Iggy Azalea slams Lorde


Iggy Azalea feels Lorde’s recent performance with Nirvana was “inappropriate”.

Lorde performed with the surviving members of the band at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on April 10 in Brooklyn, along with Joan Jett, St. Vincent and Kim Gordon.

Azalea is slamming the decision to involve Lorde, saying the New Zealand-born star didn’t belong on stage with the others.

“Nothing against her, but I think when you’re doing a tribute to someone that’s dead, generally it should be the person’s peer,” she told Billboard magazine.

“Lorde is not Kurt Cobain’s peer. No matter if she killed the performance or not, I just don’t think it’s appropriate.”

This is not the first time Azalea has started a feud with another star – last year she was fighting with Azealia Banks. According to the Aussie star, Banks was ungrateful and untrustworthy.

“She’s biased about everybody and everything, even towards the people who help her,”

Melanie Griffith files to divorce Antonio Banderas


Melanie Griffith has filed for divorce from Antonio Banderas, her husband of 18 years.

For years they were among Hollywood’s hottest couples, with Banderas publicly supporting his wife’s treatments for addiction and both supporting charitable causes.

Griffith cited irreconcilable differences in the court filing in Los Angeles. The actors were married in 1996 and have a 17-year-old daughter together.

Griffith, 56, is seeking spousal support but is willing to pay her own attorney fees, her filing shows.

Griffith, who has a tattoo of Banderas’ first name in a heart on her right shoulder, signed the divorce petition on May 30 but did not specify the date of their separation.

They first worked together on the set of the 1995 romantic comedy Two Much, Banderas, 53, later directed his wife in the 1999 film Crazy in Alabama.

In 2011, the couple hosted a fundraiser for President Barack Obama at their Los Angeles home.

Griffith has been married four times, including twice to actor Don Johnson. Banderas has one previous marriage.

Banderas in recent years has served as the voice of the animated character Puss in Boots in the Shrek films and starred in Pedro Almodovar’s two most recent films, The Skin I Live In and I’m So Excited!

Griffith was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the 1998 film Working Girl. She has recently turned to television work, guest-starring in Hawaii Five-0, Hot in Cleveland and Raising Hope. In 2003, she won praise for her role in the Broadway revival of Chicago.

An email sent to the couple’s publicist, Robin Baum, was not immediately returned.

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– AP

Home and Away star’s two loves


Johnny Ruffo goes to great lengths to pursue his great love. However, it is music – not a girl – that has the singer-actor combining long days on the set of Home And Away with late nights working on his tunes.

“It’s pretty tricky but I like to work hard and music is such a big part of my life that I make time for it,” Ruffo says. “It may be at 2am in the morning but when you love it, it’s not a chore to do.”

But for the former Perth concreter – who became a household name in Australia as a finalist on The X-Factor – earning his acting chops as Summer Bay’s likeable clown Chris Harrington is also a big priority.

He hopes the developing love triangle between Chris, Denny (Jessica Grace Smith) and River Boy Casey Braxton (Lincoln Younes) will give him the opportunity to showcase his dramatic skills as well as his comedic ones.

“I don’t mind it,” the 26 year old says of being the show’s fall guy, “because it kind of lightens things up. A lot of the time the show is very serious and full on so it needs that element to break it up. But, at the same time, I also enjoy the quite dramatic stuff.”

He has high hopes that commitment phobic Chris’ romance with tomboy Denny, the half sister of Oscar (Jake Speer) and Evelyn (Philippa Northeast), will produce such moments.

“Chris is definitely falling for Denny but in the back of his mind there’s this shadow of doubt about Casey, what with him being a River Boy and strong and buff and with his bad-boy attitude, he thinks he’s got a bit of competition.”

It does not help that the ever-confident Chris’ attempts to woo Denny often go spectacularly wrong.

“I think Chris thinks he’s a lot more adorable than what he is sometimes,” says Johnny, laughing.

“He’s that happy-go-lucky kind of guy who sometimes opens his mouth and says things he thinks are going to help but instead brings things back a few pegs.”

It is one trait, Ruffo hopes he does not share with the character he once said could have been written just for him.

While claiming he is romantically uninvolved in real life (despite gossip columnists linking him to both Dannii Minogue and his former Home And Away co-star Samara Weaving), the actor likes to think that he demonstrates more finesse with women.

