you eat, do you? How much do you weigh? A: I don't have any idea how much. I don't own a set of scales. I just know if I fit in my clothes. I eat everything. I do have a sweet tooth but that seems to be manageable. I do like wine. I like Scotch. I don't smoke but I sure would like to. Q: You used to? A: Yeah. Q: So when you're not eating out of the can? A: When I'm sitting in the makeup room, they bring me a big old bowl of porridge and a couple of eggs. It's dull but it sticks all day long. And I'll have a big lunch. My all-time favorite is lamb shanks. I generally wouldn't care if I ever saw meat again, but I do need it because I don't seem to lose the bruises. I'm extremely bruised at night, so it'll be red meat and dark green veggies. In this kind of show, you are going to get hit. You live with bruises and your pain tolerance goes sky high. I can suffer all sorts of torture now without complaining. Q: Even Xena's leather corset-breastplate? A: It really is tight. The problem is, nothing looks like leather--Lycra films shiny. Then there's copper plating on the outside, but they have made it as comfortable as they can. Q: What's the biggest Xena-ish challenge for you? A: Two weeks in the cold and the rain, up to your shins, no exaggeration, fighting in the mud. There were days when I'd just crawl down under a coat, and this hail is coming at you and you're muddy, and the wet sand and you're in it for maybe eight hours straight and you have to climb a tree and jump. Q: You have the best sneer I've ever seen on an actress. A: That's funny but you're right. That happens unconsciously. That Xena look--sometimes when I see her doing that sneer, I see my oldest brother so clearly. It's just his face when he was an angry, young man. That's how much we look alike. Next week, the action continues with Kevin Sorbo of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys." * Guest Workout runs Wednesdays in Life & Style. GRAPHIC: "I'm going to get back on that horse," says Lucy Lawless, a.k.a. Xena, who's recovering from a fall during an October taping of "The Tonight Show." [ ] 03-31-97 NEWSDAY. Monday. Page B21. 1011 words. "the Marvin Kitman Show / a Critic's Wandering Eye / after Hours, Classy Shows Yield to Lassie Shows" By Marvin Kitman (MarvinKitmanShow@worldnet.att. net) EXCERPT: There is no truth to the rumor that I dress in medieval costume and carry a sword when I watch my second favorite, mindless, guilty pleasure. "Xena: Warrior Princess"(Saturdays at 9 p.m. on WPIX / 11) is my "X-Files." It has everything: history, mythology, action, romance, camp, fun. Xena, the Amazon, played by my current dream princess, Lucy Lawless, rambles the known world with her faithful companion Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor) righting wrongs, defending the defenseless and vanquishing evil as well as anyone who gets in her way. Let me admit right off I am favorably disposed to costume pieces, the fewer pieces the better. And I am a sucker for history. "Xena" goes all the way back to "Hercules," from which it was spun off by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, the C. B. DeMilles of junk action-adventure TV. Despite the dialogue, which can be stupid, it's very clever and funny. The special effects are very good. You know it's as phony as a three-drachma bill. But its still a lot of fun. I like the way Xena is always running over people, doing flying somersaults and other impossible things. The show also has giants, monsters and gods who miraculously appear out of thin air and vanish. But still the main attraction is Xena. In the field of Wonder Women, she is more fearless and fierce than Martha Stewart. I'm told the show is very popular in sports bars. Prisons, too. Another junk show on my secret viewing calendar is "La Femme Nikita'" (Monday at 10 p.m. on USA), which premiered in January... ...Its not as clever as "Xena." It doesn't have special effects. What it does have is violence. There's a lot of shooting people in the head, tortures and other cruel things.... ...GRAPHIC: Lucy Lawless dares all as "Xena: Warrior Princess." [ ] 03-31-97 MARKETING NEWS TM. Page 22. 1209 words. "Toy companies hope to build on brand strength" By By Cyndee Miller EXCERPT: ...Stores already are stocked with tons of toys, mostly for boys, from the rerelease of the Star Wars trilogy. Aiming for much the same audience are the toys from The Jurassic Park and Batman sequels. Unknown in all of this is how girls will respond. Based on the positive response to Xena action figures, the Batgirl character shows potential, but will probably skew older.... [ ] 03-31-97 THE GUARDIAN. Page 12. 600 words. "Leading Article: Spice of Life. C5 is a real challenge to the Big 4" EXCERPT: ...Of course, there will be problems, and we should not expect the channel to be to everyone's taste. The catalogue of mishaps - the departure of a chief executive, a three-month delay in launch and the unfortunate advent of retuners - will undoubtedly be extended. Some programmes sound like stinkers, viz Xena: Warrior Princess and The Bold And The Beautiful. Some business calculations are based on intuition rather than insight. As Zenith Media noted: "So there's a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?"... Notices: All back issues of XMR and TWXN are available at (http://xenafan.com/xmr). 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). If you have never been there, you are **not** a xenafan! 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! I am greatly indebt to you), the MCA NetForum, the Xenite Message Center, and alt.tv.xena. I also would like to thank sirvin@law.wfu.edu for assitance in collecting the newstories. 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".