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Brooke back in care
YouTube pirate lawsuit appeal
Reality flock for Fleiss
LOS ANGELES: Charlie Sheen’s estranged
wife Brooke Mueller (pictured) has
checked into a Los Angeles sober living
facility just weeks after denying she had gone back
to rehab. The mother of Sheen’s twin sons returned
to rehab on Saturday to maintain her health, her
lawyer Yale Galanter said, rejecting suggestions
Mueller had relapsed. Mueller broke up with her actor
husband in Aspen, Colorado, last Christmas.
VIACOM, the owner of MTV, Comedy Central and
Nickelodeon, is trying to revive a federal lawsuit that
seeks more than $US1 billion ($A1.03 billion) in
damages from YouTube for showing tens of
thousands of pirated video clips from its shows.
The challenge filed on Friday in a federal appeals
court in New York had been expected since a June
ruling rebuffed Viacom’s copyright infringement
lawsuit against YouTube and its owner, Google.
LOS ANGELES: Former Hollywood madam
Heidi Fleiss (pictured) is set to ruffle
feathers in a new reality TV show – about
her collection of exotic birds. Fleiss has signed a deal
to shoot a pilot for Animal Planet about her 20-strong
collection of parrots and other feathery friends. The
show tells how Fleiss turned her back on a
prostitution business to care for birds that she lets fly
freely around her Las Vegas home.
The King’s Speech
reigns at awards
PUB: NT NEWS
DATE: 7-DEC-2010 PAGE: 24 COLOR: C M Y K
Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter in a scene from Australian-British co-production The King’s Speech, tipped to dominate next year’s Academy Awards
By LUCY CARNE
in LONDON
A LOW-budget film about
how an Australian speech
therapist cured King George
VI’s stammer has cemented
itself as the Oscar contender.
The King’s Speech scooped
five gongs at the British Independent Film Awards in London yesterday.
Directed
by
BritishAustralian Tom Hooper, the
period drama about King
George VI’s speech impediment won the top award for
Best British Independent
Film. It also scored best acting honours for leading man
Colin Firth who plays King
George, Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth and
Geoffrey Rush as speech
therapist Lionel Logue.
Screenwriter David Seidler, 73, also took home a gong.
The Australian-British coproduction tells the true
story of unconventional
Australian speech therapist
Logue, who helped King
George VI overcome his nervous stammer, particularly
after he takes the throne following the abdication of his
brother, Edward, played by
Guy Pearce.
The film was hailed yesterday as a sure-winner at
the February 2 Academy
Awards. It struggled to get
made because the Queen
Mother blocked the project
for more than 30 years, say-
ing she did not want to be reminded of the pain of her late
husband’s problems.
Seidler, who wrote the film
as he was being treated for
cancer, left the script wrapped in a brown paper bag at
the front door of Rush’s Melbourne home in the hope the
Oscar-winning actor would
join the film.
‘‘My first thought was:
‘Tell these people the proper
procedure!’ ’’ Rush said.
‘‘Then I read it, and the
story fascinated me. How did
this failed Shakespearean
actor-turned-speech therapist become the king’s righthand man?’’
Rush became the film’s
executive producer alongside joint Sydney-London
production company SeeSaw Films.
The King’s Speech, which
has also won the Toronto
film festival’s People’s
Choice Award, opens in
Australia on Boxing Day.
City
casts
spell
SYDNEY: Some come to
Australia for the surf, others for the icons, like Sydney’s Opera House and
Harbour Bridge.
But for Love and Other
Drugs co-stars Anne
Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, it’s the food and
drink that seem to hold
the most appeal.
‘‘My very first international press core was in
Australia for Princess
Diaries when I was 18,’’
Hathaway reminisced at a
press conference overlooking the harbour on
Monday.
‘‘Seeing as how I was 18
and the drinking age was
quite a bit lower here
(than in the US) I don’t
think I have any thoughts
or memories from that
particular trip,’’ she said.
Now 28, Hathaway’s tastes have changed.
She spent her spare
time on Sunday at photographer
Annie
Leibovitz’s exhibition at
the Museum of Contemporary Art with her
‘‘pretty committee’’ entourage. On his day off,
Sydney’s restaurants held
the greatest appeal for Gyllenhaal.
‘‘I tried to eat my way
around Sydney. I’m kind
of a foodie and it was
really, really incredible
food,’’ Gyllenhaal said,
scoffing at rumours he’d
gone for a surf at Bondi.
‘‘I went to some really
wonderful restaurants
and sat out in the sun and
ran into people who I had
no idea were in Sydney
and had a wonderful
time.’’
In Love and Other
Drugs, Gyllenhaal plays a
womanising Viagra salesman who falls in love with
a Parkinson’s disease
patient in a part-drama,
part-comedy, all-raunchy
movie, in which the pair
spend a lot of time together naked in bed.
Love and Other Drugs
opens across Australia on
December 16.
Andre texts up a divorce suit
Wanna bet it’ll end in tears
LONDON: Australian pop
star Peter Andre has been named in the divorce papers of
a British TV host after allegedly bombarding the presenter’s wife with flirty text
messages.
Lee Clark, a host for UK
shopping channel QVC,
claims he was driven to file
for divorce after discovering
that Andre had allegedly exchanged more than 100 texts
BERLIN: A contestant in
one of Germany’s most popular TV shows was in intensive care with serious spine
injuries yesterday, after a
stunt watched by millions
went horribly wrong.
Wetten, dass ...? (Wanna
bet?) sees members of the
public attempt daring feats,
interspersed with celebrity
chat, and attracts some 10
million viewers.
24
with his presenter wife Pollyanna
Woodward on
their first wedding anniversPeter Andre
ary in October.
Clark goes on to accuse the
singer of sending his wife numerous gifts after meeting
her at a dinner this year.
‘‘One of the messages he
sent my wife said, ‘I’m lying
NT NEWS. Tuesday, December 7, 2010.
in my six foot bed all alone
too’.’’
In another text, Polly told
Peter, ‘Love you millions.
Can’t wait to go shopping for
your xmas pressie. We’ll
have loads of fun and a great
day’, he told Britain’s News of
the World tabloid.
A representative for Andre
insists the singer broke off all
contact with Woodward after
finding out she was married.
But Samuel Koch’s attempt to leap lengthways
over a moving car wearing
spring-loaded stilts ended
with the 23-year-old lying
motionless on the floor.
The prime-time Saturday
show was abandoned for the
first time in its 29-year history, as Mr Koch was rushed to hospital, where he regained consciousness and
was able to speak.
The future of the show
now appears uncertain,
with critics saying the
stunts had become more
dangerous over the years.
Teen idol Justin Bieber’s
appearance on Wetten, dass
...? was cancelled following
the accident, prompting the
16-year-old to tweet: ‘‘Please
pray for Samuel Koch & his
family as we wait and hope
for his health and safety’’.
www.ntnews.com.au