Byron attacks !

The Gold Dinner, allegedly Australia's smartest charity event has been taken over by the Byron Bay set ie: the Hemsorths, as our main pic shows. This year it was held in a marquee at the Overseas Terminal at Sydney Airport. Well why not as nothing else is happening there. But Mascot? In this weather?

Above: Lucciana Barroso, Lauren Phillips, Elsa Pataky, Chris Hemsworth, Gabriella Brooks and Liam Hemsworth There were other celebs there:

Above: Rose Byrne like so many Hollywood names is fleeing LA and looking for a home in..you guessed it: Byron Bay. With Lucciana Barroso (left) wife of actor Matt Damon and Elsa Pataky

Rose Shines at Premiere

Rose Byrnes who was in Los Angels last week for the G'Day USA events flew into Sydney yesterday to attend the world premiere of her new film I Give It A Year.

The movie, a romantic comedy looks at the trials and tribulations of a pair of newlyweds during their first year as a married couple. Directed by Dan Mazer, Rose stars with Anna Faris, Simon Baker, Rafe Spall and Minnie Driver.
While in town Rose will be completing some vocals on Hugh Jackman's production of X-Men, Days of Future Past in which she plays a world authority on human genetic mutation. Isn't our Rose talented?

Below is a trailer for her new flick:

Jack Vidgen Grows Up

Jack Vidgen at 16 has survived puberty and still has his voice and amazingly, can still hit those high notes. The then 14 year old whose success on Australia's Got Talent  was sealed with a kiss on the cheek from macho Irishman Brian McFadden is still capitalising on his win and has been working non-stop for the last 2 years,
He still has a little trouble with his hand movements though but he's well on the way to becoming an Oz version of Wayne Newton. Las Vegas beckons.

Here he is at the gala G'Day USA dinner in Los Angeles last week where he sang the Star Spangled Banner for an audience of top Aussies like Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban, Rose Byrne, Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, Paul Hogan, models Elle McPherson and Miranda Kerr , Hugh Jackman, our favourite Qantas pilot John Travolta.

Here's Jack singing in our exclusive video from the event :


 

Vale James Miller.
Popular publican and man about town James Miller has been found dead by friends from a suspected overdose at the young age of 38.
Miller owned some of Sydney's most popular inner-city pubs : The Norfolk in Surry Hills and The Santa Barbara in Kings Cross.
Handsome, outgoing and friendly, Miller was named last year in Fairfax Media's Sydney Magazine as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People.

Percy Savage, Melbourne Cup & Green Moon

And so the race that stops a nation (and it does) is over for another year. Celebs are winging their way back to Sydney to stand in front of even more promotional 'PR' boards, different to the ones they stood in front of last week.

Jennifer Hawkins

Delta Goodren

 PR boards are a new and unwelcome addition to the racing season in Melbourne, being introduced in 2008 where a (very large) extra fee is now paid for their use in your marquee. Publicists are convinced they work in promoting a product.

Rose Byrne

It was around 60 years ago that the Red Carpet was basically invented by Australian born publicist Percy Savage who convinced a perfume manufacturer in Rome to roll out a red carpet ala Hollywood and invite movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor to the launch. They did and it was a roaring success and Savage- who Yves St Laurent named eau Sauvage after, went on to become one of Britain and France's most popular and powerful publicists.

Percy Savage

 The Shuttle took afternoon tea with Savage in Chelsea in 2002, and asked him what he thought of the direction in which his undoubted brilliant invention : the celebrity launch in Haute Couture- had gone :"I launched a nightmare" he replied.
 By the weekend we will be well and truly sick of hearing about the Melbourne Cup as thousands of words will be filed by social hacks. Here are a few snaps sent to us by our Cup mole disguised as a well worn fascinator.
We ditched the one of James Packer and Shane Warne : far too obvious and no doubt the Sydney media currently in the grip of Packer's PR war and uncontested bid to build a new multi-million dollar casino at Bangaroo will slavishly do his bidding.

Fairfax : Stating the Bleeding Obvious or Taking The Piss

 The Fairfax family were once the proud owners of titles like the Sydney Morning Herald first published in 1831 and the Melbourne Age established in 1854 and once regarded as one of the greatest broadsheets on the planet.
The Fairfax family have long departed (making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process) and the Fairfax empire has been stumbling along badly ever since. The last remaining family member John B.Fairfax sold his shares for $189M in 2011.
 Reputedly the editor who spent time and money trying to convince Fairfax board members to embrace digital was booted only to be snapped up by The Guardian in the UK which now slightly lags behind the Mail Online as the most popular newspaper website in the world.

