Gladiators For Gillard !

She may be taking flak left right and centre but Prime Minister Julia Gillard has a new hero in her corner : Russell Crowe. Crowe hasn't minced words and while he Tweeted today that he admired Malcolm Turnbull MP he said : Julia G is my choice though...Leader through tough times. And cricketing legend Allan Border said on ABC radio today that he admired Gillard as a strong leader. So there!


    

Indigenous Wins at ACCTA Awards

It was what the world was screaming out for-another set of film awards !

Miranda Tapsell,Deborah Mailman,Jessica Mauboy                           & the original Sapphires

Host Russell Crowe and Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) President, Geoffrey Rush, were joined on stage by  Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman to honour the year's best achievements in Australian film and television at the 2nd AACTA Awards Ceremony, held at the new The Star Event Centre in Sydney.
 
Since premiering in Cannes in May 2012, the toe-tapping musical drama The Saphirres, about four Aboriginal girls who formed a singing group in the 1960s has picked up awards all over the world and has become box office gold.
 Tonight saw The Sapphires take home six AACTA Awards - Best Film, Best Director (Wayne Blair), Best Lead Actress (Deborah Mailman), Best Lead Actor (Chris O'Dowd), Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Mauboy) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Keith Thompson, Tony Briggs)
 
 The thriller Wish You Were Here won the award for Best Original Screenplay for husband and wife creative team writer/director Kieran Darcy-Smith and writer/actress Felicity Price. Antony Starr also won Best Supporting Actor for his enigmatic performance in Wish You Were Here.

Young German actress, Saskia Rosendahl, received Best Young Actor for her lead performance in the Australian made German language film Lore, directed by Cate Shortland.
A special highlight of tonight's AACTA Awards Ceremony was the presentation of the Byron Kennedy Award to the late filmmaker, animator and artist Sarah Watt (1958 – 2011), accepted on her behalf by her son, Clem McInnes .

Jessica McNamee,          Megan Gale,          Essie Davis     Gemma Arteton,         Brooke Satchwell,    Lucy Durack & 'Taxi'

It was that sort of night !

Russell compared

Hugo was there

Joel Edgerton and new love Lexi Blake

 

Jack Thompson : confirmed luvvie

AACTA Awards Announced

 The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) have announced the winners of the 2nd AACTA International Awards in Los Angeles, with actor Russell Crowe leading fellow Australians presenters Jacki Weaver and Scott Hicks.

Silver Linings Playbook won Best Film along with Best Direction for David O. Russell; and Best Lead Actress for Jennifer Lawrence.

Best Lead Actor went to Daniel Day-Lewis for his performance as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's historical drama Lincoln. 
Best Screenplay was won by writer and director Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained while the two discretionary AACTA International Awards went to Robert De Niro for his role as an obsessive compulsive football-crazed father in Silver Linings Playbook, and to Jacki Weaver, for her role as De Niro's tolerant and forgiving wife in the film.

(But why no award yet for Samuel L.Jackson  (left) whose acting in Django Unchained is superb and worthy of an Oscar?)

On Wednesday the Social Shuttle will attend the local ACCTA Awards which will be hosted by Russell Crowe at Sydney's Star Casino.

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Nicole Kidman will fly into town on Monday to attend Wednesday's ACCTA Awards. Kidman and Keith Urban holidayed in Sydney and the NSW South Coast where they have a holiday home over the Christmas holidays, returning to the US on the 10th January. You can do these things when you have your own jet !
 
The Shuttle recalls speaking to Kidman's publicist Wendy Day at a luncheon is Sydney many years ago when Nicole was divorcing Tom Cruise.

Day was seriously worried that Nicole's career would slump, such was the power then of Cruise and the tendency for Hollywood bigwigs to line up in support of whoever they perceived as Hollywood royalty.
 Nicole of course has proved them all wrong and is the acknowledged most famous and powerful actress in the world today.

