Star line-up for the ACCTA Awards.

Nicole Kidman will be jetting into Sydney for this year's ACCTA Awards next Wednesday evening. She'll be joined by Vance Joy and Katie Noonan who will perform alongside a star-studded line-up of presenters and guests, including nominees  Simon Baker, Deborah Mailman and Bruce Beresford.

Whispers will be there of course at the The Star Event Centre with bells on to bring our readers all the action.

And what a line-up of talent:

Host Stephen Curry will be joined by top Australian film and television talent who will take to the stage to present, including: Rebecca Gibney, Marta Dusseldorp, Jack Thompson, Sigrid Thornton, Rodger Corser, Erik Thomson, Julia Zemiro, Shane Jacobson, Fred Schepisi, Nazeem Hussain and Kat Stewart, as well as KATH AND KIM’s Gina Riley, Jane Turner and Magda Szubanski.

Celebrating 50 Years

Bryan Brown, Tom Keneally & Jennifer Byrne

220 friends and fans turned up to the Westin Hotel to celebrate Man Booker Prize winner Tom Keneally's fifty years of publishing books. Plenty of amusing speeches by Richard Flanagan, David Williamson,  Bryan Brown and director Fred Schepis.
It's amazing to think that when Tom wrote his first book Australia had no such things a literary agent and books were sent to the UK to be published,
No wonder as Richard Flanagan pointed out that the great Henry Lawson said that anyone contemplating a career as a writer in Oz should fetch a revolver and shoot themselves.

David & Kirsten Williamson with Richard Flanagan,        ABC's Tony Jones                         & Fred Schepisi

 Delighted US and UK agents sent congratulatory videos as did Kathy Lette but the most impressive was from director Steven Spielberg (below) who credited Keneally with Spielberg winning a host of Academy Awards for his adaption of Tom's Schindler's Ark.

Movie Stars at premiers

Toni Collette attended the premier of her new film The Way Way Back at the Sydney Film Festival tonight at the State Theatre.
Collette has been spotted around Darlinghurst and Paddington in the past few days during filming of The Devils Playground, the film that picks up where Fred Schepisi's 1976 film left off.
 From the original book by Tom Keneally, the tale is set 35 years later in the 1980s and also stars Simon Burke who starred as a schoolboy in the original Catholic guilt laden true story based on Keneally's life. Simon was on hand at the premier tonight to support Toni while on the other side of town Collette's co-star Steve Carell attended the premier of Crazy Stupid Love.

                                           

Magic : Miriam Margolyes & Barry Humphries

It's usually a political grab fest with a variety of politicians going head to head: ABC TVs Q&A.

Tonight it was pure cabaret with a Barry Humphries and Miriam Margolyes dominating a panel that consisted of host Tony Jones and fellow panelists, former politician John Hewson, Oscar nominee Jackie Weaver and journalist David Marr.
Miriam spoke of her lesbianism, her anti-Zionism, her Canberra born partner and her wish to take out Australian citizenship.(she knows Don Bradman's batting average in anticipation of the citizenship test).
There are still tickets available for her Dickens' Women show at the Sydney Opera House this Thursday and after watching her performance as Ruth Pinch from Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit at the end of Q&A , it's a must see.

Q&A can be watched now on the ABC Q&A website.

## In 1991 David Marr published his best selling biography of Australia's Nobel Prize winning author Patrick White. Today is the 100th year anniversary since White was born in Knighstbridge in London in 1912. He emigrated with his parents to Australia when he was 6 months old, living in a Sydney flat with servants and a nanny while his parents lived in the next door apartment.

This Sunday ABC TV screens In The Eye Of The Storm. Fred Schepisi's adaption of White's 1973 book of the same name. The film stars Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush. Not to be missed.

More Honours for Nobel Winner Patrick White

Patrick White

Charlotte Rampling

The Australian film, The Eye of the Storm directed by Fred Schepisi has won the special jury prize at the Rome International Film Festival, alongside the French film See How They Dance by Claude Miller, the first time 2 movies have been awarded a joint prize.

The Eye Of The Storm stars Geoffrey Rush, Charlotte Rampling and Judy Davis ( who according to Woody Allen is "the best actress in the world") and is based on the book by Australian writer Patrick White, the first time any of his 12 novels has made it to screen and the one which so impressed a Swedish judging panel they awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature