Thursday, November 15, 2007

Tonight’s Robyn Tickets Have Been Given Away!

12:33PM Jess McGuire | We forgot to tell you yesterday, but since we are receiving a barrage of emails this morning regarding our Robyn competition, we thought it best to publicly announce that the give away is over and if you haven’t discovered an email informing you excitedly that you’re a WINNER in yer inbox, then we’re afraid you were unlucky this time around. We’ll give some more loot away soon though, swears. More »

To Do: Beautiful Boys And Reggae Revivalists

12:30PM Anna King | Music round-up: Katalyst all over the shop; Katchafire along the east coast; Custom Kings at Sonar, Milson’s Point (Up Late clip above). The Hola Mexican Film Festival is screening at the Chauvel in Sydney and Palace Cinemas in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane from 15 November to 5th December. Highlights include Drama/Mex, produced by Y Tu Mama Tambien stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and hot directorial debut El Violin. Sydney-siders can catch the tail-end of the 2007 theatre season with Company B’sToy Symphony, starring Richard Roxborough and STC’s Tales from Vienna Woods. Elizabeth The Golden Age, Fred Claus and Gabriel open in cinemas. Free - Check out Nick Cave’s junk at the Arts Centre. More »

Amy Winehouse Round-Up: Parents Call An Ambulance On Winegums, She Probably Calls Pizza Hut

12:09PM Clem Bastow | In the world of Winegums, she’s so often in the news and out and about that when she goes quiet, it’s almost a cause for concern – at least, that’s how it was for her parents after she dropped out of contact with them yesterday. With No Good&trade: hubby “Flake” Fielder-Civil locked up, it’s safe to say that pretty much everyone is concerned about how Winegums will cope, considering she has more or less called out her husband as being more important to her than, like, life. Amy Winehouse’s panic stricken parents dialled 999 last night after they lost contact with their daughter. The worried parents alerted police and ambulance crews because they are alarmed about her mental state after husband Blake Fielder-Civil was sent to jail. The couple directed the emergency services to the East London flat where she’s been staying since Blake was sent to Pentonville Prison last week. Fortunately, Winegums was not home and later popped up, alive and unharmed, but you do have to wonder. What with her history of slicing her arms up during fights with Flake, not to mention drug and booze overdoses, they’re probably justified in being a little over-sensitive about their girl. More »

Nine Boss Not Keen To High Five His Favourite Children’s Entertainers After They Defect To Seven

11:47AM Clem Bastow | Umm ahhh! When your homepage is sponsored by Nine, and you come from Channel Nine, it’s probably safe to say that you should leave all your promotional appearances to Channel Nine, right? Not if you’re Hi-5, who Nine boss David Gyngell discovered were appearing on competing network Seven – by watching Sunrise. Good to see all the avenues of communication are operating within our biggest broadcasters! Tuning in to the opposition on Monday morning, Gyng, say sources, was “pretty angry” when Nine’s homegrown kids entertainers, Hi-5 appeared on the Seven show, with new recruit Steve Nicholson and DVD to promote. After calling Today producers to find why their employees were on another network, sources say he hit the roof when told they put off a Hi-5 appearance to December, leaving Sunrise to the scoop in between. The best part of all this was when the Sunrise executive producer said Hi-5 had made the decision because “they would be seen by many more families and children and not just grandma and grandpa” on Nine. Zing, Gyngell! More »

Isla Fisher Has Had A Healthy Baby And Is Kicking Goals In Hollywood, But What Really Matters Is The Size Of Her Arse

11:16AM Clem Bastow | What is the most important thing that a woman in the public eye can do with herself after having children these days? Raising them right? Being a good mother? Taking time off work to bond with her new family? If you answered “yes” to any of those options, you are WRONG. The most important thing, der fred, is to regain your pre-pregnancy shape, dummy! *giggle* Yes, the “baby weight” brigade has their eye firmly fixed on Home & Away export, Isla Fisher, who recently gave birth to a daughter with fiance Sacha Baron Cohen. Wearing fitted jeans and a transparent kaftan top, the 5ft 3in tall star looked svelte once again now she has shed the enormous baby bump she was carrying until October 17. The Wedding Crashers star is thought to have lost the extra pounds naturally through breastfeeding. “The enormous baby bump”! Which was, incredibly, CARRYING A BABY INSIDE IT. Whoda thunk she wasn’t just eating all the pies? Honestly, this obsession with “baby bumps” and pregnancy/post-pregnancy weight has got to be the most odious of all the unpleasant aspects of the celebrity circus. Can women catch just a small, nine-to-twelve month break from the photo editor’s magnifying glass? Is that too much to ask? More »

Richard Ashcroft Thinks Verve Reformation Worthy Of Headlining Festivals; Clearly, The Drugs Do Work