Featured on the cover of the latest Hollywood Reporter Nicole speaks about life with Tom and standing up to the Studios, Scientology and sex. 

Happy Australia Day ! (and a message from Russell Crowe)

In the interests of fairness : here is Russell Crowe's contribution to this holiday :

Oscar Talk for Les Misérables

 

Les Misérables has premiered in London and there is already talk of Oscars for the stars - Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway.
Jackman and Hathaway have both sung together at previous Academy Award ceremonies and Jackman also recommended Anne for the part of Fantine in the current production.



                 

Tom Hooper, Amanda Seyfried,Hugh Jackman

Seems like such a long time ago when the Shuttle drank with Hugh at the Erskineville Pub after premier party for his 1999 movie Erskineville Kings. Asked if he had ambitions for a Hollywood career, Jackman responded with these memorable words:"would be so nice but the competition is pretty tough". As for the numerous drinking sessions we shared with Russell Crowe during his rise to fame in his Sydney days, the less said about the better !

Le Mis opens in Sydney on Boxing Day. Below is the trailer:

Best Wishes to Charlotte Dawson

Like some of New Zealand's best exports ( Russell Crowe) we like to claim as our own-Charlotte Dawson has forged a successful career in Australia as a television host, currently at the helm Foxtels' Australia's Next Top Model.

Charlotte has been on the receiving end of a campaign of Twitter hate over the past weeks. Earlier last night the Shuttle encountered Charlotte as the East Sydney Tech at a bash to celebrate the launch of  a new range of Waterford Lismore crystal. Sometime later that evening she checked herself into St Vincent's Hospital. The toll of an on-line hate campaign had finally hit home.

All at the Shuttle (including sub-editor Mildred Pierce) send their best wishes to one of our favourite Sydney-siders Charlotte Dawson and hopes for a speedy recovery . These things are sent to try us. They make us stronger in the end.

Something in Common : Dracula & Rupert Murdoch

Russell Crowe may be in the frame to play Count Dracula in the 37th film about the legendary Transylvania but he is also tipped to play Rupert Murdoch in a planned film based on the memoirs of journalist Sir Harold Evans.

Harold Evans

Evans was the editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981 when Rupert Murdoch purchased Times Newspapers after a secret meeting with then PM Margaret Thacher, a fact just revealed in the Leveson Inquiry. He was appointed editor of The Times by Murdoch after extracting an agreement that Rupert would have no editorial input. That feel apart within a year and  Evans resigned, writing his auto-biography Good Times Bad Times in 1984.
He now lives in New York with his wife Tina Brown the former Vanity Fair editor and their 2 children.

Playing Evans will be the thinking woman's heart throb Colin Firth. This will be the second time an Aussie actor has played the Citizen Kane of the Antipodes. In the excellent TV  series Selling Hitler based on the phony Hitler Diaries and broadcast in 1991, Dame Edna Everage's manager Barry Humphries was cast as Murdoch. Rupert agreed to the purchase of the diaries after they were endorsed by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper who later expressed reservations before publication. Despite being informed that the diaries were fakes, Murdoch famously said "publish them anyway, after all we're in show business".

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From Flab to Fab ! : Russell Crowe

Last night at LA's Soho House

RUSSELL CROWE ISN'T THE FIRST Hollywood star to have a battle with the bulge.

But look at the snap of our Russ from two years ago and our exclusive picture from last night's AACTA Awards in Los Angeles

2010

Crowe was topping the scale at a hefty 102 kilos but has shed 25K in a two year concerted workout regime and we have the secrets.

We and all Russell's Twitter followers. Russ is an active twitterer and last week he detailed his exercise regime which is pretty simple :

1hour 20 minutes walking, 30 minutes of Yoga followed by a 15 minute weights workout.

For the last two years Crowe has made his home in Sydney, partly to spend as much time with his 2 boys Charlie  and Tennyson  and partly to get himself in top shape.
Last year he splashed out $10M on a mansion in Rose Bay with spectacular views of the harbour and a state of the art security system so Russ could do simple things like kick a footie ball around the garden with the kids, away from prying eyes.

