THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS... TWXN 99 08/15/97 Friday 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: Silly me! I am going to be at the Jay Leno Show taping on Monday so the historic 100th issue of TWXN will have to wait until next Wednesday. We must have our priorities. That also means, for those who care, I will hold off releasing XMR #25 as well. Here's the stories: [ ] 04-02-97 LOS ANGELES TIMES. Wednesday. Page E1. 850 words. "Guest Workout. A Regimen Fit for a Hercules" by Candace a. Wedlan, (Times Staff Writer) COMMENTARY: Okay this is all HERCULES but we try to be liberal every now and then and throw the HTLJ kids a bone. REPRINT: For once, we never tire of seeing a guy in the same old shirt. That would be the chamois shirt covering (but not covering up) Kevin Sorbo's 43-inch chest. That would also be the shirt that commanded $ 1,000 at a charity auction in January during the first Official "Xena" and 'Hercules" Convention. The shirt's a lightweight compared to the rest of the outfit worn by Sorbo, 38, who stars on "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys." "The leather woven pants and boots weigh 12 pounds, and that's a lot to lug around in those fight scenes," he said during a recent phone interview from New Zealand, where the syndicated TV show is filmed. "But that's the most fun part of the show. I love doing my own stunts." Question: What's the most memorable stunt so far--with the worst monster? Answer: The toughest monster--probably the episode where my mother gets married. "The Wedding of Alcmene," it was called, with Jason of the Argonaut. Q: Oh, your mother got married? A: She got married. Yeah. Did you miss that episode? Q: I saw the one where Alcmene was engaged to a traitor. Remember Hercules never trusted him? A: Yeah, that was when we introduced Echidna, the mother of all monsters, and I almost get killed and all that kind of stuff. Q: Right, and Echidna had you by the throat but Alcmene's fiance died. A: Well, in "The Wedding of Alcmene," Jason of the Argonaut ends up marrying my mother. It was a huge wedding. We shot that over Valentine's Day a year ago. I remember because my parents were in town. Q: So what happened at the wedding? A: During the wedding, Hera sends this huge monster, this sea serpent that swallows up Jason, and I go leaping into the mouth just before it closes to follow Jason down into the stomach. We get down there and, I mean, we had to shoot inside the slimiest, grossest looking bowels of a stomach you've ever seen in your life. Q: Yuck. A: Yeah, we had to crawl around and slip and slide in this bubbly, gross stuff for two or three days. I was constantly taped from head to toe in this slimy kind of crap that would get rock hard on my body and they'd have to keep hosing me down and slapping more of the crap on me.... [ b] 04-03-97 DAILY VARIETY. Thursday. Page 3. 680 words. "'U Muscle Pushes 'Trek' from Top" By Jenny Hontz COMMENTARY: Historic announcement heralding the end of Trek's hitherto unchallenged rule of syndicated tv. EXCERPT: Trekkies take note: For the first time in 10 years, Paramount Domestic TV's "Star Trek" franchise has fallen out of the top season-to-date spot for weekly syndie hours. Moving into first place are Universal Domestic TV's action series "Xena" and "Hercules." In the latest national Nielsen chart, for the week ending March 23, "Xena: Warrior Princess" and "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" tied at 5.8 season-to-date, edging out Par's "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (5.7). "Deep Space Nine" or its predecessor, "Star Trek: The Next Generation," has held the top household slot for the past decade. Both "Hercules" and "Xena" actually fell in the ratings from the prior week, as did "Star Trek." "Hercules" dropped 2% to 6.1, which was still 11% ahead of last year's pace. "Xena" dipped 3% to 5.6, but grew 4% from the same week a year ago. "Star Trek" tumbled 11% to 4.8, off 20% from last year. But strong performances in the February sweeps for the action pack coupled with steep declines for "Star Trek" finally forced the sci-fi series to take a back seat for the season to Universal's two ancient Greek action heroes. "Hercules" and "Xena" also get ratings boosts from airing on the WGN Superstation as well as in syndication. In other weekly action, All American' s "Baywatch" was flat at 4.1, and MGM's "The Outer Limits" rose 3% to 3.4. Par's "Viper" led the frosh weeklies, gaining 7% to 2.9. All American's "Sinbad" faded 14% to 2.5 and tied with Rysher's "FX The Series," which dipped 4%. Eyemark Entertainment's "Psi Factor" plummeted 17% to 2.4 and tied with Twentieth TV's "Two," which was flat... [ ] 04-05-97 THE TORONTO STAR. Saturday. Page M1. 1458 words. "How Xena's getting it right" By William A. Hynes COMMENTARY: Strangely enough, out of my 10 megs of XWP news database, I rarely see this issue discussed. In my humble opinion, perhaps after presenting a female hero in a non-traditional manner, the show also offers an approach to multiculturalism which is not duplicated by its peers. REPRINT: At least one black good guy, bad guy, victim, bystander, lover, sage or fool has appeared in almost every episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, two popular TV shows set in and around ancient Greece. Blacks have appeared in every role with Xena (played by Lucy Lawless) - including swashbuckling boyfriend Marcus (Bobby Hosea) and mentor Mellila (Ebonie Smith) - for three seasons of Hercules and two of Xena before scholarly fans began praising the writers and casting crew for "getting it right for a change." This isn't just 1990s "political correctness." Contrary to what you'd suppose from most school history books and the average "sword and sandal" movie or TV show, black performers don't do anything on the two shows that black people didn't actually do in ancient Europe. Blacks from the Nile area entered the European story on the Greek island of Crete about 4,000 years ago. By 2000 B.C., they'd integrated into every niche of Mediterranean Egyptian life Ancient Europeans who encountered Coptic Egyptian Africa automatically encountered black Africa. In the Greek and Roman worlds, blacks played every role, from ruler and scholar to soldier and slave.... ...Blacks first appear in mainland Greek art around 1250 B.C., about the time of the "real" Hercules and some 65 years before the Trojan War. (Television's Hercules and Xena have most of their adventures around the time of that war, though there are occasional anachronistic encounters with King David, Socrates, Julius Caesar and Jesus and even a magic-powered visit by Xena to World War II.). In Homer's Odyssey, Trojan War survivor Odysseus (Ulysses, to the Romans) describes his late buddy, Eurybates, as melanochroos (black-skinned) and oulocharinos (woolly haired). Myth, legend and history show that interracial marriages and romances, like Xena's hot affair with Marcus, raised no ancient Greek or Roman eyebrows. Hercules' great-grandmother was the black princess Andromeda, wife of monster-killing Greek hero Perseus. Perseus and Andromeda ruled the two most important mainland cities of the Greek Bronze Age, Tiryns and Mycenae.... ...American historian Frank Martin Snowden Jr. has resurrected and documented part of this record in his books, Blacks In Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice. Of course, more people form their picture of ancient mythology and history from "sword and sandal" movies and TV shows than from scholarly books such as Snowden's. Fortunately, however, the Xena and Hercules series - besides being great fun to watch - are popularizing a less distorted picture of ancient times than commercial entertainment has shown us for five centuries. --- William A. Hynes is a translator, teacher, journalist and author of the French-language reading series, "Alternatives." He began researching ancient myths and realities behind TV's Xena and Hercules at the request of students in East York. GRAPHIC: COLORBLIND WARRIORS: Blacks have appeared in every role in adventures of Xena (Lucy Lawless), including that of swashbuckling boyfriend Marcus (Bobby Hosea). 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".