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Kevin Rudd knows how to make us laugh, which is more than we can say for President Prime Minister John Howard.
While lil' Johnny made his best attempt at appealing to the yoof on YouTube earlier this week, (with amusing consequences) The Ruddster went one better on Nova 969 in Sydney this morning.
Merrick and Rosso made him play Electric Chair Trivia.
Posted by Jess McGuire at 12:03 PM on July 19, 2007
Farnsey's beloved chum (and Lea Goodrem's mortal enemy) Glenn Wheatley has just been sentenced to time in the clink by a Victorian County Court judge this morning.
At the Victorian County Court, Judge Tim Wood today sentenced him to two-and-a-half years jail and said he had to serve at least 15 months before being released on a recognisance of $5000.
The entertainer pleaded guilty to three Commonwealth charges earlier this month.
Wheatley was the first scalp of Operation Wickenby, which targeted offshore tax havens.
Wheatley, 59, of South Yarra, has repaid the dodged tax amount of $318,092 and earlier indicated his intention to help authorities with the continuing investigation.
The one time Masters Apprentices bassist, who moved to a successful career in the entertainment industry managing the likes of John Farnham and Delta Goodrem, admitted to not paying tax on income earned from Farnham's Talk of the Town tour.
He also dishonestly gained a financial advantage after his promotion of the boxing fight between Kostya Tszyu and Jesse James Leija in 2003.
Posted by Jess McGuire at 11:30 AM on July 19, 2007
Avril Lavigne's popped on the akubra and turn Molly Meldrum all of a sudden in her latest bulletin to MySpazz friends. While thanking her supporters for their loyalty over the tumultuous past few weeks where every man/woman and their respective dogs are claiming to have written her hits, Avril sees an opportunity to mix business with pleasure and throws in a music purchasing recommendation to her face(book)less massive.
Subject: Thank you, From Avril.
Body: Hey everyone.
I wanted to take this time to thank you, my fans for all your undying support. You have been amazing and i can't express how much i appreciate it. Thank you all so much. I am so proud of this record and grateful for the response it has been getting from all of my fans. You made it go 1!!
also,
there is another great record i've been listening to lately. And i want you all to hear it too. The new SUM41 album called Underclass Hero comes out in 1 week on july 24. You can hear the whole album now for free here:
http://www.mtv.com/music/the_leak/sum_41/underclass_hero/
my favorite songs are "With Me", "Walking Disaster", "Best of me" "Confusion and Frustration"
It rocks you have to check it out. And of course you can also check out myspace.com/sum41 for more info.
Thank you all again, you mean so much to me.
Avril Lavigne,
We suppose every SUM41 album sold means more money for husband Deryk Whibley to put towards a cause close to Avril's heart... Avril.
PS: We love that her name now ends with a comma for no reason whatsoever.
Posted by Jess McGuire at 10:40 AM on July 19, 2007
According to latest reports, Paris Hilton is now dating an Australian t-shirt mogul with the gnarly name of Tyler Atkins.
Party girl Paris Hilton appears to have fallen for the larrikin charms of Australian fashionista Tyler Atkins - a one-time car thief and confessed drug user. The surf-loving Atkins, 21, was yesterday revealed as the new mystery man in Hilton's life, with the duo being inseparable over the past few days. Atkins has been faithfully trailing Hilton, 27, on the party scene in Los Angeles since the pair was spotted canoodling at a celebrity jewellery event held at a private Malibu estate on Saturday.
Inseparable for a few days? This must be the real thing.
BestWeekEver found a YouTube video featuring an interview with Atkins, but the clip appears to have been removed since the site first posted about it. Probably because it sounds... well, decide for yourself whether BWE's description affects your view of Paris Hilton as a teetotalling angel whose humble ways thoroughly moved renown tough nut interviewer Larry King.
What's interesting is the YouTube interview this wastoid gave a few weeks back, in which he describes in extensive, semi-retarded detail his encounter with a “famous celebrity†in Hollywood who took him back to her mansion, drugged him, and forced him into “full-on threeway†sex with her and a girlfriend. We have no idea who he's referring to, but our hearts bleed for this poor young lad.
Posted by Jess McGuire at 10:21 AM on July 19, 2007
Back in early June - apropos of absolutely nothing - Defamer Australia decided to try and find out what on earth had happened to Frances O'Connor, the one-time "thespian wonder from Down Under" (our words).
After hitting the pavement and asking assorted industry figures (tram drivers, cabbies, the guy who checks tickets on the train - hey, we didn't say they were figures from the entertainment industry) managed to turn up exactly bugger all on Frances O'Connor's whereabouts, we were forced to turn to the only two sources we truly trust in this crazy world - Google and Wikipedia.
