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.

Shining at The Golden Globes

Such glamour and they do it so well in Hollywood. Our exclusive pics from last night's Golden Globe Awards and an interview with Meryl Streep on the red carpet below :

Not Such Happy Feet 2

Every time the Shuttle has encountered film director George Miller over the past few years he has been wearing his 'lucky shirt'- a black silk number with three embroidered red peppers. Sadly it looks like his luck is waning of late.

After the brilliant success of the Oscar winning Happy Feet, the charming cartoon film about penguins, it's successor Happy Feet 2 has opened  in the USA with dismal takings of only $22M which doesn't bode well for it's future success.

Most reviewers are praising the 3D effects in the kid's movie but the bad box office takings are creating spin off damage. It's rumoured around 200 staff will be laid off at Miller's Sydney animation studios based in the magnificent art deco Metro Theatre in Kings Cross.

Further rumours are flying around that Miller's new Mad Max movie Fury Road could be in trouble. The flick is the fourth in the series and will star Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. The first three shot Mel Gibson to international stardom .  
Fury Road has already had some major hick-ups with an 2003 starting date with the late Heath Ledger in the lead role being cancelled followed by shooting in Namibia being post-poned because of the Iraq invasion.

Now pre-filming which was to start in a few weeks outside Broken Hill where many scenes from the first 3 films were shot has been abandoned.  Recent and unusually heavy rains have transformed the desert which doubled as a post nuclear war terrain into a green paradise !.
Location managers are desperately looking for a similar area in Australia. They could always try Maralinga in SA which is a real-life post-nuclear frontier. Seven giant nuclear bombs and hundreds of smaller ones were exploded there between 1955 and 1963 making it the most nuclear bombed country on the planet.