THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS.... TWXN 71 02/22/97 Brought to you by Xena: Media Review (XMR): http://xenafan.com/xmr TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR. XMR is a periodic annotated world press review of reports regarding the internationally syndicated television show XENA: Warrior Princess (1995 - ) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor. For a free e-mail subscription send "subscribe XMR" to ktaborn@lightspeed.net. Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future issues of XMR. From the editor: 1. WHOOSH #06 is currently on schedule and is due to be released on-line Saturday, March 1, 1996. Haven't memorized the URL yet? That's okay. It is http://www.thirdstory.com/whoosh/ . I promise to try to get the e-mail version out within 5 days of the on- line release. 2. XMR #22 is starting to loom in the distance. Yes! It has actually entered my conscious mind. I anticipate that it will be released AFTER WHOOSH #06. 3. I am in the midst of processing 150 XMR subscription requests. I am overjoyed and I am processing them in batches of 20. I appreciate everyone's patience. When you make a request I automatically send out my "The line you have reached is busy" message. Once you have been processed you will receive the "Welcome to XMR" drone. After that you are automatically placed in the queue for the next XMR mailing. 4. TWXN is now officially a month behind! Can things get any better than this???? I hope not. 5. Meanwhile, as TWXN slowly collapses, isn't XWP just getting better and better? I am so happy I invested my time in this show and not...well, I won't be rude and name names. ---Kym [ ] 01-20-97 NOTES: ROYAL COUPLE OF THIEVES (#17), 3rd release, 12/23/96. Ranked 1st action hour the fourth time this season with a 5.1 rating. [1st release 02/19/96: Ranked as the 3rd action hour with a 5.6 rating; 2nd release 06/17/96.] Competition: (1) XENA 5.1; (2) HTLJ 5.0; (3) STDS9 4.9; and BAYWATCH 4.8. [ ] 01-20-97 DAILY VARIETY. Monday. 1509 words. "Just for Variety" by Army Archerd EXCERPT: ...WHATTA REUNION on the Paramount lot! Anson Williams and Henry Winkler discovered each other in the commissary of the studio, where both worked on "Happy Days." Williams today starts directing a seg of "Star Trek: Voyager" and Winkler's reining a "Clueless" seg. "We screamed across the commissary when we saw each other," admits Williams. "The memories started flooding back. We'd love to work together again." Anson said, "Henry is a great actor I'm not a very good actor!" They'd been in the series from 1973-84. Williams said "Happy Days' co-star Ron Howard was very helpful to him on "The Cape" seg he directed, giving him advice on filming weightlessness and calling NASA for him. "Ron has never lost his perspective: he's always a gentleman and totally modest." Williams has directed a lot of sci-fi/fantasy TV segs, including "Hercules" and "Xena." He says the "Star Trek" script (by Jerri Taylor)he is directing is"exceptional; I am thrilled to do it." He's been offered features to direct, but allows, "It has to be the right one"... [ ] 01-23-97 THE STRAITS TIMES (Singapore). Page 8. 400 words. "Big-budget film leaves positive impact for NZ industry" EXCERPT: WHEN a US$ 30-million (S$ 42-million) movie production comes to town, it can only be good news. "Having a big Hollywood movie here has a huge impact on the local industry, not just from an employment point of view, but it also forces New Zealand film facilities and support services to come up to an international standard," said director Peter Jackson. "For example, on The Frighteners, we couldn't do a sound mix of the complexity needed because the existing equipment here was much too old. But the sound studio here said it would get the gear in," he said. "And so now New Zealand film-makers have access to that new equipment, which wouldn't have been down here if it weren't for The Frighteners." Haunted houses creak, graves rumble and Michael J. Fox zooms through dimensions during the course of the exhilarating movie. It seems, and sounds, inconceivable that these highly-polished sound effects could have been created outside of a large Hollywood sound studio. Yet, they were completed in New Zealand. "A film like this with a very big budget in US dollars does ultimately leave a very positive impact on the country," stressed Jackson. "There's also a lot of production here with American TV shows like Hercules and Xena happening down here -it's actually quite busy." At present, the modest local film industry crafts about three or four movies a year, all of which can probably be made together for under the cost of one Hollywood project like The Frighteners. When Tinseltown returns to town to film Jackson's King Kong remake at the end of the year, the residents of sleepy North Island are likely to meet another new high-tech friend -a giant mechanical gorilla. [x060] 01-23-97 THE PALM BEACH POST. Thursday. Page 8E. 3466 words. "Births" COMMENTARY: Another Xena born to the world! EXCERPT: ... PALM BEACH GARDENS MEDICAL CENTER... ... DEC. 16 - Mr. Keither Tucker Sr. and Ms. Vina Glee, Riviera Beach, son, Keither Darnell Jr. and daughter, Xena Lanett ... [ ] 01-24-97 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. Page 30. 