The result? Well, Frances O'Connor the Actress hadn't done much since the birth of her child... and she shared her name with an armless wonder who could smoke with her feet! We heart Frances O'Connor the Armless Wonder!
But today, as we perused The Age in the vain hope of finding something - anything - interesting to read, we discovered that Frances O'Connor the Actress is back at work!
Cashmere Mafia is the new show from Darren Star, the creator of Sex and the City, and fans will spot the similarities. The differences? These four beautiful, ambitious female friends are all top of their industry, and their struggle is not finding a boyfriend but keeping a husband.
The screen cuts into an extreme close-up of one of the women, Frances O'Connor, explaining why she puts up with her husband's affairs.
"We are as far as it is possible to be from the model of the wife he grew up with," she intones resignedly. "We earn more money, we have more power." The three other women - Lucy Liu, Miranda Otto, Bonnie Somerville - stare on sadly, clutching their cocktails.
We're glad to see two charming Australian actresses have been gainfully employed, but... Cashmere Mafia? Why not just call the show Labia and get it over with?
· Bill and Hillary were the Seth Rogen and Bryce Dallas Howard of their day! (Alternate suggestion: Chewbacca/Carrie Fisher.)
· James Woods thinks the problem isn't Isaiah Washington's big mouth, it's Grey's Anatomy's miserable set. Gay slurs fly fast and free among Shark's big happy family, and no one gives it a second thought.
· We're confident that the actual Jon Lovitz/Andy Dick Smackdown was a lot more exciting than John Henson's action figure reenactment on TV Guide channel. (Side note: The girl playing Andy Dick has the voice-register right, but needs to work more on the slurring and asking-strangers-for-blow part.)
· Canadians: America's extremely easy-to-please neighbours to the north.
· And finally, it's Geometry Fun Time! Brought to you by Subway cheese slices.
· While it seemed that Steven Spielberg had ended the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in throwing his support behind Hillary Clinton, an undeterred Barack Obama has gone above the Hollywood kingmaker's head by getting Oprah Winfrey, the beneficent daytime TV deity Herself, to host a fundraiser for him at her Montecito compound. An expected $US14 billion will be raised for the Obama campaign in a single night when Winfrey commands the heavens to open up and shower bundles of hundred-dollar bills upon her chosen candidate. [Variety]
· In the short term, the stockpiling of projects in anticipation of a multi-union strike may increase the number of entertainment industry jobs, but overall, the threat of a walkout could cause an employment slowdown whether or not the guilds and producers usher in the End of Hollywood Days with a prolonged work stoppage. [THR]
· CBS sets its fall schedule, but will hold risky musical drama Viva Laughlin until October 21 in order to buy more time to figure out how the hell to market the show to inevitably confused audiences. [Variety]
· Despite having his TV show let go to make more room on the schedule for caveman-related programming, George Lopez doesn't seem to be having too much trouble finding movie work. [THR]
· Beleaguered Fox/Spielberg collaboration On The Lot now only being watched by accident. [Variety]
Looking more and more in recent months like the living embodiment of a Bratz doll after a vengeful little brother has had his way with it, it's all too obvious to even the most casual of observer that former chart-topper Britney Spears has come undone. The singer regularly succumbs to manic-depressive episodes that see her indulging in marathon tube-top and fedora shopping sprees one moment, then savagely maiming a defenceless SUV with an umbrella the next. Star magazine now reports that the story has only grown more bleak, describing a "slapfest" between Britney and her mother:
The troubled pop princess and Lynne Spears had a "shocking slapfest" in mid-June that "left Lynne shaken and Britney more determined than ever to cut her mother out of her life for good," according to Star magazine.
Our Wednesday morning survey of Hollywood loneliness shifts from love-starved starlets to superannuated talent agents who will soon find themselves back on the market once their messy divorces are finalised. Today's Page Six evaluates Ed Limato's prospects for post-ICM happiness, noting that any agency courtship might be hampered by the fact that the septuagenarian won't be a cheap date:
ED Limato, 71, may have a hard time finding a new job after being unceremoniously demoted at ICM. The ill-tempered agent had talks with CAA, which covets his clients Richard Gere, Denzel Washington and Mel Gibson - but CAA doesn't want to pay Limato's $US5 million salary or hire all his staff, including two script readers, sources say.
Isolated by immense fame and doomed to romantic lives in which the intimacy of every promising first date is ruined by the swarms of paparazzi hoping to take photographs of their fleetingly revealed genitalia as they linger over dessert, Hollywood's hottest actresses stand little, if any, chance of finding true love in the "self-absorbed" show business world, an infernal, Alighierian circle of perpetual loneliness.