Russ & Danielle in 2009

Meryl Streep & Nicole Kidman at the AACTAs

He still has the Finger Wharf duplex penthouse in Woolloomoolo (on the market for $6M) but it was becoming increasingly difficult for Russell and wife Danielle Spencer to enjoy those family type events like relaxing in the back yard.

He was also a regular sight walking around the Loo and the Botanic Gardens, sometime wheeling the kids in their strollers.
To nip paparazzi in the bud he kept a wardrobe of 20 similar track suits so one day's photo looked like the rest. These days he still walks around Rose Bay and Bellveue Hill  (with it's punishing hills) but has a minder following in a car.

 Crowe was attending the AACTA Awards (that have replaced the Australian Film Institute Awards ) hosted by Australian Of The Year Geoffrey Rush, presented at a party at Soho House along with Guy Pearce, Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep who picked up a gong for her portrayal as Margaret Thatcher.

Om Tuesday the local AACTAS will be presented at the Sydney Opera House with Cate Blanchett hosting the gala.
In 2009 Crowe challenged the Shuttle's favourite show-biz editor Annette Sharp from Sydney Confidential in the Daily Telegraph to a bike ride around Sydney:

Stalking A High Profile Lawyer

"Media Stalking"

One of Sydney’s best known criminal lawyers, Christopher Murphy says he has a stalker and has appealed for help in tracking down the man’s identity.

Murphy has posted two videos on YouTube of a man silently standing on the street corner very near Murphy’s home, holding what looks to be a professional TV camera but with no identifying markers.

It’s fairly clear watching the videos that the lawyer appears to be in some distress as he urges the man to leave him and his family alone He says his wife and young children are too frightened to leave home.

Chris Murphy

While TV and media crews can be alarming at the best of times, it’s the silence of the cameraman that makes his presence decidedly creepy. Standing silently and continually focus his camera upon Murphy does send a certain chill down the bones.

Chris Murphy has previously written columns for newspapers and handled cases for some pretty high profile celebrities including the hapless actor Matt Newton currently on a charge of allegedly striking taxi driver.

A prolific twitterer with over 2000 followers (he was introduced to twitter by Russell Crowe) Murphy has been correcting the more sensational reporting on Newton’s movements including the claim he was at a children’s party the night before the alleged taxi incident happened.

Newton, a talented and gifted actor has some serious problems with a psychiatric illness and despite the PM Julia Gillard recently appointing Mark Butler to the ministry portfolio of Mental Health and bringing him into Cabinet and state premier Barry O'Farrell appointing a mental health minister after revealing his own family problems, some journalists still don’t get it.

One tabloid writer outrageously suggested Newton should be ‘bashed' by members of the public after an incident with actress Rachael Taylor. More recently the Daily Terror has been musing on whether the actor has a future in the industry. Surely not a discussion that's very helpful for a person who is still recovering from health problems.

Below is one of Murphy’s posts on YouTube. Maybe a reader can illuminate us on why this stranger is lurking about street corners!

Naomi Watts Boots Nicole Off Top Spot

Actress Naomi Watts is top of BRW's Young Rich List this
year having been paid $19M for two movies this year which include J.Edgar which opened to poor takings in the US.

Nicole Kidman took a paltry $18.6M by comparison but both ladies beat Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman despite Jackman's box office record breaking run on Broadway. Last year's winners-ACDC received only $9M compared to their whopping $131M takings during their world tour in 2010.

 

And Aussie dinosaurs are still winner Walking With Dinosaurs-the Arena Spectacular took $62M while the radio announcer who many says has dinosaur like views Kyle Sandilands made $3M despite losing millions of dollars in sponsors after his recent outbursts.

