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News Roundup W/E 2020-10-11

Personal / Website News

Sara Tantlinger Blog Appearance

For the month of October, horror author and poet Sara Tantlinger is doing a series at her website called Delicious Horror. I had the honour to make an appearance on her 10/07 entry, talking about my love for Mikel Koven’s book La Dolce Morte and giving a cocktail recipe for the Buona Vita.

Ann Radcliffe Academic Conf 2021

The CFP for the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference (year 4!) for the 2021 StokerCon is live at the StokerCon website. Please consider submitting!

HP Lovecast Fragments

The next episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast will be a fragments episode. We will be interviewing author Kathleen Kaufman, whom we had the honour to interview last year on the Scholars from the Edge of Time show.

Exotica Moderne

Issue 9 of Exotica Moderne will be published next month. This issue will have my write up of the Severin Films release of Horrors of Spider Island. The cover art of the new issue looks like this:

General Neo-Peplum News

Netflix is releasing an anime-styled animated series called Blood of Zeus. Release date is October 27. The trailer is on YouTube, or you can see it embedded here:

Blood of Zeus trailer

Comicon.com has a review up for Knights vs. Pirates: “A Great Sword, Sorcery And Swashbuckling Adventure From Start To Finish.”

Comicon.com also has a back and forth on the comic Kill the Minotaur.

From Dread Central: Hex Studios announces sword and sorcery epic Dragon Knight

From CBR: “10 TV Shows That Feel Like Old-School Dungeons & Dragons Campaigns.” Lots of neo-peplum fare on this list.

Fanbase Press has a review of the comic book Norse Mythology #1.

At CinemaBlend: “What The Witcher’s New Season 2 Images Tell Us About Henry Cavill’s Geralt And More.”

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News Roundup W/E 2020-10-04

Personal / Website News

Book Citation

Emily Anctil’s essay “Not a Bedtime Story: Investigating Textual Interactions Between the Horror Genre and Children’s Picture Books” from Horror Literature From Gothic to Post-modern: Critical Essays has been referenced in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Fall 2020 Vol 45 No 3.

McFarland Book Sale

McFarland is doing their yearly October sale for their horror books. If you use the code “HORROR” (without the quotation marks) you will receive 40% off the order from now until Friday, October 16. There are numerous horror books I am a part of that you can purchase: Horror in Space, Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern, and Uncovering Stranger Things. If you want to support my academic endeavors, purchasing copies of Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern benefits me greatly.

New Episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast

New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is now online. In this episode Michele and I talk about two short stories from the Swords Against Cthulhu anthology: “Modu” by Mark Sims and “The Sword of Lomar” by Jason Scott Aiken. The episode has been added to the podcast appearance index.

General Neo-Peplum News

The book, Xena: Their Courage Changed Our World was recently published by AUSXIP Publishing. The large book is a collection of essays from the Xena fandom and the impact of the show on their lives. The book can be ordered from the AUSXIP web store or Amazon in a variety of formats: e-copy, soft cover, hard cover.

Per Deadline, Netflix looks to be developing a live action Conan the Barbarian series.

Paul A J Lewis has written an article at The Film Magazine called “Loincloths, Muscles, Sorcery and the Rock of Uranus: A Journey Into the Realm of the Italian Peplum (c.1958-1965).“

Screen Rant ranks the 10 best gladiator films.

  1. Spartacus (1960)
  2. Ben-Hur (1959)
  3. Gladiator (2000)
  4. The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
  5. Barabbas (1961)
  6. Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
  7. Cabiria (1914)
  8. Centurion (2010)
  9. The Eagle (2011)
  10. The Arena (1974)

Article at Deutsche Welle called “What Hollywood got wrong about the gladiators of ancient Rome.”

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News Roundup W/E 2020-09-27

Personal/Website News

Michele and I interviewed cosplay couple Steven and Tiffany Carmel Lake on the Scholars from the Edge of Time program where we talked about the art of cosplay.

Earlier in the week I had a quick appearance on the Voice of Olympus program to talk about Antonio Margheriti’s film Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules. Both podcast appearances have been added to the podcast appearance index.

