Archibald portrait prize winner

Indigenous artist Blak Douglas has won the $100,000 Archibald for his portrait of fellow artist Moby Dickens. Well done Blak..we like it !.

Box Office Bonanza

As if to prove Whispers' point in our last post mentioning a low budget film we are working on, a

perfect example occurs to prove powerful Hollywood film producer Cassian Elwes' belief in the big profits to be made on small films.

And taking the box office by storm the flick also stars two Australian actors. Annabelle: Creation is the tale of a couple who welcome a Nun and six orphaned girls into their California farmhouse. But terror soon strikes the house when one child enters a forbidden room.
Directed by Swede David Sandberg the film stars Miranda Otto and Anthony LaPaglia. It was released in Australia on the 10th August and is a smash hit.
Costing a reasonable $15M , the picture has already taken over $71M at the box office. 
Below is a trailer for the film.
    UPDATE : Worldwide takings for Annabelle: Creation are now:  

$215,080,384

Cleo Clanger

Feel for the staff of Cleo Magazine who probably read today via the Daily Telegraph that they would lose their jobs as the magazine closes. Cleo came as part of the package when the James Packer sold out his publishing interests to the giant German Bauer Media Group in 2012.

First published 44 years ago with the venerable Packer favorite Ita Buttrose as editor (a shout-out to Ita who Whispers found themselves with in a Surry Hills post office queue just a few days ago), Cleo was aimed at an older female audience. Recently their Bachelor Of The Year awards have received plenty of publicity (aided by some self-important publicists who seemed oblivious to the rapidly changing world of media). Circulation has hovered around 53000 a year with a claimed readership of 173000 and a claimed 300,000 online readers.
But just look at Whispers'(thesocialshuttle.com) online readership (left : Google's figures) . Daily views are around 2300 with monthly views around 72000 which is not dissimilar to a monthly magazine or a local newspaper (and a shout out to our daily 300 approx readers who are in Russia). Of course it's very hard to compare and many factors influence readership but compared to a blog run by 1.5 (part timer) and a dyslexic cat who claims to be the sub-editor, something must give in these print publications and the large staff needed to run them.

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Meanwhile as the Happy Couple, Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall announce their engagement, Don Rupioni's beloved Sun Newspaper is under investigation for claims it was also involved in phone hacking. We couldn't help but notice a recent cover. As one irreverent wag from that august publication put it : "how dare they, that's our job"