From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V5 #68 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Tuesday, March 15 2005 Volume 05 : Number 068 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] season six DVDs - my eyes, my eyes! [cjlnh@webtv.n] [chakram-refugees] Conflicting info [HJJH ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena's arrows [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena's arrows [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] COMING HOME Commentary [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] COMING HOME Commentary [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Trees... [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Lucy and Rob [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] COMING HOME Commentary [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] season six DVDs - my eyes, my eyes! [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Lucy and Rob [cjlnh@webtv.net (Cheryl LaScola)] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 00:27:22 -0500 From: cjlnh@webtv.net (Cheryl LaScola) Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] season six DVDs - my eyes, my eyes! Regarding bloopers on disc 9, not only were they old, there were only a couple of minutes of them. There must be plenty from S6 that have not been shown... like Old Ares ... bedroom scene, Rob mentioned many takes for that... I also thought the set was light on video commentary, especially compared to S3. Could have used more LL/ROC in the interviews, rather than all the Joel Metzger... he seemed cocky and arrogant to me, very unlike anyone from the series, cast or crew. I will say though I loved the 30 minute interviews with cast and the 30 minutes of Lucy, Rob & Renee on the FIN set. All in all worth the $$, but I guess knowing there is no S7 to follow it will have to do. ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:56:24 -0600 From: HJJH Subject: [chakram-refugees] Conflicting info According to TVGUIDE Online, on-- ABC: Friday, March 18, 9:30 p.m., Central time "Less Than Perfect: Ignoring Lydia" Lucy Lawless plays a PR specialist who9s promoting ex-lover Will Butler9s autobiography. However, my newspaper shows "20/20" on that channel from 9 to 10. TEXena ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 20:32:00 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena's arrows On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 07:43, Xena Torres wrote: > When watching FIN, it's quite clear Xena was shot five times (once in each > shoulder, in the gut, her right elbow and her leg leg through the side of > the knee). However, watch carefully as she's about to have her head taken > off and you MAY notice (as I just did for the frist time last night) that > Xena has TWO broken arrow shafts in her left shoudler. What the? > (big snippage) > > So, now I'm all lost and confused. Just how many times was she shot and > when!? > BATTLE ON XENA! Gosh XT, you're the first person EVER to notice or comment on that. You should be working in forensic investigation. ;) cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 20:41:47 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena's arrows On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:59, IfeRae@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/13/2005 10:47:35 AM Pacific Standard Time, > > xenatorres@hotmail.com writes: > > So, now I'm all lost and confused. Just how many times was she shot and > > when!? > > LOL! Lots and often. How's that? May CR'll try to give a more precise > answer. He likes hurting his brain. > > -- Ife Errr, no. I wouldn't try to compete with XT on an issue where it's all visible on screen anyway. What I had in mind though was to try and identify the forest where Xena's last battle in FIN occurred**. Now that I've seen the little forest at Bethells and a bit of Woodhill, there's a chance I may be able to spot it. Assuming, of course, that it was shot in one or other of those locations. ** I mean the battle against the army of course, not against Yodoshi - that was at Lion Park. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:18:51 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] COMING HOME Commentary On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:59, IfeRae@aol.com wrote: > Huh. I'll look for that. So far I've looked at the > interviews/commentaries through Gurkhan. Cute, how they managed to spread > stuff from a particular interview/commentary session through several eps. > > -- Ife I think they just did a few interviews with each particular person, that ranged over a wide variety of eps, and then cut the bits to suit each particular ep together. The person doing the video editing, I have to say, quite often got it wrong.... that is to say, somebody like Donnie Duncan (the DP) for example would be talking about some camera effect and I'd know *exactly* which shots in the ep he was referring to, but the picture sequence they cut to would be the wrong one - something vaguely similar but definitely not the one he was referring to. