No Party Without Kerri-Anne

 

Aboriginal model Samantha Harris prepares backstage for David Jones' fashion parade

 


David Jones launched the 2014 fashion bunfight with a front row powerhouse that include Great Gatsby star Elizabeth Debicki, Oscar nominee and four time nominated Emmy winner Rachel Griffiths (left), star Jessica Marais, Young Hollywood talents Isabelle Cornish, Leeanna Walsman, Grace Huang and Alex Russell (set to star in Angelina Jolie's new film) and the inevitable Kerri-Anne Kennerley (right) and Terri Biviano.
Designers on parade included :  Christopher Esber, Michael Lo Sordo and Nicola Finetti, Akira, Alice McCall,  Josh Goot and Zanerobe.

Bradley Cocks & Collette Dinnigan                                   Cameron McGlinchey  & Natalie Bassingthwaighte

actresses : Jessica Marais                         Alyssa McClelland                                           Leeanna Walsman           

Hollywood Hits Town

Anchorman 2 premiered last night at Fox Studios with the film's stars attending including Will Ferrell, Kirsten Dunst and Steve Carrell (his 3rd visit this year). Producers have conducted one of the best PR campaigns imagined : with Ferrell in character as Ron Burgundy reading news reports with local news from countries around the world. The Youtube videos have been picked up by localTV stations and re-played dozens of times. Hollywood publicity at it's best !

Timomatic & date                                         Demi Harman                             Hamish Blake & Zoe Foster

Alyssa McClelland                                                     Ray Martin                           Layla Subritzky                                     

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Meanwhile two leading ladies have taken up temporary residence in Sydney.
Charlize Theron has taken two suites at the ritzy Park Hyatt Hotel while she films Mad Max: Fury Road and Angelina Jolie and brood have rented a Rose Bay mansion for three months while she directs the war film Unbroken.

Training Angelina

Luke & Scott with Sarah Wilson

My Kitchen Rules' stars Luke Hines and Scott Gooding have entered a crowded market with a new book : Luke & Scott : Clean Living. They promise to transform you into a healthy specimen in 3 weeks.
The pair launched their book at the Bondi restaurant, The Bucket List on a blustery evening and still managed to pull a sizable crowd including TV's Andrew O'Keefe and the lady who has herself transformed many lives, writer Sarah Wilson
whose bestseller about killer white sugar is still flying off the shelves.
Luke has another gig lined up: he'll be
training Angelina Jolie went she settles in for a few months to film the WW2 movie Unbroken .Hines also has to transform the film's star into a malnourished air crash survivor while still keeping him healthy.
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It's that season again : social writers flocking to Melbourne for the Spring Carnival and attempting to impress their readers that they are missing out on an amazing event. The Shuttle's attended more than we care to think about but in the past few years Melbourne's racing season has descended into a sort of bogan tragedy. Minor 'celebrities' are trotted out and placed in front of the dreaded photo wall that now plagues every event around the world. The days of being flown by private jet by interesting people are basically over (the Shuttle flew with Richard Branson once in a special Virgin flight and 3 times with the late Jim Fleming in his Lear jet.)
It's just very hard work and these days you cannot wander as you could in the past, from marquee to marquee. Needless to say the media will trill over this year's slebs : Hamish &Andy (spotted any day at Kings Cross), Kris Smith (male model) and the aging Naomi Campbell (yawn).                           

Brangelina, Wills & Kate: No Idea

The fierce rivalry between Australia's top selling tabloid magazines- New Idea and Woman's Day has stepped up a notch with WD blindsiding NI with their scoop on the royal honeymoon snaps that have been on offer around the world for over a year and have now caused so much confected anguish in the UK media. British newspapers in the midst of the Leveson Inquiry had all turned down the pics.

Poor old New Idea (some wags in the industry unkindly refer to it as No Idea) really had no hint of what their rival was about to publish.
Both keep in touch of each other's up-coming stories by monitoring agency photo sales and thereby have a pretty good idea of what each other will publish in the next issue : come Monday morning the similarities between each is almost mirror -like.


