Posts from — March 2011

Air NZ new safety video has gone viral because it has Richard Simmons in it. However I like it because The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan makes a few appearances in it, and who knew that he had the moves?

Channel Ten have allegedly dumped former Ferdinand Marco’s daughter from the cast of their reality design show the Renovators.

Well that is why Bondi designer Analisa Hegyesi thinks is the reason she is no longer on the show.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Analisa who is a designer was rung by the production company Shine Australia last Monday to say she was no longer part of the show.

The article states:
The Channel 10 series  starts filming next week, with a team of professionals locked down in an apartment block and taken to various properties to make them over.

Hegyesi told us [Syd Con] she made it to the final cut after months of auditions and interviews – but was dumped after she mentioned who her father was to producers last week.

“The thing is that I’ve had to juggle my business and clients to make time for the show after I was asked to audition and was then chosen from hundreds of people around Australia”

“I was chosen on my own merits but then I was dropped due  to aspects of my private life which I will not discuss.

“I was told there was a fear, too, attention would be paid to me and not the show and other contestants.”

A Shine insider told Confidential that staff thought it was harsh to drop her for “the sins of her father” who ruled Phillipines from 1965 to 1986 before he was deposed in a people’s revolution.

“A lot of people think it’s really unfair,” the source said.

Hegyesi was born in Australia to her mother Evelin, a former Sydney swimwear model.

A Ten spokeswoman claimed Hegyesi’s ejection was routine.

“Casting has not been finalised and we are still speaking to a number of different people,” she said.

I think that is a bit rough, considering anyone under the age of 35 would have no idea about Ferdinand Marcos and what he did.

Now this blog post is just an observation from tonight’s episode, but is Lara and Leigh’s relationship coming under pressure from being in The Biggest Loser House?

After Lara weighed in tonight she went over and hugged Sharlene, but did not touch Leigh. It was the same again after the hill climb and tread mill in the immunity challenge they barely looked at each other.

Maybe they were just having a bad day. It will be interesting to see what happens to them after the show.

In other highlights (or lowlights depending how you see it) – Tiffany looked like she was about to have an exorcism when she was training Meg tonight. Ok so Meg had put on 4 kilos but she had won immunity.

Sarah Moon had her usual meltdown on the treadmill. Seriously why is she not dropping more weight.

And finally Joe who expressionless and monotone to camera said how excited he was to have won immunity.

Good new for Masterchef Australia fans, the third season will be premiering on Sunday the 1st of May. I think we can presume it will be on at 7.30pm on Channel Ten.

It will be going up against the Logies, so it will be interesting to see the ratings.

Now what do we know about Season 3.

1. Donna Hay will have an expanded role as a mentor,

2. Expect to see a lot more of Matt Moran on the show,

3. This year the overseas trip is to Malaysia,

4. There is a food blogger on the show,

5. George Calombaris will mangle english,

6. Matt Preston will ham it up,

7. Gary and George will be much softer on the pretty girls, and

8. 90% of the contestants are hoping to get their own cooking show from their reality TV appearance.

Please feel free to add in what you think will happen this year on the show.

The Masterchef Australia website is also being rehauled.

The blurb says:

- Inspiring recipes to enliven your kitchen, with greater information on food.
- Expert cooking tips to help development your culinary know-how.
- Exclusive online-only videos and photo galleries.
- Promotions and competitions.
- Engagement with fans through both the website and social media.

Additionally, all your favourite sections will be back, bigger, better and more mouth-watering than ever before. Full episodes on Catch-Up TV, web-exclusive interviews, recipes from past seasons and of course the MasterChef Community Forums, where you can engage in dinner conversation with your fellow fanatical foodies.

 

I would love to start a rumour about the luscious Padma Lakshmi and Curtis Stone hooking up, however here they are at the Live At Bravo Upfront 2011 in Los Angeles.

Curtis Stone is the new host of Top Chef Masters which is premiering in the US in April, and Padma is the host of Top Chef.

I cannot believe I am saying this but Curtis looks very nice in this photo. Has he buffed up?

