THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS... TWXN 84 07/09/97 Wednesday 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 Ze Editor: 1. Today is a major Baha'i holiday. A pretty somber one too. It commemorates the martyrdom/execution of one of the prophet-founders of the Baha'i Faith. I am informing you of this to help with fostering interfaith amity and education. Are you reading this, Deb? 2. In late May 1997, the Radio National (ABC) of Australia on a half hour show called "Women Out Loud" featured XWP and interviewed several U.S. fans about what they felt was so compelling about XWP. It was part of the campaign to get XWP back on the airwaves in Australia...and it worked! Chris Clogston has been gracious enough to offer copies of this tape AT COST. For only $4 she will copy the audio tape and mail it to your home. Just write to cclogston@earthlink.net with the subject "Aussie tape". You will be glad you did. 3. News of XMR!!! We are getting closer to production date. I haven't decided yet to have it come out on Mondays or Fridays, but I want #22 out no later than July 18th, and henceforth from that date fortnightly! I am getting excited over having XMR in action again and with working with the new team I have assembled for this "rebirth": Diane Silver, Maria Erb, Barbara "Xenatwo", and Lydia Woods. 4. The biggest news this issue is that we FINALLY leave February of 1997. It was a nice month, but come on. I am hoping to get my act together, earnestly try to ignore those shiney things that jump into my path, and over the summer, to play an intense game of "catch-up". As to news content, we are sensitized to the acting job market in NZ, we get to see Rob Tapert in denial (and he ain't with Cleopatra!), and we get to experience some feint rumblings about ROBIN HOOD. 5. And what do we have to look forward to on Friday? Glad you asked! We will have XWP intruding into an article about gardening, an everso brief mention of Sam Raimi (Sam Raimi? Who's HE?), some more exciting sports page stuff, and can you say....SPY GAME? And here is what **you** have been waiting for: [ ] 02-26-97 THE DAILY NEWS (New Plymouth)[New Zealand]. Page 3. 484 words. "Tutor tells of need to go offshore" By Mark Birch REPRINT: IF YOU want to make a living purely from acting, you'll have to go overseas. That warning was given in New Plymouth yesterday by Wellington-based Macgregor Cameron, who is tutoring 19 young members of the Performing Arts Centre's core course and also conducting workshops for former course graduates and members of amateur theatre groups. "If you are going to make a living off purely acting, you can't stay here in New Zealand," he said. "And it's a very very small number who make it overseas; you can count on the fingers of two hands the people who are out there doing it. "Michael Hurst (a New Zealander who plays the character Iolaus in Hercules) is my god. He and Lucy Lawless as Xena are absolute success stories and deserve all the kudos they get for playing their roles and giving the public the performance that's expected from them." In New Zealand, professional actors had to rely on other kinds of work to top up their incomes, said Cameron. "I have friends who have a multitude of skills. I supplement my income by teaching and tutoring, and I have a friend who is a plumber. "You become very much a jack of all trades; you can't help it, because the opportunities for fulltime acting work are pretty limited," Cameron said. Opportunities to act in filmed productions shot in New Zealand, such as The Piano and some episodes of Hercules, were wonderful -- but the problem was getting cast. "However, there's a healthiness about the industry in New Zealand that wasn't there five to ten years ago. There's an attitude that we want to start creating our own thing, whether in film, television or stage work. "The stage is pretty healthy, particularly in centres like Dunedin and Wellington." People studying to become actors needed to do homework "in varying degrees. Out in the business you get everyone, from people who are very intuitive, down to people who benefit from a lot of very formal methodology. "And there's a growing sense at the moment that actors should take more responsibility for their own scholarship' of the text they are working on. "You are basically working from the text to find out the truth of the text, the playwright's intention and the characters' journey through the play . . . "The model overseas is one of three, four or five years' formal training. In America it would be post-graduate training; Hollywood stars like Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields have masters degrees in their CV; that's the pattern. "In New Zealand, I think we are actually going closer to the European model, which is autonomous drama schools. "Beyond that, there is the need for some foundation skill work, which is what places like the Performing Arts Centre serve," Cameron said. [ ] 02-26-97 THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES. Wednesday. Page C1. 