Monday, September 03, 2007

Scenes From the Wine Dark Sea

This will be old news to some of you, but I have been known to assert that all women -- past, present and future -- pale into insignificance compared to the beauty that is Xena, Warrior Princess.



The extraordinary sailing montage above is from an episode called "Destiny," in which Xena boinks Julius Caesar and gets crucified (literally) for her trouble. The music is an adaptation of an old celtic folk song by series composer Joseph LoDuca, which (for reasons too complicated to get into) never made it onto any of the Xena soundtrack CDs.

It's quite ethereally lovely, and the whole sequence strikes me as something edging perhaps perilously close (for TV at least) to the precipice of what you might call art; you really get a feeling for the vast, strange beauty of the ancient world. Of course, show producer Rob Tapert (who's married to Lucy Lawless, if memory serves) included it for no other reason than he's a big sailing enthusiast.

5 comments:

The Kenosha Kid said...

Xena? Feh! Where is Callisto? Now she was teh hott!

steve simels said...

The Kenosha Kid said...
Xena? Feh! Where is Callisto? Now she was teh hott!

Absolutely. Hudson Leicke is hubba hubba, as today's kids say.

Slig said...

Interesting pitch-bending work in the low-end keyboard tracks.

steve simels said...

LoDuca is one of the few really original composers working for television (unlike all those nose to the ground hacks who've done all the Star Trek series since the first one).

He comes out of rock and jazz (he was in bands in Detroit back in the MC5 days) and he's got very big ears.

NYMary said...

in which Xena boinks Julius Caesar

Jeez, Mark Antony only got Cleopatra.