 Now the tattle amongst the industry is that the knives are out at Pacific Publications, publishers of New Idea and a full on industry war is about to be declared. Pacific had turned down purchase of the beach wandering royal snaps on the understanding that rivals had done likewise.

Particularly as New Idea was forced to run a fairly tragic tale titled "SECRET WEDDING PHOTOS..you were never meant to see".. a concocted tale with"intimate"snaps of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt that "proved " the couple had been up to hanky panky before their affair became public knowledge.

Alas, the pics have all been published before and are just a set of publicity stills from their 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith and have lain on photo desks around the world for the last 6 years. Better luck next time folks.

Party With The Stars

which is the real Alf?

Amanda Keller(s)

That's what the invitation said-'party with the stars at the opening of Madame Tussauds" in Darling Harbour. It was a fairly understated affair. The stars?- Layne Beachley, Amanda Keller, Dawn Fraser and a couple of Home & Away stars.

the Shuttle finds Madame Tussauds a little on the creepy side. We went to the one in London 25 years and haven't been back although we know someone in television who goes regularly to check up on celebrities heights, Tussauds being the only place one can really get the correct measurements!.

old &wrinkly works best

What do slebs think when they see a real life version of themselves?. It's probably a great example of the ego today's sleb must have in order to succeed-clocking a life size version of themselves and not being frightened to death in the process. One thing we have noticed is that older and wrinkly people come up best in wax as opposed to the young and botoxed, as our pics show.

Delta with scary Delta

Madame Tussaud herself



Below-our favourite-Rolf Harris

The Shuttle  went to a do once where they had a Tussauds 'Michael Hutchence on display and having known the singer when he was alive it was startlingly lifelike. His father Kel burst into tears upon seeing it.

plastic Brangelina

Julia Gillard

Madame Tussauds is now open at Darling Harbour next door to the Aquarium so you can do the sharks and celebrities in one go.

NB: the real  Ray Meagher.is on the right!

Margaret Olley Exhibition Opens

An exhibition of the late Margaret Olley's paintings that have never been publicly displayed before opened on Thursday evening at Sothebys in Woollahra. Prices on the 27 works range from $60,000 upwards although most have already been sold. The one at the top which looks suspiciously like Margaret's living room is available for $440,000.

Amongst the guests were long time friends of Olley's including retiring NSW Art Gallery director Edmund Capon, Barry Humphries, movie director Bruce Beresford and artist Ben Quilty who became a good friend of Margaret;s after he won the Archibald Portrait prize for his painting of Olley last year.
2nd-17th March 118-122 Queen St Woollahra.

left : Margaret with Ben Quilty                                                        ********************

Best Look at The Oscars : Forget Angelina Jolie's leg, Rick Rubin pictured with Amanda Santos had the look with his famous whiskers combed to excess when he attended the Academy Awards and the Vanity Fair after party last Monday.

Rubin is the co-president of Columbia Records and possibly one of the greatest record producers in the world with a fortune estimated at $300M.
                                                     

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Madame Tussaud's has just unveiled one of it's waxworks that will appear in it's new Sydney exhibition that will open in Darling Harbour in May.

Nicely timed for today's Mardi Gras it's Felicia Jollygoodfellow from The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, in red, yellow and white feathers. Hopefully they will also include Guy Pearce who played Felicia in the film-he's much better looking.

Tabloid Tales :"Kate's Pregnant!"

Daily Telegraph

Australia's top selling tabloid The Daily Telegraph (proprietor : Rupert Murdoch) brings us the tale of how dozens of magazines world-wide have reported the false claim that Prince William's bride Kate is pregnant.

A 'staff writer' tells us how "a tally of incorrect US gossip mag covers shows their editors have made fake hay while the sun remained behind clouds this year" when reporting the non-existent pregnancies of Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, Angelina Jolie and more.