“There are definitely a lot of the aspects of the character that I share. While that’s fun and helps get you into your comfort zone, I think it’s good now that the character’s starting to expand and show a lot more depth. That’s quite exciting for me because I get to hone my craft and get better.”

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He might be an acting novice, but fans of the long-running soap certainly appreciate his efforts.

He was a finalist in the best newcomer category at the Logies (losing out to co-star Bonnie Sveen who plays Ricky Sharpe).

He is also happy to be part of a drama that, after 26 years on screen, still managed to be voted Australia’s favourite drama at those same awards.

“I’d love to try my luck overseas but I’m so fortunate to have Home And Away and my career in Australia that I’m incredibly happy,” Ruffo says. “I really have the best job in the world.”

-The TV Guide

Kylie’s spinning around


Kylie Minogue is in something of a unique position as she settles down to chat about her latest project, The Voice.

Sitting in Sydney’s Fox Studios, the singer was preparing for her time in the red chair as the latest coach in the Australian incarnation of the hit reality series, but was already doing the same job in the British version.

“It’s the same show,” she says of the The Voice Australia. “But obviously it’s done slightly differently. For a start, the chairs spin the other way.”

Jokes aside, straddling the two shows across two time zones and facing two sets of contestants and fellow coaches, and with both versions at different stages, is a tall order indeed.

But if anything, the experience has given Minogue a special insight into how the show works and that is something she is looking forward to bringing to Australia.

“It wasn’t a no-brainer,” she says about signing up for the Australian season. “I had just started in England and I wasn’t mentally to the point where I knew what I was doing yet, but something within me said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound, let’s do it’. I might as well use the experience in the UK to come here, and it’s great to come home, of course.”

Even without the British Voice in her resume, Minogue has the ultimate credentials to coach would-be singers alongside returning coaches Joel Madden and Ricky Martin, and fellow newcomer will.i.am.

With a career spanning almost three decades, global album sales north of 70 million, a dozen world tours and more than a passing insight into the intensity of a life in the spotlight, she has plenty of good advice – learnt the hard way – for her aspiring charges.

One thing is not to over-perform. “I fell prey to that in the beginning,” Minogue says. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I just kept leaping around… dancing all the time, singing, dancing, cartwheels, just keeping moving (waves her arms around).

“And at one point I learnt that less can be more, to choose the moments and peaks in a song and take people on that journey.”

On The Voice UK, alongside coaches Tom Jones, will.i.am and Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson, critics gushed over “the Kylie effect”, saying she single-handedly revived the show, drawing in an extra two million viewers with her “addictive” personality, some outrageous flirting with contestants and belting out great performances of her own, too.

The Voice UK eventually ended with low audience numbers and Minogue has said she will not return next year, but even while it was still running, Minogue said whatever happened, her experience in the chair would form her coaching style.

“I was very nervous at the start of the show, which is a good thing to tell my acts, as well. We don’t just roll in. This is a new experience for me sitting in the seat. No one has given me a guidebook. I’m just trying to
find my way.”

The biggest thing she offers is her “overall experience” and her support.

Minogue says the latter is of vital importance in tackling anxieties felt by all artists.

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“I think an integral part of being a performer is insecurity, and I certainly still have my share.

“You want to do the right song, you want to get everything right, you want to perform at the best
that you can.

“Performance is not a scientific formula. It depends how you’re feeling, where you are in your day, in your life, what the audience is like, what the conditions are like with so many different factors, and there is no right or wrong.

“It’s not a scientific equation, so any performer has those (anxieties). It’s normal. When I was younger no one really addressed that with me and I thought it was just me, but actually it’s everyone.

“So any morsels of wisdom that I’ve gained over the years, it’s interesting when there are moments to pass that on to our acts.

“It’s rewarding because I think, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was ever going to come in handy beyond for me’, and it might be something that’s very small but it can have a big impact on someone.”

Minogue is conscious of holding contestants’ futures in her hands, but adds that while saying
no is tough it isn’t the end of the world.

“If they don’t go through, the great thing is each coach on the panel can say we’ve all had setbacks.

“Even if they don’t get through, they’ve been taken really good care of and they’ve got stacks more experience than when they stepped through the door.”