Lots Of Stars At The World's Most Costly Building

In report after report we are brought the news that the former Star City Casino at Sydney's Darling Harbour has received a much needed make-over (it's rather nice now) that cost a whopping $961 million dollars. (The Shuttle's resident architect says this must rate as the most expensive building  renovation ever undertaken on the planet and suggests the owners re-check their invoices.)

Now re-named The Star, a series of parties have been thrown to show case the joint and it is rather splendid. Leo Di Caprio has even taken a whole floor in the sumptuous hotel tower (reputedly provided free of charge).

We do hope they have enlarged the elevators. The Shuttle was once almost throttled by action star Jean Claude Van Damme in the hotel's lift. It's a long story for another time.

Last night they had a party but Leo avoided the red carpet and inside introduced star act Stevie Wonder to a glittering audience that included Elle McPherson, Tobey McGuire and Russel Crowe.

You can see a couple of photos from the event at the New s Corp's Daily Telegraph which has billed one as  World Exclusive Photo. You have to congratulate the Tele who have had an amazing run of good luck at getting some exclusive snaps of Leo driving cars, on the set of his new film at Fox Studios and so on.

The fact that News Corp owns the Tele, Fox Studios and has invested a mega sum in the new production being filmed at Fox The Great Gatsby (in glorious 3D) is of course, entirely co-incidental.

Irrelevent / Irreverent Fact :Anti-gambling campaiging MP Nick Xenophon on his website It's A Big Fat Lie reckons $12 billion a year is lost on poker machines.

Putting the Gossips Under The Spotlight

Annette Sharp goes into battle with Ros Reines

It was an opportunity not to be missed : the chance to see the Australian reigning queens of gossip in action at the Secret Woman's Business lunch.
Veteran of British and Australian publications Ros Reines who writes for the Sunday Telegraph, and Annette Sharp, former TV network publicist who edits the Sydney Confidential pages in the Daily Telegraph were the guests at the ritzy Quay Restaurant.

Around a hundred ladies gathered to watch the three being questioned by Woman's Weekly editor-in-chief Deborah Thomas followed by questions from the audience.

actresses Paula Duncan & Judy Nunn

One particular table was notable for containing a number of ladies who had been subjects of the trio's tales including top publicists Brooke Tabberer and Deeta Colvin and society figures  Glen Marie Frost, Skye Leckie and Victoria Morish. Safety in numbers ?.

Ros Reines told us of some her legendary feuds that so far have included tiffs with society hairdresser Joh Bailey, Australia's Got Talent judge Kyle Sandilands and top New York publicist Kelly Cutrone and one that hit the front pages-a stand-up dressing down from James Packer at a Nine network season launch at Garden Island. The Shuttle was there on the night and it was the talk of the town : James Packer attacked Reines for writing about his personal life- an odd decision from a man whose wealth was built on publications exposing the lives other people and one that completely over shadowed the reason for the night.

Annette Sharp gave us all the details of the bicycle ride she was challenged to by Russell Crowe after she had written a story about his burgeoning weight. The subsequent story and film of the two cycling through Sydney streets went viral around the world. One of her top scoops was the news that James Packer had joined the Church of Scientology.

The occasion was voted a success by the largely civilian audience who all hoped it may become an annual event. It was the brainchild of actress Paula Duncan and in aid of the for the Royal Hospital For Women Foundation.

Kelly & Belly Secretly Wed

Kelly & Belly

He looks after the finances of a host of celebrities like Russell Crowe and Elle McPherson and some of Australia's top business people. She is the gorgeous host of the travel show Getaway

Anthony Bell and Kelly Landry wed in secret in Queenstown , New Zealand 2 weeks ago.

On Friday evening they threw a bash at the exclusive Rose Bay water-side restaurant Catalina for 200 pals, amongst them actress Holly Brisley, TV host Larry Emdur , boxer Danny Green and society maven Marie Sutton.

Known as Kelly & Belly to friends, Anthony Bell's firm Bell Partners  regularly tops the list of the Business Review Weekly (BRW) magazine's most productive performing companies.

