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....