1280 words. "Violence on the tube. Critics fault syndication and ridicule the ratings" By Steve Bornfeld (The Chattanooga Times) EXCERPT: Bang, bang -- you're dead. Or: Thump, smash, pow and thwack! -- you're maimed, crippled, bloodied and battered. On the tube, that is. Television violence is a hot-button issue, ensnaring everyone from TV set manufacturers (who will build new sets with V-chip blocking mechanisms) to President Bill Clinton.... ...So who's responsible? Most viewers just blame "television," that vast, amorphous tangle of networks, affiliates, syndicators, stations and cable operators, the latter breeding new channels at jackrabbit speed. But one of those words -- "syndicators" -- has particular resonance. The syndicate offerings are the only ones purchased directly by local programmers. With their shows sold market-by-market instead of nationally distributed by a network, they produce what some critics call "violent" -- but they like to describe as "action-adventure" -- series: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys; Xena: Warrior Princess, FX: The Series; The Highlander; Real Stories of the Highway Patrol; Kung Fu: The Legend Continues; Real TV; The Extremists; LAPD: Life on the Beat; Viper; High Tide; Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years; The Lazarus Man; and Tales From the Crypt, to name a few.... ...But a recent, exhaustive TV violence study at UCLA praised the networks for toning down the torture. Instead of pervasive violence, there are now pockets of it, like NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street. Their view of syndicated shows was not as generous. "Syndicated series raise more concerns on a percentage basis than network series do," the authors say. "Syndicated series are mostly one-hour dramas, a type much more likely to contain violence than half-hour network comedies. These syndicated dramas also run at many different time periods throughout the country, sometimes even in the daytime."... ...The UCLA study targeted several syndicated shows as worthy of worry, including Kung Fu: The Legend Continues; Babylon 5; and Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. Of Hercules, it said the show "features weapons such as fists, clubs, branding irons, swords, rocks and whips. . .The major reason it raises concerns is its glorified portrayal of combat." Of Xena, it said: "Each episode is full of threats, kicks, punches and martial-arts fighting. In one program, there is a scene in which a supernatural power comes out of a treasure box and burns a villain to a crisp. In other episodes, a man is impaled on an ax, and a sword is shoved into the groin area of a man." But Rob Tapert, executive producer of both shows, says the concern is unfounded. "On both, we don't make the violence something easy to emulate," he says. "Xena's acrobatic stuff is so over-the-top and Hercules is so powerful. You hit people and they go flying a hundred feet. Not all that much is believable. And we try to put small messages or morals in them. People feel comfortable with their kids watching it." Tapert also says he's grateful he's not producing these shows for the networks. "We get no notes back from syndicators, no network notes, we're allowed to take this show in the direction we feel best for it." Wildly popular now is Xena, with its warrior heroine slicing and dicing her foes, signaled by her ear-piercing yelp of "ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!" It was spun off Hercules, a similarly intense show about the mythical demigod. And then there's The Highlander in which decapitation empowers the hero.... [ b] 03-07-97 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. Page 56. 972 words. "The Week" By Bruce Fretts and Ken Tucker EXCERPT: ...The combination of cartoonish violence, anachronistic jokes, and voluminous cleavage (both male and female) has made Hercules and Xena huge hits in syndication. Now THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (TNT, Mondays, 10-11 p.m.) tries to replicate the formula on cable. Johnny Depp look-alike Matthew Porretta brings little panache to the title role; he wisely opts not to attempt an English accent (unlike Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' Kevin Costner), but he's not going to make anyone forget Errol Flynn. The rest of the cast is equally anonymous: bland Anna Galvin as Maid Marian, Fabio wannabe Richard Ashton as Little John, and token fat guy Martyn Ellis as Friar Tuck. This Robin Hood strains for campy humor but winds up delivering even fewer laughs than Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, if that's possible.... [ c] 03-17-97 CHICAGO TRIBUNE. Monday. Page 8. 423 words. "TV'S New Robin Hood Feels at Home" By Doug Nye (Knight-Ridder Newspapers) EXCERPT: Matthew Porretta says he's "having a blast" these days. And why not? He's making a living doing what he did as a kid in Connecticut, playing Robin Hood. Porretta is the star of "The New Adventures of Robin Hood," a one-hour series currently airing each week in the United States on cable's TNT Mondays at 9 p.m.... ...Porretta says "Robin Hood" is part of the new wave of adventure series such as "Hercules," "Xena" and "Sinbad" that have shown up on television in recent years....