4VF News – Daily News Channel

INXS, AC/DC and Jet have made a long list of the greatest guitar riffs of all time, but can they beat the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Blur, the Clash and Nirvana

In a web poll bound to get music fans around the world passionately arguing for the next 10 days, British radio station BBC 2 has given its web users

Queen with Adam Lambert has announced one New Zealand show at Auckland’s Vector Arena on September 3.

US online newspaper The Huffington Post has called on HBO to dump comedian

Lorde has become the latest victim of Weird Al Yankovic’s pop mockery musical videos.

As part of #8Videos8Days, the comedian teamed up with CollegeHumour on a music video for Lorde’s magnum-opus Royals.

Replacing “royyyals” with “foiiiiil”, his song praises all the wonderful uses of, that’s right, foil.

Apparently, it’s as good as preserving last night’s dinner as it is for defending your mind from government control.

As with the original, Yankovic’s version is annoyingly catchy.

“I never bother with baggies, glass jars, tupperware containers, plastic cling-wrap, really a no-brainer,” he sings.

“I just like to keep all my flavours sealed and tight.

“With aluminum foiiiiiiil.”

The song takes an unexpected turn when the lighting dims and Yankovic spills his conspiratorial theories.

“Be aware, there’s always someone that’s watching you.”

After broaching the moon landing and Illuminati secrets, the songs comes back to foil.

“I’m protected cos I made this hat… from aluminium foiiiiiil.”

Take a taste test in the video above, or enjoy a full serving below:

Back when Wellington’s Lyndee-Jane Rutherford was about eight years old, Grease the movie was out and the soundtrack album and singles were at the top of the New Zealand charts, including You’re the One That I Want at No 1 for four weeks.

The only problem for Rutherford was that she was too young to see the film.

“I had the record and I played it to death. I had my favs and I had the ones I would skip.

“I remember crying in my bed because there was a documentary on television about Grease. My mum must have felt terrible, so she actually got me up out of bed and I managed to watch the second half.”

Rutherford did eventually get to see the film, starring John Travolta as high school “greaser” Danny and Olivia Newton-John as Sandy, which for many people was their first introduction to the musical.

Now Rutherford, after 21 years as an actor and director in theatre and television, is directing the stage version of Grease for Wellington Musical Theatre. Not only is it Rutherford’s biggest musical – and her first in the canon of Broadway and West End hits – but with more than 50 in the cast, the single biggest live show of her career.

It was Wellington Musical Theatre who approached Rutherford to direct. “How thrilled was I and how thrilled am I,” jokes Rutherford. “I directed [off-Broadway musical] Zombie Prom a couple of years ago at Whitireia and I had such an amazing time. Michael Highsted [business manager] of Wellington Musical Theatre did see that. But Grease is the most ‘official’ musical. When people think of musicals they think of things like Grease and Phantom of the Opera.”

Rutherford hasn’t seen Grease on stage before, but is aware of the history. Some of it will surprise people. It includes the fact that Grease premiered in Chicago in an experimental theatre, which used to be a tram shed, in 1971. The cast were all amateurs and the audience had to sit on newspapers.

Travolta was in a national tour of Grease when he was 17, before his television and film career, including Saturday Night Fever which made him a star the year before the movie Grease.

Some of the songs, including You’re the One That I Want and Grease, by The Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, weren’t part of the original stage show and were written specifically for the film. This has also happened in other film adaptations of stage musicals, including Jesus Christ Superstar.

Rutherford says her Grease incorporates the film’s hit songs, but in other ways reflects the differences in the stage show to the film version. There are the same core characters, including Waylon Edwards as Danny, Awhimai Fraser as Sandy, Ainslie Allen as tough girl Rizzo and Flora Lloyd as Frenchy, but it’s not a carbon copy of the film.

“In the movie Sandy is Australian because Olivia Newton-John is Australian. She’s not [Australian] in the musical. And Sandy’s got a little bit more guts in the musical, which I really like. She’s more up to giving to Rizzo a little bit more.