These mad claims were brought undone when that US TV network of repute Fox News ( proprietor : Rupert Murdoch) compiled the list of glossy magazines which made the phoney claim.

Our staff writer even has a dig at the Oz glossy New Idea (referred to as No Idea by industry wags) which also fell for the Kate Middleton 'pregnancy' claim.

Alas, our News Corp scribe missed one small fact in his/her mention of the New Idea. Just who was the source for their claim?.

Step forward a 'royal photographer' who is interviewed for the cover piece that screams :
YES. KATE'S PREGNANT!...Exclusive interview with official royal photographer

New Idea

The snapper in question and "royal insider" is Arthur Edwards who gushed to New Idea :" Kate looked great but I just got a feeling she wasn't quite herself".

And just who does our 'royal insider' take his royal photographs for ? (from the press pen along with every other photographer)...why the popular top selling UK tabloid The Sun (proprietor : Rupert Murdoch)

Missing AA Gill

baboon

Gill

The writer AA Gill is in town for the Sydney Writer's Week which concludes today. Infamous for once blasting a baboon to death to 'see how it felt' the grovelling to the scribe around town was embarrassing. The Shuttle missed his interview on Thursday (one of the few events that wasn't sold out) and we lost count of the number of restaurant workers phoning us to impart the news that "AA Gill is here eating "

Even at the launch party at Porteno for the second season of Foxtel's 'Spirited' a waiter collared the Shuttle and solemnly informed us that Gill was downstairs if we wished "to pop down and get a snap  ". We passed.

We did manage to hear him on radio being interviewed by local foodie God and long time Shuttle pal Tony Bilson along with American ex-chef Anthony Bourdain . When Bilson commented that large food corporations were colluding to force manufacturers to list ingredients and that he believed it was a conspiracy to drive small providers out of business Gill launched into a diatribe about the importance of those tiny lists on the side of products. Ten minutes later when Bilson defended vegetarians Gill railed against foodies who included endless claims about the ingredients their nosh was complied of.

Emma Forrest

Later when a female audience member asked a question and Gill interrupted, she scolded him with "oh shut-up Anthony, you're no better than some yapping kid at the back of the bus ". The applause was deafening.

We did make it to the small cocktail party given by the advertising agency BWM for American /English writer Emma Forrest. Emma has just published an autobiography Your Voice In My Head.

Forrest was diagnosed as a manic depressive (bi-polar!) at 14 and began self harming, slashing her legs and arms.

She became fascinated and obsessed by sex whilst being repulsed by it and remained virginal until she finally flung herself into a series of destructive relationships. Emma wouldn't confirm or deny that the 'famous actor who broke her heart' was the long rumored Colin Farrell-she simply told us that she 'knows and likes his work'.
Emma now writes movie scripts and lives between New York and Beverley Hills. 
"I couldn't handle the grey skies of London anymore "said Emma when the Shuttle commented on her breezy outlook for someone who had gotten off an 18 hour flight at 11am that morning.

"I love LA, no matter who bad it is the sun always shines. This morning I bounded off the plane when I saw the brilliant sunshine".

She told us of the interview she once did with Brad Pitt who told her obsessively of how he and Angelina Jolie wanted to have a 'surrogate' baby. The following day Pitt phoned and left a voicemail message asking her to phone him urgently. 2 more messages followed over the same number of days. She never called him back. She thought he may ask her to have his baby !

Murdoch : "you're fired!'

Your Voice in My Head  is to be made into a film. I asked Emma who she would like to play her in the film
"Cate Blanchet" she responded." but when I told the producers they said 'oh no'. It doesn't matter that Blanchet has won Oscars. They don't know her in Middle America. They only know 2 actresses- Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts"

Honourable mentions at writer's week : * Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson in discussion with Frank Moorhouse celebrating the return of the comic mode in fiction. Brilliant.
 *Elisabeth Wynhausen and Bruce Guthrie telling Mike Carlton about the shock and the fury of getting fired by Rupert Murdoch. Very funny.