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News

News Roundup W/E 2021-03-14

Personal / Website News

Interview with G. A Lungaro

I conducted an interview with G. A. Lungaro about his Neo-peplum/Lovecraft comic series, Isidora and the Immortal Chains.

General Neo-Peplum News

Byzantine Conference

The 47th annual Byzantine Studies Conference has a CFP open. More details can be found at the Byzantine Studies Organization of North America’s website. The CFP closes May 1st. Because of Covid, there’s a 50-50 chance it will either be in person or all online.

Soundtracks

Intrada released a 40th anniversary edition of the soundtrack for Ulysses 31, an old school anime which took the story of Odysseus and bumped it to the 31s century.

Peplum Parody

The folks at ScreenRant have done a faux pitch meeting for 300.

Rest in Peplum

Comic book artist and writer Frank Thorne passed away at the age of 90. He was known for his contributions to the Red Sonja comic during the 1970s.

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News

News Roundup W/E 2021-02-28

Personal / Website News

Roman-Themed Fry’s Retrospective

ICYMI in the wake of Fry’s Electronics closing down, I penned a short article about the Roman-themed Fry’s that was in Costa Mesa, CA.

Call for Papers – Closed!

The Call for Abstracts for the collection of neo-medieval media is now closed. I’ll be assessing the submissions over the next couple of days to determine if the project is go/no go. But in advance, thank you to all who have submitted.

Podcast News

Our newest episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is live! In this episode we dive into the anthology Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 2 and look at three stories: “Dead End Town” by Lee Murray, “The Island in the Swamp” by J. Scherpenhuizen, and “Depth Lurker” by Geoff Brown. The episode can be streamed at Buzzsprout or your favorite podcast program.

Also earlier this week Michele and I had an episode of the Scholars from the Edge of Time podcast. In this episode we interviewed Dr. Jeremy Swist on ancient worlds and heavy metal. That episode can be streamed/downloaded at Blog Talk Radio.

General Neo-Peplum News

Peplum Children’s Book

Children’s author and classicist Annelise Gray will have a new fiction book titled Circus Maximus: Race to the Death published by Head of Zeus on March 4th. It’s elevator pitch is Ben-Hur meets National Velvet for 9-12 year olds.

Rest in Peplum

Italian director Giancarlo Santi passed away at the age of 81. He was an assistant director on the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films: Hercules (1983) and The Adventures of Hercules (1985).

After a prolonged illness, British actor Ronald Pickup passed away at the age of 80. He played Orpheus in the Atlantis (2013-2015) television series, played King Sharaman in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), and an appearance in the biblical peplum In The Beginning (2000).

Acclaimed sound editor Alan Robert Murray passed away at the age of 66. He worked on:

  • 300: Rise of an Empire (2014)
  • The 13th Warrior (1999)
  • Quest for Camelot (1998)
  • Ladyhawke (1985)

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News

News Roundup W/E 2021-02-21

Personal / Website News

Call for Papers

The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here. This upcoming week is the final week this CFP will be open.

HP Lovecast Podcast

Our newest episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast will be going up later today. Yesterday our podcast host, Buzzsprout, was the target of DDoS attacks, so we really couldn’t access anything.

General Neo-Peplum News

Academic Talks

Dr. Jeremy J. Swist gave an online lecture earlier this week called “An Unholy Trinity: Antiquity, Heavy Metal, and White Supremacism.” That talk is now available on YouTube and can be streamed here.

Of supplemental interest, Dr. Swist gave another online lecture in 2019 called “By Spartan Law: Laconophilia in Heavy Metal Music” that is also on YouTube.

Depictions of the Trojan War

Tony Keen has a short article at his website called “Modern Adaptation of the Trojan War Tropes” where he muses on tropes found in modern day depictions of the Trojan War.

Biblical Pepla

Matt Page has updated his Bible Films Blog with a write up of Histoire de Judas (2015).

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News

News Roundup W/E 2021-01-17

Personal / Website News

Call for Papers

The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.

Podcast News

New episode of the HP Lovecast Podcast is online! For this month’s Fragments episode, we interview Jason Parent about his new novella, Eight Cylinders. The episode can be streamed at Buzzsprout or your podcast application of preference.