-The TV Guide

Plenty at stake in Taika’s new film


One April weekend in 2005, Taika Waititi and long-time collaborator Jemaine Clement rented frilly shirts and headed to Waititi’s creepy Wellington flat. Waititi was always going to be the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt-styled sensitive dandy vampire. What took longer to determine was whether Clement’s character, Vladislav, or Jonny Brugh’s Deacon was more likely to sleep with banshees.

After two days shooting a mock documentary about the banalities of a vampire’s day-to-day existence, they had the bones of What We Do In The Shadows. From there, it only took seven years to flesh the story out and make the movie, which lands in cinemas on June 19.

Shadows is Boy director Waititi’s third feature and the latest project in almost two decades of collaboration with Flight of the Conchords star Clement. That’s longer than most Kiwi marital unions. So do they finish each other’s sentences

“Sometimes it’s been a bit like a marriage,” Waititi admits with a laugh. “We’ll have to take breaks, where we see other people.”

It’s tough to keep track of all the other people Waititi is seeing. Projects in development include playing a useless dad, directing talking dogs, a comedy about a Hitler Youth member, writing a television show with Clement and some secret squirrel work with Disney.

In case he didn’t have enough to do, Waititi is also producing Shadows, and they’re distributing the film themselves.

But the crazy schedule is nothing new for the 38-year-old who has spent his career juggling art, theatre, film directing and acting. Two years ago he added fatherhood to that list, with the birth of Te Kainga o Te Hinekaahu, known as TK.

Clement and Waititi have been long-time vampire lovers. No, not like that – they’re both happily married. I mean they’ve both been captivated by blood-suckers since boyhood.

Waititi was inspired by films such as The Lost Boys and An American Werewolf in London. And in 2005, when they conceived the idea of Shadows, no-one was making vampire movies. Few film-makers were making mockumentaries, either. One of Waititi’s first films was a fake documentary about police dogs – a “silly acting exercise” in which humans played the dogs. He liked the idea of a documentary about something you coudn’t possibly make a doco about: “Something magical, where a handheld camera would be able to see the special effects.

“We always knew we were going to make it, we just had no idea when. Every year we would say ‘this is the year’. That conversation happened for seven years. I made two films in that time, Jemaine went off and had an acting career. It just became harder and harder for us to get together to finish writing the script.”

That window came in 2012, while both Waititi and Clement were working in the United States. Clement had enough down time while acting in Men in Black 3 for the pair to nut out a screenplay. But by then both big and small screens were dripping vampires and Borat had the mockumentary market cornered.

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“In the wake of having one idea you think is original, Hollywood does it 50 times before you manage to do it,” Waititi grumbles. “Hey, what do you mean somebody else has made a movie about pogo sticks”

The duo carried on regardless, and Waititi now thinks the timing might be perfect, as serious vampires have been truly done to death, so a piss-take just might work.

Shadows follows the everyday lives of 379-year-old Viago (Waititi), 862-year-old Vladislav (Clement), 183-year-old Deacon (Jonny Brugh) and 8000-year-old Petyr (Ben Fransham). They case Wellington streets for potential victims and discuss housework rosters and the need to put towels and newspapers down before blood-sucking.

Then there’s the scene where the vampires parade their potential nightclub outfits, including an abominable red one-piece ski suit. “That was ridiculous,” Waititi laughs. “It’s basically what actors do when they go to the Costume Cave – put on stupid clothes and go ‘looook’.”

Shadows was shot in a mix of Wellington flats, a Miramar set and a villa that used to house Sir Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films. Inner-city Wellington also plays a starring role.

Unlike Boy, which was partly shot in Waititi’s boyhood home and drew on his personal experience, Waititi’s clean-freak vampire is definitely not autobiographical.

“I’ve never been a guy who was anal about housework. A typical Wellington flat when I was flatting was a warehouse with basically sheets hung up for walls.”

Despite the seven years it took Waititi and Clement to devise the 150-page script, they never showed it to the cast. The actors were fed lines critical to the plot, but otherwise the film is about 95 per cent improvised.

It’s interesting that Waititi says the toughest thing about being a vampire would be having no reflection, given that as an actor-director he has to shape his performance without seeing it.