Here is a picture of Skyler Morrison Bergman son of Rachel Zoe and Roger. He is six days old. They all look great.

No news on what the baby weight was. But what we do know is that Rachel will be back to pre-pregnancy weight in 3, 2, 1…..

Source: www.dlisted.com

Well if I ever want to know what is going on in The X Factor I will know to contact host Luke Jacobz as according to Sydney Confidential he was singing like a budgie about the line up for the show on Tuesday night.

The article all but confirms that former So You Think You Can Dance host will be taking over from Natalie Imbruglia on the show as a judge.

The article states:

According to television sources, Imbruglia will not be returning as a judge on the talent show with Bassingthwaighte to take the step up from the Ten Network, where she hosted So You Think You Can Dance.

It’s understood her contract with Seven is a significant improvement on her deal at Ten.

Jacobz also revealed Brit pop legend (and regular Sydney visitor) George Michael had been mentioned as a possible replacement for Sandilands, along with Brian McFadden.

“But [producers] are telling me nothing,” Jacobz said.

As for Ronan Keating, he too is yet to commit.

“I texted Ronan the other day to ask if he was coming back and he just sent a wink ‘smiley face’ reply in a text,” Jacobz said. “So I’m not sure about him yet.”

That leaves Guy Sebastian as the only definite re-signing.

 

Although Seven refused to confirm the talk yesterday, the program’s host Luke Jacobz admitted Bassingthwaighte’s name was among several he had heard regarding new additions to the show, which has also lost judge Kyle Sandilands.

“I’ve definitely heard Nat Bass’s name mentioned,” Jacobz told Confidential on Tuesday night.

“I know a decision has definitely been made because I walked past our producer this morning and said ‘Do you know who it is?’ And he said ‘Yup’ and smiled and walked away.”

I love the line where Luke says “the producers are telling me nothing” no bloody wonder he is gibbering to the media about it the first chance he gets.

With the finale of Farmer Wants A Wife screening on Channel Nine tonight, some of the farmers reveal what it is like to be on a reality show. It is no surprise that they revealed those little love lines are not exactly spontaneous.

The Daily Telegraph reveals some of reality TV’s secrets in this article:

The saccharine-sweet small talk and declarations of love that are the meat and potatoes of The-Bachelor-meets-the-bush program didn’t come as naturally as you’d think, say this season’s country singletons.

“It does feel a bit like acting sometimes,” said 26-year-old Farmer Nick. “I’d have a big genuine chat and they’d go ‘this is great but they’d say we can’t use any of it’ so you’d pull out something corny or something you wouldn’t usually do and we’d be away.”

“You’re running against the time and they’re saying we need this by then and they won’t let you get there and talk about the footy for an hour. They can’t use none of that so that’s when you’d end up saying “you’ve got beautiful eyes” or something stupid.

“You know what they want. They want the corny lines where you say ‘you’re beautiful, you’ve got beautiful eyes’ and all that sort of stuff.

Farmer Mark, a fruit and coffee farmer from tropical North Queensland said producers didn’t want him to give too much away too early.

“There were constant cheesy lines saying your feelings for every girl,” said the 27-year-old. “Even if you didn’t really have feelings for every girl you had to play it up so the viewers thought you were interested in all three girls. At times you just felt like being honest and the producers would be like ‘nah don’t say that’.”

Executive producer Karen Walker claimed they didn’t have to ‘train’ the farmers to open up about their feelings, but rather gave them a “nurturing environment” including sitting them down with a psychologist to discuss the experience beforehand.

“It’s a gently, gently approach,” Walker said. “It’s a lot of sitting down and talking to them, we just had to ask them enough questions to get them to feel comfortable, but I think we create a really safe environment for them to open up and say how they feel. We can’t put words in their mouth, they say what they say and in the end it works, it’s one of the most genuine shows on television.”