Tomorrow's Sydney Morning Herald will feature a piece titled Most powerful players in Australian film, basically a list of household names who command power and big money in the Australian film industry. the real heavy hitters with surprising results it trumps !

Well not quite. Sam Worthington, Chris Hemsworth, Geoffrey Rush, Mia Kasalwoska, Rose Byrne, Hugh Jackman, Emile Sherman etc etc are unlikely to surprise anyone. And who is one of their sources ?

Rose Byrne

A photo agency called Jamie Fawcett Photo News run by Jamie Fawcett the photographer bankrupted by Fairfax during a court case in which Nicole Kidman appeared as a witness.
A Shuttle reader sent us an email a week ago with 2 screen shots which we cannot display for legal reasons.
The Sydney Morning Herald had published a story about the arrest of a union official. We had already read the tale the night before on a website called Independent Australia which has been miles ahead of both News Ltd and Fairfax on the same story. In the first screen shot the SMH claimed it had "exposed the embezzlement" of union funds by the official as well as claiming something similar about a Member of Parliament.

By Mid-day the word 'allegedly' had finally been inserted before the damaging claims. Did Fairfax inform their readers of their mistake and apologise as  their code of conduct requires ?. Most certainly not. 

The editor of Independent Australia, David Donavon has ripped into Fairfax over their incorrect claim in their Brisbane Times that a woman had yelled at Prime Minister Julia Gillard during a Queensland community meeting that she was 'white trash', duly reported by the BT and picked up around the country by various news outlets.
What the woman actually said which is clearly audible on BT's own website is that "we are not white trash" referring to herself and her son.

The Sun

And the Brisbane Time's reaction when asked to correct the lie : total denial it had ever happened.

Sydney Morning Herald

Fairfax share price is plunging almost weekly despite it owning a reputed $5B in assets. Staff are being made redundant at a great rate with 29 fired a fortnight ago in Melbourne.
A month ago the Shuttle ran into a former Fairfax editor, now publisher of on-line magazines. Asked to comment on the anouncment that Fairfax will go digital in 9 years he scoffed. "5 at the most and possibly 3" was his reply. 

On Thursday the Shuttle attended the opening of the French brasserie style Aranas Bar in The Rocks owned by the same people as the nearby Lowenbrau beer cellar. We had forgotten it was Oktoberfestt and had to pick our way past a blaring oompah band and some thigh slapping chaps in lederhosen (we are assured they are of German descent). It was a reasonably staid affair with good food and copious amounts of Veuve Clicquot but the Shuttle didn't visit the Gents or we may have witnessed the bizarre urinals that became a feature the following day in the media.

Gina Rinehart

What we did notice is that the venerable Sydney Morning Herald produced a piece that was almost a carbon copy of Britain's infamous The Sun newspaper which 20 years ago would have been it's ideological opposite, quoting the same sources, feminist Ann Summers and former Parliamentarian Meredith Burgmann.

Will readers sign up to a digital version of Fairfax Newspaper to read this stuff ?. And more importantly, why is the world's richest woman Gina Rinehart snapping up Fairfax shares as they plunge. Is it to put it out of it's misery?.
                                  

Stepping Out in the Big Apple



Rose Byrne



The delectable Aussie export Rose Byrne wearing a delicious pale pink Ralph Lauren  gown was at the uber smart Ciprianos on Wall Street, New York on Thursday evening for a ball to launch this year's New York Fashion Week. Rose arrived on the arm of honorary Aussie citizen actor Liev Shreiber.

No scandal here- Liev did the gentlemanly thing and escorted Rose a good pal of his wife Naomi Watts who had filming commitments and couldn't make the event. Rose is currently filming X-Men: First Class while Naomi is filming the bio-pic J.Edgar  which stars Leo DiCaprio as the famous cross dressing FBI boss J.Edgar Hoover.



On the same night in the same town Geoffrey Rush was being honoured for his role in The King's Speech at a dinner at the 5 star Mandarin Oriental hotel in Columbus Circle. Amongst the gum-leaf mafia were 2 of New York's newest residents Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin who moved to the Big Apple last September so Baz could work on his next project The Great Gastby.

 Luhrmann shot down in flames the recent claim that his movie had been shelved and told the Shuttle's mole that he had 2 studios after the project- Sony and Warner Brothers and that he would be making a decision on which studio to go with as early as the end of next week.The Great Gatsby also stars Leo DiCaprio in the lead role.                                                    

Meanwhile closer to home our gal Jackie Weaver who is being wined and dined from New York to Santa Monica and winning awards on the strength of her Oscar nomination for the film Animal Kingdom  is the recipient of another accolade.