 He also owns the enormous gin palace Ghost which is often used for celebrity harbour cruises including by Bono last year and Prince Frederick & Princess Mary of Denmark.

That Oprah Winfrey Guest List in Full

Russell & Oprah sailing today on Sydney Harbour

She seems to have swept the nation of their feet-Oprah Winfrey's tour Down Under is generating the sort of excitement last seen when Princess Diana made her last public appearance in 1996.

As the Social Shuttle exclusively reported, young Bindi Irwin is to be a guest on one of the two Oprah shows to be filmed tomorrow at the Sydney Opera House in front of an invited audience of 7500. The lucky guest's names were drawn out of hat of over 340,000 who applied for the tickets.

Bindi Irwin

Today Oprah sailed on Sydney Harbour with Russell Crowe and wife Danielle. Russell will be a guest on Oprah's show along with Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Hugh Jackman , Portia de Rossi and Olivia Newton John. Jon Bon Jovi will perform while John Foreman and his orchestra will play the finale of the 2 shows which are to be screened in the USA in early 2011.

On Thursday Oprah will be a guest at the re-opening party for the $660M re-vamped Star City Casino where Jon Bon Jovi will perform again. He'll be joined on stage by Bob Geldorf.

And Friday-she's off on a private holiday up north with her personal staff . Then we have to hope that amongst the 8% of Americans who have passports, some watch Oprah and will buy the expensive travelogue they see !

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Shari-Lee & pal Lizzie Buttrose

Appearing in the NSW Supreme Court today-Shari Lee Hitchcock who is demanding a bigger share of the estate of the late billionaire Dick Pratt. 

Dick Pratt

Shari Lee, whose 12 year old daughter Paula was fathered by Pratt is suing his widow Jeanne Pratt and the Pratt estate for a greater share.  Paula was left a magnificent beach side house in Watson's Bay and a farm on the NSW south coast. There are also 4 properties in dispute that appear to be held by  a maze of Pratt corporations: a multi million dollar Quay Apartmen,t  2 country properties and a paper mill in Tumut. 

Despite daughter Paula also receiving $20M in cash both she and her mother claim they weren't left enough to live on  by the late cardboard king. Dick Pratt died of cancer in 2009 leaving an estate valued at nearly $6B.

Something stinks and Russell Crowe isn't happy

Tweeted by Russell Crowe :

  from Woolloomooloo to past Stanley St up to hyde park,the whole area pongs of diesel fuel. Apparently a spill at Garden Island. about 1 hour ago via web .

Russell's view

Wooloomooloo Wharf

Russell's new view ?

It's one of the drawbacks of living on the Woolloomooloo Wharf as north facing residents discovered long ago. Directly opposite is the Garden Island naval base and when the ships are in the smell of diesel wafts over. And it's not healthy for the kids either.

spotted at Seven Shillings Beach

Via Veneta

Perhaps that's why Crowe and family were spotted checking out this 1950's Point Piper mansion on Seven Shillings Beach on Monday.

Despite a rumour that swept the property market, Crowe did not purchase Via Veneta in the same suburb that sold for a record $60M this week.

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Prize for packing the most product placements into a series of daily tweets goes to our favourite celebrity spruiker Max Markson  with these :
  maxmarkson
  Had grt day today ... Did I ever show u the 3 bikini girls ? about 3 hours ago via web 

 maxmarkson
  Check out the uber sexy uber model Emily and get Boca Lupo energy drink  about 11 hours ago via Twittelator
  maxmarkson
  Having hot choc at Guylian with the fully clothed bikini models and Spiderman... Want to join us  about 11 hours ago via Twittelator
  maxmarkson
Crikey this is hard ... 3 bikini clad girls+ Alain Robert and only one can of Boca Lupo energy drink! about 12 hours ago via web 


We thought we should show a pic of spiderman Alain Robert as well. He and Zoo Magazine are clients of Max !