Album review: Gargantua – Ash Grunwald

GARGANTUA Ash Grunwald (Shock) While the Living Dead’s Scott Owen and Andy Strachan might provide the “bang and clang” as the hired guns for Australian guitar maestro Ash Grunwald’s latest project, he’s the one everyone in Australia has been making a noise about for well over a decade. And while Grunwald, who has done stints as a radio DJ, is a capable enough vocalist, what he lacks in the wizened old voices of blues greats, he makes up for with a steaming repertoire of guitar licks

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‘Funny, original’ short film a winner

The story of a 10-year-old Wellington girl searching for her best friend has bagged top prize at the 48Hours Furious Film-Making Challenge. Wellington film-maker Dean Hewison, along with writers Sam Dickson and Richard Falkner – collectively known as Traces of Nut – were crowned grand national champions at the Civic Theatre in Auckland last night for their short film The Sleeping Plot

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DiCaprio film nothing if not stylish

A tour of the set at Sydney’s Fox Studios during production showed Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby will be nothing if not stylish, with a lavishly detailed mansion and the famous pier in the vast sound stages, colourful period cars and beautifully crafted costumes for the cast and hundreds of extras. All suggested the re-creation of 1920s New York will be as impressive as the version of historic Paris in Moulin Rouge, which Luhrmann and his creative partner and wife, designer Catherine Martin, also shot in Sydney

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People: Apr. 3, 2000

YOU MAY ALREADY BE A COLLECTOR Among the distinctions that painters covet–gallery shows, a high price for their work at auction, placement in a museum, a patron–being cited by the Guinness Book of World Records is not a must-have. But JANE WOOSTER SCOTT received that honor recently when she was named the “Most Reproduced Artist in America.” “I heard I was closing in on the title; for a while I was running neck and neck with Picasso,” says Wooster Scott, whose work appears on jigsaw puzzles, Christmas cards and calendars

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Crime-fighting leech cracks Australian cold case

If not for a lowly leech, Peter Alec Cannon might not be in the heap of trouble he’s in now. In what Australian officials are calling a first in their country — and possibly in the world — police used DNA extracted from a leech that bit Cannon eight years ago to convict him of robbing an elderly woman.

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