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". 