General Neo-Peplum News

Rest in Peplum

Animator Dale Baer passed away at the age of 70. He worked on quite a few sword and sandal-adjacent and sword and sorcery animated movies:

  • Robin Hood (1973)
  • The Lord of the Rings (1978)
  • The Smurfs (1980s)
  • The Black Cauldron (1985)
  • Quest for Camelot (1998)
  • The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)

Mona Malm passed away at the age of 85. She was in the super important Bergman film, The Seventh Seal (1957).

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News

News Roundup W/E 2020-12-13

Personal / Website News

Citations for The New Peplum

I’ve finally procured a copy of The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation and was able to confirm that Jennifer Mara DeSilva’s essay “The Secularization of Cesar Borgia and the American Motion Picture Production Code” contains my intro to The New Peplum listed in the bibliography. I’ve updated the page for The New Peplum to reflect this. The book can be found for sale at the Routledge store website.

The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation

Dr. Hannah Mueller’s essay, “Male Nudity, Violence and the Disruption of Voyeuristic Pleasure in Starz’s Spartacus” is cited in Dr. Maria San Filippo’s book, Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media. This book can be found at the Indiana University Press bookstore.

Provocauteurs and Provocations

McFarland Sale on Viking Books

McFarland is having a sale for books about Vikings in film and pop culture. From now until December 31, if you use the code VIKINGS30 during check out, you’ll get a 30% discount. The New Peplum is part of this sale, no doubt due to the presence of Steve Nash’s excellent essay “There are no Boundaries for our Boats: Vikings and the Westernization of the Norse Saga”.

Call for Papers

The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.

General Neo-Peplum News

Dr. Ross Clare has given a presentation on Herodotus from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey that has been published on the YouTube channel of Herodotus Helpline.

Rest in Peplum

A little late on the news for some of these folks as I’m just hearing of their passing.

Abby Dalton, perhaps best known for Falcon Crest, passed away at the age of 88 on November 23rd. She starred in The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1958, Roger Corman)

Romano Ghini passed away on October 25th. This guy was a prolific sword and sandal star:

  • Samson (1961, Gianfranco Parolini)
  • Triumph of Maciste (1961, Tanio Boccia)
  • The Black Invaders (1962, Franco Montemurro)
  • Fury of Achilles (1962, Marino Girolami)
  • The Fury of Hercules (1962, Gianfranco Parolini)
  • Hercules Against the Sons of the Sun (1964, Osvaldo Civirani)
  • Antony and Cleopatra (1965, Vittorio Cottafavi)

Categories
News

News Roundup W/E 2020-11-15

Personal / Website News

Stranger Things Citation

My essay, “Lost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwave” from Uncovering Stranger Things was cited (opens up!) in the article “GTA Vice City Created a New Wave of ’80s Nostalgia: How a video game kickstarted reverence for a decade — even for those who never lived through it” over at Super Jump.

The New Peplum Citations

The New Peplum has been cited in two essays in a new anthology published by Brill, The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century, edited by Alastair J.L. Blanshard and Emma Stafford:

The Modern Hercules

The two essays are:

“Hercules’ Self-fashioning on Screen: Millennial Concerns and Political Dimensions” by Jean Alvares and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell

“Warriors, Murderers, Savages: Violence in Steve Moore’s Hercules: The Thracian Wars” by Katherine Lu Hsu

Unfortunately I don’t know which essays within The New Peplum these two essays cite, but as soon as I find out I’ll update the citation page accordingly.

Podcast News

New episode of H. P. Lovecast Podcast Fragments is live. This is the episode we interview Robert P. Ottone. Check it out on Buzzsprout or your podcast app of preference.

Call for Papers

The Call for Presentations for Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is live. The CFP can be read at the StokerCon 2021 website.

The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.

General Neo-Peplum News

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

The newest neo-peplum title in Ubisoft’s long running Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, was released this past Tuesday. Lots of news to round up.

Lakeshore records released the soundtrack via Bandcamp.

YouTube cocktail channel How2Drink has created a libation for AC:V called The Horn of Eivorr.

Blood of Zeus

Articles at Screenrant: “Blood of Zeus: 10 References to Classic Peplum Flicks You Probably Missed” and “Blood of Zeus: 5 Authentic References to Greek Mythology, 5 Things That Are Totally Made Up.”