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“So that’s been really fun and that’s been a really positive and awesome and energetic component in the show. But we honour the film. You can’t not. But we have a few musical surprises in there as well,” says Rutherford.

OVER the show’s three-month rehearsal period she’s been helped by Grease’s musical director Michael Nicholas Williams and choreographer Leigh Evans. Rutherford has worked with both on other shows, including Zombie Prom with Williams and The ImpoSTAR with Evans. But it was still a learning experience dealing with something the scale of Grease.

“We are a team and we work together really well. We feed off each other and Michael also has an amazing knowledge of pop culture.

“And this is my first time in the Opera House and – oh, my goodness – my mind is blown with how much I’ve learned and how much my knowledge has grown. It freaks me out just how much I have learnt.”

It’s been the same in working with the cast, which Rutherford says, is largely young, some still at high school. “It is about spending time with people and I’m a firm believer in that. People are slowly but surely getting there and it’s really fulfilling to see how people have grown. It’s amazing. People have been able to push themselves and learn. Part of me wishes I’d actually recorded them on the first day, they have done such an amazing job.”

For Rutherford some of the “magic moments” in rehearsals have been seeing the cast nail a song. It really hit her this week when the cast were able to rehearse on the Opera House stage. “They just went up a notch as soon as they got up on stage. They do what you ask them to do and it was awesome.”

Not surprisingly, Rutherford is keen to direct another large-scale musical and it’s made her more aware of her strengths as a director. “I work really well with people. I’m really patient and I put the work in and so when I’m working with a big cast like this, I really enjoy seeing that development.”

Nor is she about to be musical-free after Grease. Rutherford will return to acting with a role in the musical Dead Tragic – written and directed by Williams – at Circa Theatre in November.

“I’ve seen it twice at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North in two different productions. I just sat in the audience wishing I was in it because it was so hilarious. All of a sudden I’m it.”

–

That Guy Leigh Hart is back on Kiwi TV screens with his latest show The Late Night Big Breakfast. He talks to James Croot about the programme, which reunites the Olympico team of himself, Jason Hoyte and Jeremy Wells.

Where did the inspiration for the show come from

A segment in a series we used to do called Moon TV. It was a short section that we felt could work in a longer form.

You guys have worked together before on the likes of the Olympico show – what makes yourself Jason (Hoyte) and Jeremy (Wells) such an effective team

We can make being highly ineffective, look effective. Both Jeremy and Jason have a great sense of what makes good TV, and more importantly bad TV. Plus, we all get on well.

Who have you got lined up for the series as guests and anyone in particular who you would really have liked to have gotten

The guests aren’t your regular crop of New Zealand celebrities, rather everyday real people who you might see guesting on a regular Breakfast show, though if we could have got Scarlett Johansson on the show we would have. She is yet to return my calls, or faxes.

Who is the king of the chat show format and why Both here and overseas.

Overseas, I would probably say David Letterman. Closer to home, Rawdon Christie and Ali Pugh. We are trying to get Ali to jump ship and join our show.

Why is New Zealand notoriously bad at the real version of this kind of show

I wouldn’t say we are. Breakfast TV is what it is and I think we do a fine job here. Our show only differs in the fact that it’s a Breakfast show at night and we probably drink a little more.

What are the keys to a successful lifestyle or chat show then

I think a major key is the chemistry between the presenters and having good infomercials! We each do our share on the infomercial front. Jas does the ones for rectal and other health problems, Jeremy and I split the others between us.

What to you is the quintessential New Zealand TV lifestyle or chat show moment (Brendan Pongia farting Yulia’s crazy musical number Something from Paul Henry’s back catalogue)

Brendan Pongia farting could be up there. We have him shortlisted to do some flatulence infomercials.

What’s been the biggest challenge of putting this show together

The biggest challenge has probably been certain key bits of furniture getting sold from under us mid-show. The show is filmed in a Target furniture store.

It’s hard to keep continuity and is confusing for the guests.

What do you hope viewers take away from the show

If nothing else I hope the viewers take away some of the amazing products we sell during the show. If each viewer buys a Late Night Breakfast coffee cup we could all retire.

