- What’s this? Despite what Guillermo Del Toro told a BBC radio program, Hugo Weaving says he hasn’t been approached to reprise his Lord of the Rings role in The Hobbit (though he’d be open to it). Did Del Toro say what he was planning to do rather than what he had already done?
- We should all stop sneering at fantasy aficionados, says a writer for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Ya think?
- Some folks have started a petition suggesting Bridget Regan as Wonder Woman in the new would-be movie. Frankly, while I really like Regan in Legend of the Seeker, (a) I’m not sure this is particularly good casting, and (b) I get annoyed when people unimaginatively suggest actors for roles based on similar roles they’ve played before. As such, as much as I love Lucy Lawless, I think she’d be the worst Wonder Woman imaginable. She’s already played a warrior princess; since comparisons between the portrayals would be inevitable (and infuriating), playing a variation on the warrior princess role does her, and Wonder Woman, no good whatsoever.
- The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that they’ll be ten Best Picture Nominees next year. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time since 1943! The point, of course, is to generate more popular interest in the awards by upping the chances that the nominated films are ones that audiences have seen and care about. This also gives the Academy a chance to include more genre films (but I’m not holding my breath).
- To date, the Harry Potter movie franchise has made an astounding $7.2 billion in theatrical and DVD sales. But each movie has sold fewer DVDs than the one before it — part of an ongoing industry trend of plummeting DVD sales.
- Art really does imitate life! Stephen King’s book Cell was about an evil cell-phone signal. It turns out that the publisher may have been sending some evil signals of its own — namely illegal text-messages promoting the book.
- Where did the current explosion of literary vampires come from? Salon spells it out.
- There of YA’s top fantasy authors — Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black, and Cassandra Clare — spill their secrets at a BEA panel.
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While I think Bridget Regan would make a great “Wonder Woman” based on her portrayl of Kahlan on “Legend of the Seeker”, she would essentially just be playing “Kahlan” in a leather corset instead of the “magic” pure white dress.
I’m personally hoping Alexa Davalos is considered, although Joss Whedon apparently had Cobie Smuthers in mind for the role (not that his thoughts will amount to much after his removal from the project). And there’s always George Miller’s pick for the JLA movie that went nowhere - Megan Gale. I can attest to her breath-taking beauty (having met her), but I have no idea how she is as an actor (apart from her terrible “role” in the terrible film “Stealth”).
And I would have a MAJOR geek-gasm if Lucy lawless were cast as Hippolyta. But I don’t expect that to happen.
Of course, since the WW film appears to be stuck in development h3ll, all this casting talk is probably pointless.
Good casting idea for Lucy.
EVENTUALLY the film will get made, I think.
Um, I hope you are aware that Xena isn’t an actual princess. She’s not royalty. Just like Autolycus isn’t an actual king when he refers to himself as the ‘King of Thieves’. He is the best at what he does (stealing). Just like Xena is great at what she is (a warrior).
I didn’t know people took that to be literal…lol.
Well, not to go all Xena-geek on you (which I could do!), but doesn’t it depend on how you define “royalty”? Didn’t the warlord Borias, after conquering much land, did dub her his “warrior princess” …?
But yes, I understand that that’s mostly an expression.
Wait, wait! I just realized it was Lao Ma, ruler of the Chin empire, who dubbed her her “warrior princess”!
Wow, how could I have got that wrong?! Bad me!
Nope.
Lao Ma (Xena’s Chinese mentor and Empress of part of Chin(a)) first coined the mantle of “Warrior Princess” for Xena when offering Xena the position as her second-in-command (with Xena’s primary duty being to invade and conquer all the surrounding individual “states” of Chin(a) so that Lao Ma could be the ultimate ruler). I’m not quite sure whether Xena’s “princess” duties would have extended as far as the royal bed chamber though - quite possibly given Lao Ma and Xena’s “sensual flying fabric dance of love”.
However in the author’s defence, although not clearly shown on-screen, it does appear that Borias learnt of Lao Ma’s title “Warrior Princess” (even though Xena declined Lao Ma’s offer to be her “Warrior Princess”) and used it to described Xena (with respect or in jest is unclear - probably the latter given Borias’ personality and his attitude towards Xena at that time) and the title “stuck” and definitely became a mark of “respect” as it were.
Finally, there is also the original script for the very first Xena episode “Sins of the Past” which suggests that Xena’s biological father may have been a man of nobility - the rough theory (based on the very little evidence available) being that he was a King or some such who popped into Amphipolis, knocked-up Cyrene with baby Xena and then left town in a hurry. The locals gossiped about the nobility of Xena’s father and coined the term “Warrior Princess” as a means to tease/ridicule Xena for her tom boy ways and single-parent status. This “version” of events was somewhat reflected in one of Dark Horse’s Xena comics (”Year One” perhaps).