At least this time he had a wingman to make suggestions. This was his first time sharing the directing role with Clement. So how did it go

“We were helping each other, directing each other. The pro is you’ve got two minds working on something, you get twice as much good stuff. The con is getting twice as much stuff.”

Shooting two versions of the same scene seemed like a good idea, until it came to editing the 125 hours of footage. That took a year – three times as long as normal. “That was actually really crazy. I would not do that again.”

Waititi and Clement had to work month-about to retain their sanity.

Waititi’s wife, Chelsea Winstanley, who also helped produce Shadows, mostly stayed away. “She’s smart enough to know not to spend too much time at places like Park Road Post or an edit suite, where you go crazy, because there’s no light.”

Clement and Waititi must have one of New Zealand’s longest-standing creative partnerships. The pair met in 1995 at the Victoria University capping revue, and have performed together in comedy troupes So You’re a Man and The Humourbeasts. Waititi directed Clement in Eagle vs Shark and they’re now working together on a television show.

Waititi says the relationship hasn’t changed much in 19 years. The press notes for the film’s appearance at the Sundance Film Festival in January say Clement considers Waititi a mentor and father figure. Given the papers also describe Winstanley as having “aligned herself with some of the hottest new directors emerging from New Zealand”, I’m picking Waititi wrote the notes

He giggles guiltily. The funniest thing, he admits, is that he continued the joke at a Sundance interview that Clement slept in for, telling the reporter he was like an older brother to Clement “because he’s always needed someone to look after him”.

“I thought the guy would get that I was dicking around. Then, apparently, at South by Southwest [film festival], the same guy interviewed Jemaine. He told me about it later – this weird guy interviewed me and he kept saying, ‘so, I’ve heard you really look up to Taika and he’s a real mentor to you’.”

What has changed is how the pair collaborate. Before Clement became uber famous, the pair would meet in Wellington cafes.

“We would just hang out and do some people watching and just come up with ideas. Now I don’t think it’s a very comfortable experience for Jemaine to go into town. So, often, it’s either his house or on the phone or maybe at my place, or in another city.”

As we enter Arthur’s on Cuba St, the young woman behind the counter asks, without looking up, “Mister, could you shut the door”. “Oh, it’s you,” she exclaims, as she clocks Waititi, even under his beanie. “Without being all ‘famous guy’, I really loved Boy,” she says shyly. Later, when she pops in to say “bye”, she asks his name.

Waititi says he’s lucky he can be relatively anonymous, even in Wellington. He lacks Clement’s kooky look, his mop of

hair is less distinctive now it’s short and his face is less instantly recognisable as it’s more often behind the camera. He looks like the open, amiable ordinary guy he projects in interviews.

Which brings us to the question of whether Kiwi superstars such as Lorde should stay in New Zealand or ship out to be smaller fishes in bigger seas.

Based on his experience, Waititi reckons she should split her time between New Zealand and the United States, to limit exposure to PR flunkies talking at you.

“Not many 16-year-olds who get famous actually write their own material and have got something to say. She’s our Kate Bush. It may well be that we live in an age where it’s no longer build your way up, climb the ladder. It’s like take an elevator to the top floor.”

But in some ways, he feels he was at his most creative in his early days sharing a studio with Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie and playwright Jo Randerson in a lively, grungy Wellington that has been gentrified out of existence.

“It’s so weird, it’s so not Wellington. The best thing about the old Wellington was artists had a place. There were old warehouses. I guess every city wants to rebuild and artists take advantage of that small period where there are cheap spaces nobody wants.”

In a 2005 interview, Waititi called America an alien place and said he could never live there. But he spent most of two years living in Los Angeles, acting in Green Lantern and directing and producing television show The Inbetweeners. So what changed

Nothing, he says – he still thinks the people are crazy. But it’s fun for a while, so long as the madness doesn’t rub off. And he would live there again, perhaps to write a couple of episodes of Lisa Kudrow’s axed television show, The Comeback, which is, obviously, making a comeback. But he’d always return home.

“I love living in New Zealand. My daughter goes to kohanga now and she’s super into it and that’s something that’s important to us. I’ve seen teenagers in America and I don’t want her to become one of them.”

Shadows has already featured at the prestigious Sundance and Berlinale film festivals, to mostly rave reviews. While most film-makers struggle to get one film into Sundance, it was Waititi’s sixth appearance. (He’s been eight times, having also helped out with the indigenous development labs.)

