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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

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/