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:13:50 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] COMING HOME Commentary On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 07:42, Xena Torres wrote: > Kay, don't do that. You scared the crap out of me! This was in the > interview. There was no commentary. I bought the Futureshop/Best Buy > edition and I was freaking at your heading that there was another > version!!! ACK! ;) > > But, to your post, ah yes, I agree completely with you and Lucy. But, > unfortunatly, they say that all the time. They all have scenes they'd like > to fix. With TV the biggest issue is time - they simply don't have any. Rob > shocked the hell out me when he said both FINs were shot in a total of 18 > days!!!!! Granted that's two more days than normal for two eps (standard > shooting time for a tv ep is 8 days), but FIN was so HUGE in undertaking > and what Rob pulled off with budget and time. > > Course, I'm beginning to see why FIN had a lot more money. After watching > all of season six the last few days (which, honestly, I have enjoyed a lot > more in one sitting That's a marathon performance! > and I now like the season better than before), my gods, > like EVERY other ep is a clip show or at least using more than a frame of > file footage! No, seriously! Send in the Clones, The Last of the Centaurs, > You Are There, A Friend in Need II, Soul Possession - ALL these eps used > clips. Well yeah *but* a clip show is really one that's composed mostly of clips. Clones I think was the only clip show by that definition. You Are There had a host of characters in familiar settings from previous eps so it looked like a clip show, but a lot of that material was freshly shot. > And while I'm nitpicking.....Soul Poessesion - after watching it again, > I've decided to just chock it up to a Annie and the others story and > pretend it has ZERO base in the actual Xena world because it's so > inconsistant with the series. Ares did not confess his love for Xena until > season five. Granted, this was not the sincere profession of that love, and > was more, yeah, be my warrior queen ep, but still. Also, ONE person was > paying attention as Xena DID have the CORRECT old chakram in the bar scene > with Joxer. However, in every other 'old' shot, Xena sported the new > chakram on her belt. Yes, we know about that YAXI I found the logic of the wedding agreement a bit hard to follow - I think I need to view the ep again. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:22:30 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Trees... On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:59, IfeRae@aol.com wrote: > > > IIRC we came up with a name for these things - not YAXI, not blooper - > > but I can't remember what it was. > > LOL! Yes, I recall that, but can't remember either. But I won't argue if > you call the tire tread a blooper. > > -- Ife It bothers me 'Blooper' is really a flubbed line, I think. And YAXI is - well, an error in the continuity. There *must* be a generic name for these things - microphone booms in the shot, aircraft in the background, tyre treads, actors wearing pre-Hellenic digital watches.... 'anachronism' doesn't quite cover it. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:23:56 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Lucy and Rob On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 07:46, Xena Torres wrote: > After watching all the commentaries and behind the scene footage, I just > gotta say that Lucy and Rob seem like such a lovely couple! Good on them! > I liked Rob directing Lucy and Lucy suddenly commenting that he was so > handsome that she wasn't listening. And my fav, during the FIN commentary > when Rob jokes that he didn't tell Lucy and Renee to kiss and then Lucy > starts yelling, "Kiss her! Kiss her!" and then look at each other and just > laugh. ;) Is this *another* commentary on FIN (besides the one on the one-off DVD release?) Oooooh I hope so!!! cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:06:39 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] COMING HOME Commentary On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 07:23, IfeRae@aol.com wrote: > Oooo, I picked up season 6 and am checking out the interviews and > commentaries first. I was pleasantly surprised by Lucy's contributions > about COMING HOME. I understand she did multi-season comments while she > had a bad cold. From what I've seen so far, many of the S6 sessions > must've been then, when she seemed even more subdued than usual. But every > now and then she sees something (often a "mistake" in her own performance) > that's worth all those moments she doesn't say much. Lucy is quite critical of her own performance. Also (occasionally) of Renee's, I notice. Can't remember the occasion, it was somewhere in the Season 5 commentaries. She did say she thought Gabs' sais looked like gardening forks and were a 'silly weapon'. But most of the time she was more critical of herself. OTOH, occasionally something strikes Lucy as really well done and she's not hesitant to say so, either. I think we're privileged to be getting her genuine immediate reactions. > I was also surprised to hear RT give such weight to this ep reconciling the > Gabwhack in MOTHERHOOD. For someone who is accused of doing what he wanted regardless of the fans, RT actually seems to have been taking quite a lot of notice of the opinions / feelings of fans. (Rather too much in my view ;) I thought the Gabchack scene as modified by Rick Jacobson worked fine (but then I would, wouldn't I? ) Interestingly, Rick Jacobson in his interview on the ep seems to think it worked fine too. Maybe he isn't as sensitive of the subtext as RT is. > I hate the scene where X apologizes to G about > nearly taking her head off, but figured it was inserted to make up for the > occurence. Oh, me too. That is, I hate that scene too. Why apologise? Xena made amends for it by (indirectly) getting both Gabs and Eve resuscitated (even if from an unexpected quarter) at the risk of her life. And if there was an apology, I'm sure it woulda been forthcoming well before Coming Home happened. > RT almost made it sound like the ep itself was conceived as away > to address that one thing. Interestingly, there's no real discussion about > it, and they don't even show the apology bit. I'm glad. > Oh, another thing. We recently had a CR-inspired discussion about the > devestated forest scene in COMING HOME. Quite conveniently, we find out in > the commentary that this particular forest is cleared every 25 years and > that huge trees grow in the place of those burned. The crew heard about > this and jumped on the chance to incorporate it into the ep. So now we > know XWP was not responsible for causing them to burn down those trees. > Actually, they don't burn the forest, they log it with