Legal Blondes Galore !

Tim Mimchin with Sarah & Nel Minchin at the Helpmanns

Legally Blonde swept the boards at the 2013 Helpmann Awards last night at the Sydney Opera House scooping up 5 gongs including  best musical, direction and choreography and an award for Lucy Durack as best female actor in a musical.

the Tap Bros

The spectacular Melbourne based stage event  King Kong, won four design awards for costumes, lighting, sound and scenery, plus a special award for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement. There are bound to be more plaudits for King Kong as it's heading for Broadway in the near future.

A total of 43 Helpmann Awards were presented during a glitzy night honouring the most outstanding live performances in Australia in the past year.

Colin Friels won for Death of a Salesman at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre and Alison Bell won for her role in Hedda Gabler at the State Theatre Company of South Australia. Geoffrey Rush was named best male actor in a musical for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.



Paul Capsis (below right) Lucy Durack (right )  Elizabeth Debicki (below)

theatre heavyweights : Baz Luhrmann, Andrew Upton and a glamorous blonde

Briden Star         Helen Dallimore            Erika Heynatz & Andrew Kingston           Cheryl Barker                                       

heading for Broadway : King Kong

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

Stage Heavyweights attend Awards

                                       The winners of the 2012 Sydney Theatre Awards have been announced with around 300 members of the Sydney theatre community attending the auditorium at Paddington RSL to cheer on their fellow thespians.
 International stage royalty presented awards including Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones and Barry Humphries.
Best Mainstage Production went to Belvoir Street's Medea while Best Actor in a Leading Role of a Mainstage Production was won by Josh McConville for Griffin’s The Boys.

Angela Lansbury

Lucy Durack

James Earl Jones & wife Cecilia Hart

 Caroline Brazier won Best Actress in a Leading Role in an Independent Production for I Want To Sleep With Tom Stoppard, while James Lugton won Best Actor in a Leading Role in an Independent Production for The Taming of the Shrew.
 South Pacific was awarded Best Production of a Musical, while Lucy Durack won the Judith Johnson Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Legally Blonde, and Ben Lewis was awarded the Judith Johnson Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for Love Never Dies.


 Wacky Hairstyle of The Month

David Lynch.  New York Social Diary

Pictured : filmmaker David Lynch with his magnificent cockatoo parrot inspired thatch at a recent fundraiser in New York for the David Lynch Foundation. Fab!