So you'll be wanting some good news about New Zealanders' endeavours in Australia, then. How about this?
Shihad, the mighty Kiwi band who have based themselves across the Tasman for a year or two, are nominated in three categories in the upcoming Australian Recording Industry Association Awards, or Arias, the Aussie equivalent of the Grammys.
Their album General Electric is a finalist in the album of the year and best rock album divisions, and the band are also nominated for best group where they are up against pop acts such as Savage Garden and Madison Avenue.
But it seems they've already won that perennial transtasman musical honour: Next Kiwi Group To Be Adopted As Australian.
JUST POPPING IN: Talking of the duo Savage Garden — the top earners in the Australian entertainment biz with an estimated $A30 million ($38 million) pay packet last year — after they play at tomorrow night's closing ceremony, singer Darren Hayes will be jetting into Auckland for a spot of promotional activity.
He leads a wee invasion of fleshing-the-press pop stars hitting town this week. Also on the way is Heather Small, the statuesque singer from M People, who'll be pushing her solo album, and English popteen Billie (last here a lifetime ago at the tender age of 16) returns as an 18-year-old woman of the world to do the in-store thing (Sounds, Queen St, Friday 12.30 pm) and play a private showcase that night.
SORRY, NEXT! It seems Auckland actor-musician Joel Tobeck, who divides his abundant talents between playing bad guys in post-Hercules productions (such as the just-cancelled Cleopatra 2525) and fronting Tadow, the house band on telly show Ice As, has become a rarity — a Kiwi actor who has lost out on a role in Lord of the Rings.
He had been named to play young Smeagol (the hobbit also known as Gollum, Trahald, Slinker and Stinker) but the role has changed in "height and stature," meaning the lanky Tobeck is out. Meanwhile, filming on the trilogy was in full swing this week on the set depicting the mystical town of Edoras, constructed on Mt Sunday in the Rangitata River Valley, Mid Canterbury.
SINS OF THE FLESH: Fans of hip-hop outfit Bone Thugs'n' Harmony, who played in Auckland a few weeks back, may have wondered why there were only three of the five-piece on stage.
Well, Bizzy Bone doesn't like flying, apparently, and it seems the also absent Flesh'n'Bone was unavoidably detained — in jail on firearms charges.
Flesh (real name Stanley Howse) was this week sentenced to 11 years' jail in California after pleading guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and criminal possession of a firearm.
The rapper threatened a friend with an AK47 rifle in December after pulling it out of a baby's crib. He's up for sentencing on another admitted charge of possessing a sawn-off shotgun this month.
THE FAMILY TOMB: Angelina Jolie might have to be on her best behaviour for at least some of the time she's playing Lara Croft in the film version of the popular video game Tomb Raider — playing her dad, Lord Croft, will be her dad, Jon Voight. Voight has been cast as the aristocratic explorer father in the film being shot in Britain and due out mid-2001.
<i>Chatterbox</i>: Kiwi in Aussie finals shock
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.