I did a write up of the neo-peplum comic Elysian Fields #0 and an interview with the comic’s creator Michael Oden.

This upcoming weekend we will be recording our newt episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast where we discuss stories form the book Swords Against Cthulhu.

Michele and I will also be appearing on the program Chatting with Sherri.

General Neo-Peplum News

Michael Oden’s neo-peplum comic, Elysian Fields: The Pyramid Gambit, launches on Indiegogo.

Screenrant has an article up “10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Making Of Gladiator (2000)” in honour of the film’s 20th anniversary that was celebrated earlier this year. A condensed list of the trivia:

  • General Maximus was an amalgam of many historic peoples, with Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, and Hugh Jackman all considered for the role.
  • There was lots of re-writes and ad-libbing
  • The coliseum was 1/3 built and 2/3 CGI
  • Opening battle scene in Germania took 3 weeks to film
  • Oliver Reed died and his remaining scenes were accomplished with rewrites, body doubles, and CGI.
  • Maximus was going to fight a rhino instead of a tiger.
  • Film shot with different cameras and different frame rates.
  • The blurry sequences during a big fight scene were accidentally caused during post-production, but they went with it.
  • Joaquin Phoenix was super nervous to play his part, so to help out, Russell Crowe got him drunk.
  • Crowe got lots of injuries making the film.

The upcoming Hindi fantasy film Brahmāstra (trailer) looks to contain many India-style sword and sandal elements.

Just learned of the Byzantine Empire neo-peplum comic Theophano: A Byzantine Tale. The folks at Fanbase Press have an interview with the comic’s illustrator, Chrysa Sakel. The graphic novel is readily available on Amazon, I’ll be checking this out!

Legendary sword and sorcery film Beastmaster is getting the 4K treatment over at Vinegar Syndrome.

Comicon.com offers a sneak peak at Vampirella/Red Sonja #10.

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News Roundup W/E 2020-09-20

Here is a news round up for weekending September 20th, 2020. On these weekly posts, I’ll list not only personal and project news, but I’ll be rounding up neo-peplum news that has occurred in an attempt to aggregate and promote the genre.

Podcast News

New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is now online. In this episode Michele Brittany and I discuss Gou Tanabe’s manga adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City.”:
URL: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1022692/5521708-hplcp-fragments-ep-02-gou-tanabe-s-the-nameless-city

This upcoming week I’ll be on a sword and sandal cinema segment on Hercules Invictus’ Voice of Olympus program on Tuesday the 22nd followed by Michele’s and my monthly Scholars from the Edge of Time segment Thursday the 24th. For that episode we will be interviewing cosplayers Tiffany Carmel Lake and Steven Lake. Links will be added to the podcast page when they are live.

The next episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast will be on stories from the Swords Against Cthulhu anthology.

General Neo-Peplum News

Ubisoft, publishers of the historic epic/neo-peplum video game series, Assassin’s Creed, announced two titles later this year that are in the sword and sandal genre: Immortals Fenyx Rising (trailer) and a remastered version of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (trailer). This is in addition to the prior announced next entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (trailer). I’m saddened that Kassandra’s storyline from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is officially at an end, but happy to see Ubisoft continuing to pump out neo-peplum video games. I look forward to writing about these titles after they are released.

Late last week I received my copy of issue 0 of Elysian Fields by Michael Oden and published by 9 Realms Publishing. I’ll be interviewing Oden and doing a write up about this comic in the very near future. More info about the comic can be found at the 9 Realms Publishing Facebook page or at the Indiegogo campaign page for the comic.

Issue one of the neo-peplum/Lovecraft comic Isidora and the Immortal Chains by G. A. Lungaro just concluded their Kickstarter campaign.

I’ve also backed a neo-peplum comic on Kickstarter that takes place in the Mesoamerican period that is called Aztlan. I’m always excited for sword and sandal that is outside traditional antiquity.

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New Website Work in Progress

My new website is under major construction. This is all filler for right now. Please continue to visit my old website as I get this up and running:

https://sites.google.com/site/vnvdiak/