The novelty has worn off for Waititi, but this year was different, as he experienced the festival through the eyes of his first-timer cast. While it was fun to kit struggling actors out with jackets and jeans, in the “gifting lounges” the commercial element makes you feel pretty cheap, Waititi says.

At Berlinale he swapped celeb parties for pushing TK through the Berlin snow, as the whole family came along.

While most reviews so far have been positive, Variety slammed Shadows as “anemic”, “silly” and “not remotely weird or witty enough for cult immortality”. You can feel Waititi’s breath catch at the mention.

“Variety just don’t like my films.”

That’s not strictly true – in 2007 the magazine named him one of their 10 directors to watch. But the reviews have hurt – Boy was a “let-down second feature”, scrubbed of all culturally specific traits; Eagle vs Shark was a comedy “whose out-of-itness is clearly meant to be funnier than it is”.

True, says Waititi, it might have been unwise to jokingly ask an earnest Variety reporter in a live interview why the magazine hated his movies, before they’d reviewed Shadows.

Still, he’s hoping Shadows will get a wide release, as it bridges horror and comedy.

Times are tough for film-makers, even when you’re as successful – and with a portfolio as diverse – as Waititi. “It’s just harder and harder these days to get your film out there. When Whale Rider was around, everyone had money. People were going to Sundance and buying films for $10m – films that were made for $500,000. Those days are so dead. People’s films just don’t sell at Sundance, unless there’s a superstar in them.”

Times are so tight that the company hired to distribute New Zealand box office hit Boy in the United States launched a Kickstarter fund to raise $90,000 for distribution costs.

The last thing people with no money want to see is a movie about people with no money, Waititi reasons. “You want to be transported to outer space with Will Smith or Tom Cruise, for 3 hours, in 3-D. And fair enough.”

While it was good to release Boy in America, the Kickstarter project was “a massive hassle” for Waititi, who had to provide rewards, including 20 hand-painted Crazy Horse helmets.

He’s not struggling, but he has had to compromise, by making commercials, including the acclaimed anti-drug-driving ad Blazed.

“I’m very much a realist now. You can have integrity with your art, but worrying about integrity doesn’t pay the bills.”

To succeed as a film-maker now, you have to own your film from beginning to end, instead of just being a director and giving away content and control, Waititi says. With Shadows, he’s producing and self-distributing for the first time.

“It gives you more chance of making a profit. If you make a beer, are you going to sell it independently or give it to Lion Nathan and lose half your money It’s more work, but in the long run hopefully it’s better.” (For the record, Waititi is drinking Tuatara, which is appropriate as the Wellington brewery is making a special beer for Shadows.)

If all else fails, Waititi figures he can fall back on art (many of the quirky illustrations in Shadows are his) or wedding videos. Or he quite fancies opening a bar.

The fickleness of the business is also the reason he always has multiple projects on the go (see sidebar).

Take The Last Family in England, which Waititi is writing and directing for Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B. After four years they’re only now at casting stage.

“You have to be involved with lots of things as a film-maker, to make sure there’s always something to fall back on. If you have just one idea, you could be waiting for 10 years before you make it. That’s just the shitty reality of film-making.”

Still, Waititi has no plans to bow out.

“When I made [Oscar-nominated short film] Two Cars, One Night I just wanted to make a short film, then I thought I’d just go back to painting. As things went on I thought storytelling is actually a really cool thing to do.

“I don’t feel like I owe it to anyone just to do it because I have an opportunity lots of people would like to have. I have always said that as soon as it feels like a job, I should give it a break. But right now it still feels pretty fresh.”

What We Do In The Shadows opens in cinemas on June 19.

FAVOURITE FILMS

While Shadows is light fun, most of Waititi’s movies balance comedy and poignancy. As he puts it: “I like to lure people in with the promise of a good time, then depress them with real life, then make them laugh, then have some credits.”

That’s reflected in the films he loves – Russian, Japanese and Korean cinema, 70s American movies. Films with heart. “When I became a film-maker, all my favourite films, they weren’t comedies.

I appreciated film for being able to deliver messages and something deeper than just a broad comedy.” The Graduate is a favourite, and he started out loving Wong Kar-wai films. “They are really mad films, but also very beautiful and emotional.”