Of course, later events in the TV series strongly suggested that Xena’s father was nothing more than a drunken warrior who was willing to sacrifice his daughter to Ares if it would aid him in battle.
Nice. You way out-geeked me. Interesting, because I guess I remembered Borias calling her “warrior-princess.”
Did an early episode also suggest that Ares might be her father — which would make her a “princess” of a different sort? (And which would, of course, be extremely creepy given later events…!)
The season 3 episode “The Furies” was written to establish/confirm that Ares was in fact Xena’s biological father (he simply disguised himself as Cyrene’s husband so that he could pretend to be her husband returning from war and have celebratory/reunion s3x).
BUT a number of TPTB as well as Lucy Lawless (aka “Xena’) and the late Kevin Smith (aka “Ares”) all felt that the character of “Xena” worked better as a mortal (which also helped to separate her from “Hercules”) and that the sexual tension between Xena and Ares (established in their very first episode together) would be *icky* in hindsight.
Therefore, the ending of the episode was changed to leave it “open to interpretation”. Of course, only the very “end” was changed, so all the “evidence” provided in the episode still weighed in favour of Ares being Xena’s father. However, Ares’ behaviour in season 5 (stalking Xena, demanding that she have a child with him by threatening the life of baby Eve and finally admitting he loved Xena) pretty strongly indicates that he didn’t consider himself to be her father (although, in Greek myth Ares happily bumped uglies with his “sister” Aphrodite, but I don’t think TPTB would have included incest in their show - infantcide, genocide, domestic violence and “necessary” depictions of headless and naked lead characters were about as far as they would go).
Nice! Thanks! Did you have to look any of that up? You should teach a class!
LOL. No, unfortunately I didn’t have to look any of that up. I’m just a dedicated Xenite. BUT I’m in recovery and hope to complete the twelve steps shortly. With any luck I won’t even be able to name Xena’s annoying blonde sidekick - Elle? Belle?
$@#%&!!!
That article in the Guardian started out pretty insulting, eh? Not denying the fact that Fantasy really hasn’t been given its dues, and that it’s firmly in the realm of geekhood. But seriously.
“They are the zit-ridden little brothers of the SF geeks, whose even-less-healthy obsessions include trolls, giving Anglo-Saxon names to phallic weapons, and maidens with magical powers.”
Use past tense, friend. Fantasy has been quietly growing in popularity for YEARS, thanks to Harry Potter. It’s not the avenue of the unhealthiest geeks in the high school anymore. There’s no reason to hide your David Eddings or Terry Brooks in the closet anymore when your friends come over. More and more are finding out that DnD is not the habit of the mentally retarded, but is just a hellova lot of fun. And GIRLS are happily among fantasy’s greatest fans. I’m young, but even I’ve noticed the change in ‘atmosphere’ since my childhood, when I didn’t dare tell anyone about my love for the fantasy genre. This perception of “pimply nerd boys” is as outdated as the so-called myth of “chick gamers”.
They say Fantasy can be a little outdated - I think part of the problem is that literary perceptions of the genre are out of date. Especially since we seem to be sneaking many of today’s kids over to our side. Hah!
/rant
“I think part of the problem is that literary perceptions of the genre are out of date. Especially since we seem to be sneaking many of today’s kids over to our side.”
Yes, the Salon article also bumps up against this idea towards the end of the article, with regard to the recent resurgence in that subset of fantasy that people don’t quite know what to call: horror, paranormal romance (LOL), urban fantasy…
However. An eighteen-year-old girl who has read every vampire novel published in the last two years and who rents the Buffy DVDs to catch up on “the classics” has very little in common with the more stereotypical fantasy fan, and I doubt she would even define herself as one.
I agree that Twilight and “urban fantasy” fans don’t really mix well with “true Fantasy”, etc. and while it’s a step, there isn’t always a lot of crossover. I was thinking more along the lines of Harry Potter fans, plus all the fantasy that has been filling up the YA shelves. I’m a little out of date on the hottest YA Fantasy authors right now, but I could mention Tamora Pierce for example.
When I was in grade 7, I picked up the first and only book our school library had, her very first one. I loved the series so much that I made my little brother and sister read them, who really enjoyed them. Two years later, the library bought new copies of her first two series and I could never find them on the shelves because my sister’s friends had passed the word around, and they kept getting to them before me. And that was almost 10 years ago now.