“Repeating and repeating and repeating the same scenes especially when its emotional scenes and you’re having to talk about your feelings and love and emotions, and to repeat yourself on the same things by the fifth time the love is gone, the emotion is gone, you’ve lost all enthusiasm, please just get what you want and let’s move on. It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

Farmer Ben says producers had to cajole him into making a decision between two girls when he was faced with indecision.

“I was finding hard to choose so I didn’t want to rush into one, so I held off a bit, they were going ‘come on, can you do something, we want something,’ you could say they coax you into it, give you a bit of a push and a shove to get something happening.”

It should be noted the Farmer’s also said they had a ball on the show.

God I am thick, last night in my blog post I query where Kel and Ash are as they are not spotted on The Ghan, and do I twig at all? NO. Clearly I learnt nothing from all those Nancy Drew books I read in my teen years.

It was Kel and Ash who had to leave as Kel had lost sight in her right eye and they had to leave the competition. Well they wanted to stay but apparently the producers were not comfortable with it. The condition was from a long standing medical issue.

After they had given their farewell speeches and the tears had been shed, I am sure all the viewers were sitting there like I was thinking OK so what is going to happen in the next 45 minutes.

Manu and Pete  revealed all teams would be cooking and the winner will mean they are safe from elimination next week.

By the way how many bullets can Kane and Lee dodge? I was sure they would have been eliminated tonight.

The challenge for tonight was two teams had cook mudcrab for entree, two teams cook barramundi for main, and tropical fruit for dessert.

Kane and Lee cooked salt and pepper crab, and the judges loved it. Daniela and Stefania cooked chilli mud crab, but it was undercooked.

For mains Sammi and Bella cooked barramundi on crushed potatoes and pea soup, which looked delicious. Nick and Ann-Marie cooked macadamia crusted barramundi on a lentil and vegetable salad. Nick spent ages fiddling with the fish fillets, and their dish looked a bit ordinary, but the flavour was there.

The two teams who got dessert had no hope in winning, as they had to cook with tropical fruit. Yes it is nice but it was going to be hard to get a wow factor in 60 minutes. Esther and Ali made a passionfruit syrup cake which looked dry. Bill and Alex’s Zabaglioni was a dud, as it was not cooked enough. There was certainly enough effort put in with Bill putting a litre of sweat into it as he stirred it. The judges could only take one spoonful of it.

The winner unsurprisingly were Sammi and Bella. I thought that was fair. Considering Kane and Lee were meant to be up for elimination tonight it would have been a bit unfair if they were now safe for next week.

Unfortunately I missed The Biggest Loser episode on Sunday night, but by the sounds of it the producers could not have written a better script them selves when Joe wielded the knife on his brother Damien.

After winning a challenge he got an extra kilo loss for when he weighed in, and also an extra one kilo to give away. Instead of giving it to Damien but no he gave it to Rebecca Moon and Damien landed below the yellow line and was eliminated again.

Clearly Christmas in the Challenor household will be tense after that little manoeuvre, unless he wins and splits the cash.

In the TV WEEK Damien hit backs at his brother Joe.

The article states:

Is it hard to get a second chance and still not make it to the end?

Definitely, yeah. It has been a little disappointing – unfortunately the show has brought out the worst in my brother Joe.

How do you feel about Joe now?

He’s still my brother, but as what happens after teh show, I don’t know. I think it’ll take a while for things to get back to normal between us.

Will you be able to forgive him?

I wil be able to forgive, but as far as spending time with him and things like that, I’m not sure whether that’ll happen immediately. Unfortunately, the person who he’s become, or is becoming, I don’t necessarily like.  He’s lost sight of what family is about and of what the whole show is about. He looked beyond what family means and took care of another team. When push comes to shove, I didn’t expect him to do that. It was a shock.

Do you regret taking Joe’s side over nephew Nathaniel’s now?

Yes, I do. In hindsight, I would have made another choice. I thought that I knew what I was getting with Joe, but clearly I didn’t.

What I think was so poor about it was that Damien is one the contestants that really needed to be there. Sure he lost over 65 kgs, but he needs to lose at least another 50. Poor form Joe, and if he wins he will be the most unpopular winner ever.