chainsaws for timber or woodpulp. The appearance of burning was given by a couple of small fires or smoke flares or something that (I think) Renpics FX guys set. But yes, pinus radiata does grow to maturity in about 25 years in the North Island climate. They don't clear a whole forest at once, I think they aim to log roughly 1/25th of it each year.... or maybe they have a group of forests and work through them on a 25-year cycle. So that the supply to the mill stays fairly constant. > Finally, Tappy and Lucy question the ending, where Xena and Ares make up. > Tappy says the scene had been part of MOTHERHOOD and they liked it so much > they wanted to use it somewhere. Now, he wonders if it wasn't too "chummy" > at the end of an ep where X&A had just tried to beat each other to a pulp. > I wonder if they forgot Ares was under the influence of the Furies at the > time, which I think most fans would take into consideration. Personally, I > thought that scene added "heart," by reminding us of the complex attraction > between X&A. It didn't seem weird at all to me. I lied that ending. And after all, Xena had just risked her life to save Ares from the Furies - in return for him saving her life in Coming Home, at the cost of his godly powers. That's more than Ares had ever done for anybody else. > Yep, second guessing XWP is very interesting, even from Xenastaff. I have > to say, most of the time I think what we got is as believable (and maybe > more "real") than what TPTB wish they'd done instead. > > -- Ife I'd rather have the second-guessing from Xenastaff. It doesn't infuriate me the way second-guessing by fans does I reckon Xenastaff are _entitled_ to criticise, they made the ep. Having said which, I think their original decisions are usually better than their second-guess ideas. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:33:34 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] season six DVDs - my eyes, my eyes! On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 07:56, Xena Torres wrote: > WHEW! FINALLY finished my DVD box set of season six and I had some > thoughts: > > 1. This set appears to have the highest quality for picture. However, one > must wonder what was done to the film to make it so. All the colours seems > to glow and reach out and smack your eyeballs they are so vibrant. I > honestly couldn't stare at it for hours on end and had to take some mini > eye breaks. Also, this 'high quality' seemed to cause some odd results. In > some scenes, the outlines of some people blurred. It was very slight, but > you could still notice it. It also caused a massive lighting messup in "The > Ring" where Xena faces the camera and there is torchlight on her face. > Suddenly her faces lights up like a lightbulb! Ack! Xena is GLOWING WHITE! > There were a few other shots in "The Rheingold" and "The Ring" that had > this same problem, but that one shot in particular just buried Lucy's face > beneath a mask of white light. Could be the settings they used for the DVD compression, I suppose (though I have no idea what the process involves). Anyone here know anything about creating DVDs? > 2. Less commentary. :( Only four, and pretty much all the same people. > Granted, I LOVE Lucy, Rob and Renee commentary (though Lucy was VERY > subdued this time - perhaps cause all eps were dramas), I also really > enjoyed in earlier sets Hudson's commentaries and Rob with other members of > the staff (like Chris and Liz). I would have preferred a little more > varity. Also, why did Joel comment all alone? Just an odd choice I felt. (I > honestly have not yet listened to his commentary because I run audio > commentaries in the background when I am working on the computer and I had > no interest in watching a his video commetary). That is rather disappointing. I want commentaries by everybody on every ep! Well, almost. > 3. Lots of great features: I really enjoyed the nice LONG season six > interview with cast and crew. Okay, that partially makes up for the scarcity of commentaries. > A lot of great questions were asked and I > LOVED that Hudson was included even though she wasn't in the last season. I > really loved all the interviews throughout the discs, but I had to wonder > who chooses which eps to interview about and which not too - ie: NONE of > the FINs had interviews. But there was a lot of great insight both behind > the scenes and character wise. What? When they had interviews on two-thirds of the eps in Season 4, for instance. But some of the omissions in previous seasons were very odd - no interviews for Amphipolis Under Siege or Looking Death in the Eye, for example. AUS was really inexplicable since the eps each side of it - Eternal Bonds and the execrable Fishsticks - *both* had interviews. EB is arguably a far less distinguished ep than AUS (and as for Fishpaste.... :) cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:06:18 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Conflicting info Hi, >According to TVGUIDE Online, on-- > >ABC: Friday, March 18, 9:30 p.m., Central time >"Less Than Perfect: Ignoring Lydia" > >Lucy Lawless plays a PR specialist who9s promoting ex-lover Will Butler9s >autobiography. > >However, my newspaper shows "20/20" on that channel from 9 to 10. "Less Than Perfect" is on at 8:30pm Central time (9:30 Eastern). 20/20 follows it at 9 central, 10 Eastern. I just confirmed this on TiVo, which updates its listings daily (and set the ep up to record ... I forgot to record "2 and a Half Men" or whatever it's called, oops). =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 20:38:56 -0500 From: cjlnh@webtv.net (Cheryl LaScola) Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Lucy and Rob Yes the FIN commentary on S6 DVD is new and while some of the same subjects come up it is different from the stand alone FIN commentary (which was only audio.... S6 is both audio & video). C ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V5 #68 *************************************