Proudly displayed at the concierge counter at the smart Horizon building in East Sydney where any number of well known Sydneysiders lay their heads including Weaver, a large framed photograph of a beaming Jackie is displayed with a congratulatory note from the building's management.

Rose off to the Emmys

A week after attending the opening night of A Streetcar Named Desire to support her good pal Cate Blanchett, actress Rose Byrne  (left copyright the Shuttle ) jetted of to LA for the Emmy Awards due to be announced tomorrow.

Last night Byrne attended a BAFTA tea party at the residence of the LA Australian Consul General along with the 8 other Aussies up for Emmy awards.

Rose confided to The Shuttle at Streetcar that she had been petrified of auditioning for the role of a lawyer in the film Damages along with Glen Close :"she's a goddess of cinema and acting, I've never been so nervous " said Rose. She need not have worried. She scored the role and is a hot favourite to pick up the coveted award. Rose is looking forward to playing her next role as a pop star girlfriend of Russell Brand in  Get Him To The Greek. "I've been studying Posh for the role", says Rose. Which shouldn't involve too much effort.

Also at the tea-party and expected to win-star of TV series The Mentalist Simon Baker. The ever so nice Baker is yet another from that Ramsay Street soapie that has sent to many off to Hollywood for stardom and we love how the once short haired Simon's locks gets thicker and fluffier as he ages.Must be something in the Hollywood air.

## instant update: Toni Collette picked up the gong for best actress in the United Sates of Tara which describes the relationship the Shuttle has enjoyed with Toni since we've know her for 15 years. One day it's arms flung about us-the next it's a frozen stare which I guess is why she plays the role,of a psychologically disturbed housewife so well. 

But it's an award well deserved. Toni has transformed herself over the years from the frumpy role in Muriel's Wedding (little make-up or padding needed) into a superstar and a superb talent. There's still an Oscar waiting with her name on it.


Perhaps it's because we turned down the last offer to Toni's singing performance. Having seen a few in the past-well let's say we rather attend a Russell Crowe "Grunt's" stage show and that is out of pure politeness.


Rose Byrnes and Simon Baker still, have another 2 hours before they know if they are winners although Rupert Murdoch's flagship Aussie tabloid the Daily Terror online site points out the same in one sentence followed by the next claiming she has already lost. It's only to be expected for the Terror and we've long given up pointing out these errors to them as they instantly correct them with nary a polite thank you.


### Sadly Simon lost out as did Rose Byrnes but her co-star Glen Close won an Emmy. At least Simon Baker, gorgeous hair and all has been voted the sexiest man on TV by several US publications.

Earth to Fairfax Newspapers....

When a snapper telephones your news desk at around 12.30 am with a pic they believe may be off interest-having your phones diverted to the security office doesn't quite seem de rigeur for a major newspaper.

But who are we to tell accountants how to run a news organisation ?

Whilst the assembled paparazzi and tabloid photographers waited outside to get the snap of the stars of "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the after show party, the Shuttle swept in and here they are:  Cate Blanchett and Joel Edgerton with director Liv Ullmann.

Fortunately the Shuttle's US agent is on hand 24 hours a day and had shifted 12 pics within the hour-even as far as China !

One of the reasons why your 120 year old empire is stumbling is because bean counters don't know how to run newspapers. Perhaps that's why 6 months ago as you let one of your most experienced journalists Annette Sharp sit around twiddling her thumbs when she returned from maternity leave wasting her talent,she was snapped up by the Daily Telegraph's Sydney Confidential.

Sharp pulled off a major coup this week when major  Hollywood box office star Russell Crowe challenged her to a bike ride contest to Bondi complete with cameras and the story has been syndicated to newspapers worldwide.

Sounds like false economy if you won't consider allowing experienced newsmen to call the shots instead of accountants who have presided over a plunge in profits in the last year.

But enough of moi-"A Streetcar Named Desire" is simply amazing and the 2 stars-Blanchett and Edgerton shine. Ullmann's direction is superb. Don't even try to get a seat-it's a sell out. If you want to catch the show you will have to travel to Washington or New York later this year-but book now.

And along tonight to support Blanchett and Edgerton-2 pals building great careers in the USA, the gorgeous  Miranda Otto (above) and Rose Byrne with actors Damian Walshe-Howling & Nash Edgerton.