1554 words. "must Bleed TV; Lookin' for a Little Action? Then Head for the Last Stronghold of Tv Violence, the Punch-drunk World of Cable and Syndication Otherwise Known as..." By David Browne COMMENTARY: In an article about RENEGADE, XWP and HTLJ are mentioned several times in context of the general action-drama scene. EXCERPT: On Renegade, they don't just shoot a scene--they pump it full of lead. "Makeup, we need blood!" barks the director, roaming the living room of a suburban ranch house that has been transformed into a TV series set. Similar orders from other crew members bullet around the room: "I really want to see that he got shot!" "We need a badge and a gun!" One of the actors pokes near his heart: "If I was shot here," he says, "blood would be squirting up this way." In the mood for an earnest, slice-of-life drama or an impossibly clever sitcom populated by unblemished twentysomethings? Scram. This is double-two-fisted action TV, fella, and the cast and crew of Renegade are cartridge deep into it. For those too sensitive to tune in, the USA Network drama chronicles the travails of Reno Raines, an ex-cop who is, of course, wrongly accused of murder. As played by former Falcon Crest bad boy Lorenzo Lamas, Reno is a brooding, morally upstanding fugitive-loner of few words and many tight, sleeveless T-shirts. Reno and his Native American cohort, Bobby Sixkiller (played by hulking veteran heavy Branscombe Richmond), are always eager to help victimized citizens--when not trying to clear Reno's name and pulverize a few thugs in the process. Lamas is hardly the only one who thinks so: The airwaves are being sprayed with a buckshot load of action series. In addition to Renegade, there are shows about wisecracking mythological figures (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess), rip-offs of wisecracking mythological figures (The Adventures of Sinbad, Tarzan: The Epic Adventures), time-traveling swordsmen (Highlander: The Series), crime-fighting cars (Viper), cops with heightened senses (UPN's The Sentinel), a Fugitive-meets-Twins merger (Two), hunky astronauts in training (The Cape, with a depressed- looking Corbin Bernsen), hunky special-effects men who double as crime fighters (F/X: The Series, with a depressed-looking Kevin Dobson), and a mad-virus- scientist of the week (UPN's The Burning Zone). "Let's face it, we're not doing Shakespeare," says Viper star Jeff Kaake. "It's like being a kid again. You get to shoot bad guys and save the girls." Call it B-TV--the B movies of television, a simple world in which the heroes are virtuous bruisers and the public is threatened on a weekly basis by cold-blooded international terrorists, militia groups, or gun-toting nutjobs. In the end, justice is inevitably served, usually with the help of Uzis and explosions. "You need big adversaries for big guns," says Danny Bilson, executive producer of Viper and The Sentinel. "You can't use the Viper car to take out counterfeiters."... ...One thing everyone agrees on: B-TV attracts a devoted following--here and abroad. Because of its simplistic good- versus-evil plots and characters, action TV plays enormously well overseas, to the point where many of these series have foreign investors. (Viper, for instance, is partly owned by a German media company.) Even Stateside, most action series bring in roughly 2 to 3 million viewers--a modest hit for cable and syndication--with titans like Hercules and Xena racking up double that. Who are these viewers? The "male testosteronal audience," cracks Okie of the predominantly young, male fan base. Distinctions do exist. Lamas' hunkiness leads more women to Renegade. Viper, thanks to a star car that can morph into "a powerful armored machine," attracts more 12- to 17-year-old boys, and Xena has a passionate lesbian following (in New York City, lesbian bars hold Xena nights). Highlander pulls in sci-fi geeks willing to dress in Scottish garb for conventions devoted to the series and the feature films on which it's based. "Action shows allow us to explore our dark sides," adds Okie. "It's a real catharsis. If you were Greek and saw tragedies in Athens, you got a vicarious release. You wouldn't go home and kill your wife." True, but don't rule out life imitating Lamas just yet. In December, a New York bank robber confessed he'd been partly inspired by a Renegade episode. "Obviously," says Okie, who wrote the script, "he didn't watch the fourth act and see the bad guy screw up."... GRAPHIC: XENA, [Lucy Lawless from TV's Xena: Warrior Princess]... [ ] 01-24-97 DAILY NEWS (New York). Friday. Page 81. 1375 words. "on the Mark Mason on Mission All-star If He Makes Team or Not" By Mark Kriegel COMMENTARY: It's always a special day when XWP makes the sports page! In an article about Mark Mason making the All-Star Basketball team, the writer, while comparing Andrew Goleta with Dennis Rodman of all people, stated, "Hey, how about Rodman going one-on-one with Xena the Warrior Princess? I'd pay my $ 24.95 for that." Xena also made a graphic!