Despite having received the GLAAD Squeal of Approvalâ„¢, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry has mostly underwhelmed critics, one of whom wrote, "[It] isn't just unfunny; it's racist, sexist and homophobic - and truly unpleasant to watch." (In fairness, we should mention that the Village Voice review declared it "as eloquent as Brokeback Mountain," and included the pull-quote ready, "This sodomite had a gay old time" - sure to become the centrepiece of the movie's print marketing campaign.) It's not just critics who find themselves offended, however: At a TCA week promotional party for NBC's fall slate, Heroes' teleporting office worker Masi Oka disapproved of Rob Schneider's turn as the fake-gay couple's slanty-eyed officiating officer. From the USA Today report:
Oka was less thrilled with the stereotypical Japanese character comedian Rob Schneider plays in the new Adam Sandler comedy feature, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, opening Friday. "I didn't agree with that," said Oka. "It was very funny, but it wasn't smart funny. I don't understand why an Asian guy couldn't have played it. You didn't need to have the (slant) eyes and the buck tooth trying to be a 'yellow face,' as we call it."
The shocking news that Dave Chappelle briefly checked into a local emergency room this weekend for "exhaustion," the go-to publicist excuse for suspiciously hospitalised celebrities far, far below the comedian's talent-grade, will in all likelihood invite knee-jerk speculation that another head-clearing trip to Africa is in the offing. But take heart, fans: long unburdened of the dehydration-inducing demands of huge amounts of basic-cable money, Chappelle merely succumbed to the punishing physical effects of his legendary, marathon stand-up sessions, a problem that shouldn't recur once he tightens up his set to to a more manageable three-and-a-half hours.
Some of the highly questionable methods employed by Dateline NBC in order to bring audiences To Catch A Predator have already been revealed in a lawsuit brought against the network by a disgruntled former producer. But while the series has unearthed scores of alleged "sex offenders" in its underage internet sex stings, it can only truly add one notch to its belt: a Texas prosecutor who shot himself in the head moments before he was tackled by Chris Hansen and his overzealous friends from local law enforcement. Now, the dead prosecutor's sister is suing NBC for $US100 million:
Louis "Bill" Conradt grabbed a gun and shot himself as he spotted cops, reporter Chris Hansen and a camera crew from the popular "To Catch a Predator" segment outside his home on Nov. 5, 2006, according to a notice of claim sent to NBC yesterday.
TMZ.com's Starcatcher team, the internet's leading documentarians of the weave-scalping, paparazzi-hospitalising atrocities being committed each night outside of Hollywood's most exclusive safe-harbours for violent insurgents, found themselves caught up in the brutality they so faithfully capture on video each night when the crew tragically wandered within pummelling range of an agitated C-lister. An excerpt from their report on a run-in with CSI star Gary Dourdan follows:
Clad in leather biker gear, Dourdan violently grabbed our photog outside Hyde, who the actor had mistaken for another guy, and slammed him to the pavement several times, sending his head bouncing into concrete over and over again - all while his camera continued to roll.
Having already signed on to reprise her role as horny, nouveau-riche plastic surgery addict Dawn Budge in Nip/Tuck's upcoming season, Rosie O'Donnell's primetime prospects continue to grow: First, with an invitation to appear on the Ben Silverman-masterminded celebrity edition of The Apprentice, and now, with an offer from struggling-yet-beloved NBC drama Friday Night Lights. TVGuide.com has the exclusive:
FNL execs are wooing the ex-View lightning rod to appear in an episode this fall. "Rosie's a big fan of Friday Night Lights, as we know from The View, and we heard she was interested in being on the show," executive producer Jason Katims tells me.
Hoping to finally close the Case of the Vanishing Criminal Minds Star, reporters at today's CBS Television Critics Association panel confronted president Nina Tassler about the exact nature of the "creative differences" that might induce an actor to flee a successful series without explanation. Clarified Tassler:
"When he approached us and said, 'I want to be released,' and we talked about it internally, we realised that this was the moment in time where we knew we had to address it, and we did and were able to accommodate him," she told a gathering of TV critics in Beverly Hills.
Because we fear we may have failed in adequately relating the horrors of the coming Hollywood labour war by trying to put a cherubic face on the issues at stake, we pass along this explanatory clip from CNBC's Media Money. If an attractive woman reading aloud from the WGA and AMPTP's bellicose statements (did anyone else get totally hot at the way "Draconian restrictions" rolled off her tongue?) while standing in the middle of Universal CityWalk (or is that the Grove?) doesn't open your eyes to what's going on, nothing will.
A reader angry over the unexpected eye-diddling he received from the seemingly crazed Alan Arkin, his gang of tiny pals, and a scrapie-afflicted sheep emerging from page 7 of today's Variety wrote in a little while ago to request that we share with the world "the ugliest, most confusing, bizarre movie ad I've ever seen. It looks like it was designed by a Bollywood crack-addict."