10:56AM Clem Bastow | After apparently fluking The Verve’s Urban Hymns, Richard Ashcroft has continually shown himself to be a tool of astronomical proportions and questionable talent (we should know, we couldn’t give his solo stuff away on eBay), and his latest outburst is no exception. Apparently, according to Dicky, all these Boyzone, Take That, Spice Girls and Led Zeppelin reformations can pale into insignificance with the news that The Verve are getting back together – and he thinks they should be given an appropriately large celebratory return performance. The Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft wants the band to headline Glastonbury 2008. The star insisted it would be a “travesty” if they didn’t take centre stage at the event – though the recently-reformed band faces serious competition for one of the coveted slots. Speaking to XFM, Ashcroft said: “I think it would be a travesty if we didn’t. Because I think what’s missing from a lot of the headliners is we’re one of the few bands that can jam without sounding like Lynyrd Skynyrd on a bad night, so we can actually take people on a proper journey, rock ‘n’ roll-wise.” Oooh, Richard, you do not want to incur the wrath of the Skynyrd fans – we’ve seen them, and they are not pretty (and some of them keep axes and rifles as “pets”). And beyond that, how about a nice, steaming cup of shut the fuck up? The fact that he thinks a protracted jam session is the mark of a good band is indicative of his skewed view of “the biz”. All of this reminds us of one of our favourite negative reviews of all time, on the topic of Ashcroft’s solo effort, Keys To The World: “In Richard’s head he no doubt thinks he’s made an album that stands up with the greatest rock records of our time. We can concur with part of that statement. Richard Ashcroft has made an album.” More »

Seven Confirms: Anna Coren Not Actually Serious Journalist After All

10:37AM Clem Bastow | It could be our medication, but we’re starting to feel a teeny bit of sympathy for Anna Coren. Installed in the wake of the popular Miss Today Tonight, Naomi Robson, ridiculed constantly, criticised from all angles – and now, even from within her own network. You may have noticed that over the past few days, those wacky Chaser boys have been locked in battle with Seven, as the network tried to gain an injunction to finally stop the satirical show from having digs at Today Tonight. Well, far from shielding Coren from further humiliation, it’s opened her up to more: The credibility of Today Tonight host Anna Coren has been officially declared a joke, after her own management this week successfully argued in court that she’s regarded as just a “performer.” The demeaning job description for the former US correspondent, which emerged in legal documents yesterday, was the backhanded way Channel 7 was able to block The Chaser’s War on Everything from airing a stunt involving the star during last night’s show. In an expensive bid to stop the skit via a Supreme Court injunction, Seven’s lawyer Dauid Sibtain stated Coren’s involvement as a “performer” meant the ABC would be breaking copyright laws if they reproduced her image without her employer’s consent. Hang on, though. Did anyone ever think she was actually a real, live journalist? All she really does is spout dribble at the start of each show/segment, and then nod her head and say things like, “Mmm… I wouldn’t want to live there.” Even her own TT bio is vague about her actual journalistic experience beyond presenting news updates (which, let’s face it, is about on par with the weather girl and the traffic helicopter). At least now that she’s a confirmed “performer” we can look forward to seeing her on Dancing With The Stars and It Takes Two, because no one with a serious career ever shows up on those two! More »

Lobbying By Clooney, Pitt Leads Matt Damon To ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ Win

8:00AM Defamer Hollywood | This week’s special issue of People – perhaps the magazine’s second-most anticipated installment behind its annual Baby Bumps, Secret Weddings, and Conspicuous Nose Jobs spectacular – brings some happy news: Matt Damon will wear the magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive tiara for the next 12 months, a choice that may indicate a seismic shift in the criteria it uses to select its honourees; if this newly established precedent holds, we may be entering a Golden Age of Sexy Lists in which less conventionally handsome Hollywood stars (work out all you want, Matt, you still have the face of a cherub who can’t quite lose those last three pounds of baby-angel fat) can compete on equal footing with the throbbing slabs of leading-man-beef who tend to dominate the glossies’ evaluations of Hollywood hunksmanship. People explains its choice: More »

Hollywood Foreign Press Rewards Rumer Willis For Being Demi And Bruce’s Daughter

7:45AM Defamer Hollywood | Congratulations are in order for actress/scenester/pre-achievement semicelebrity Rumer Willis, who earlier today was crowned Miss Golden Globe 2008, the single highest honour the Hollywood Foreign Press Association can bestow upon the female, teenage progeny of an internationally recognisable performer whose staggering success is unlikely to be replicated by his or her pampered offspring. More »

‘Film Threats’ Flips The Hollywood Icecube Tray And Sees What Falls Out

7:40AM Defamer Hollywood | What with the bleak, suspended state of things these days, the time seems right for Film Threat’s annual Frigid 50 list, celebrating 2007’s “coldest people in Hollywood.” Some of their choices might surprise you – particularly the top spots, occupied by President George W. Bush at #1 (easy swipes in Transformers and Michael Moore’s oeuvre make him “as much a cinema celebrity as the next despotic tyrant,”) and Angelina Jolie at #2, for whom they prescribe “adopting an American kid and making movies that people want to see.” More »