What is the current state of Kiwi comedy on TV from your perspective and how has that changed in last decade

I think New Zealand comedy is in a great state. There are many great shows, I would say to the point that we don’t need to ask that question all the time.

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In any country to have one good comedy show you need three bad ones and New Zealanders are prepared to accept that now. I am not sure what side of the equation this show will sit, but at the end of the day it’s a Breakfast show not a comedy show.

The Late Night Big Breakfast 10.05pm, Thursdays, TV One

– Stuff

The reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century, says she never gave her approval to a new memoir that portrays itself as a rare, intimate look into the lives of the writer and her older sister in small-town Alabama.

“Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood,” Harper Lee said in a letter, just as the new book, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee was about to released. The book was written by Marja Mills, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, who moved next door to Lee and her sister, Alice, in 2004 and remained there for 18 months.

Mills responded in a statement, saying that Lee, known to her friends as Nelle, and her sister “were aware I was writing this book and my friendship with both of them continued during and after my time in Monroeville. The stories they shared with me that I recount in the book speak for themselves,”

Mills’ book describes a friendship that blossomed after she first travelled to Alabama in 2001 to write about Lee and Monroeville for the Tribune when To Kill a Mockingbird was selected to launch Chicago’s One Book, One Chicago program. She describes her surprise when Alice invited her in to chat and her shock when Lee called her later and visited her the next day at her motel. Lee did not participate in the newspaper story.

“We had a great rapport from the start,” Mills said in an interview before Lee’s letter was made public. “I didn’t feel entitled to know more than they wanted to tell me.”

In the book, Mills describes how she became part of the Lee sisters’ social circle, having coffee regularly with the author at McDonald’s, sharing catfish suppers, feeding the ducks and taking long country drives. In the interview, Mills says she had built a trust with the two women from her newspaper story and both Lee, then 74, and Alice, 89, were eager to have their family stories preserved.

To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is the story of Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer, his two young children and the fight against racial injustice in Depression-era Alabama. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel became a movie starring Gregory Peck, who received an Academy Award.

In her memoir, Mills’ quotes Alice Lee on one of the lingering mysteries about her sister: why she never wrote another book.

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“When you have hit the pinnacle,” Alice Lee said, “how would you feel about writing more”

Lee’s letter is not the first time she has spoken out against The Mockingbird Next Door. The intensely private author, now 88, issued a statement in 2011 after Penguin Press announced it had acquired the book, saying she had not “willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills.”

In a statement issued this week, Penguin said it was proud to publish the book.

In her July 14 letter, Lee said she normally wouldn’t respond to questions about books about her life but felt compelled to do so. She said Mills had befriended her sister and “it did not take long to discover Marja’s true mission; another book about Harper Lee. I was hurt, angry and saddened, but not surprised.”

She said she immediately cut off contact with Mills and left town when she was there. Until her stroke in 2007, Lee divided her time between New York and Monroeville.

She also said Mills has a 2011 statement signed by her sister, “claiming I had cooperated with the book,” noting Alice Lee would have been 100 at the time.

In her response, Mills said Alice Lee was still practicing law at age 100 and declared that letter “makes clear that Nelle Harper Lee and Alice gave me their blessing.”

Mills also cited one sentence from Alice Lee’s letter: “Poor Nelle Harper can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence. Now she has no memory of the incident.”

The book controversy comes a month after a federal judge ended the on-again, off-again lawsuit filed by Lee against a museum in her hometown.

US District Judge William H. Steele of Mobile dismissed the case in a one-sentence order after lawyers for Lee and the Monroe County Heritage Museum filed a joint motion seeking to end the litigation. Lee had accused the museum of taking advantage of her work by selling souvenirs and using the title of her book on its website address. The museum changed its website’s name.

– AP

You would think that a foul-mouthed, bong-smoking, womanising teddy bear might be a one-off, but not so according to a lawsuit filed against Seth MacFarlane over

Queen with Adam Lambert has announced one New Zealand show at Auckland’s Vector Arena on September 3.