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Brian Watson's Daily Top 5 Picks: Friday

1. I’m a sucker for awards shows but the Billboard Music Awards show, live on Channel [V] on Monday, wasn’t the best I’ve seen this year. Host Tracy Morgan has a truly grating personality, Bieber got booed, with some justification, Madonna’s endless thank-you speech should have got booed, and Miguel accidentally kicked a fan in the neck while performing his hit “Adorn”. Aside from that mishap, it was better than the version he did with Wiz Khalifa at the Grammy Awards, and anyway I’m happy to hear him sing that song any time. Bruno Mars’ energetic opening act put a smile on my face, and it was a pleasant surprise to see Kacey Musgrave for the first time – her album Same Trailer Different Park gets a lot of play on my iPod. Ed Sheeran’s no-frills version of “Lego House” with just his voice and guitar was mesmerising. And I couldn’t fault the show’s classy climax, Prince giving us our money’s worth with a rocking performance backed by his hot three-girl band.

2. Switched at Birth was a very pleasing addition to the FOX8 Monday night lineup this week. Two high school girls discover they were victims of a hospital mixup and ended up in the wrong families. Bay has rich parents while Daphne lives with her half-Puerto Rican single mum in a poor suburb. To complicate matters, Daphne has a hearing impairment and attends a school for the deaf – although some of the students speak, some scenes are performed entirely in subtitled ASL. It’s shaping up as an interesting soap opera with 30 episodes in this first Australian season while it’s halfway through a second season in the US.

3. Season finale #1: The Vampire Diaries season 4 finale had so much action it left most season finales for dead. It was graduation time for all the high school seniors, i.e. most of the cast, and all was going well until we realised the evil dead had infiltrated the crowd. Enter Klaus (charismatic British actor Joseph Morgan), returning temporarily from his New Orleans series spinoff The Immortals, who tossed a mortarboard and promptly beheaded their leader. On the plus side, Jeremy returned from the dead, it looks like Matt has “action” for the summer, and maybe Tyler will be back next year. Not so good news: Bonnie died, the evil Katherine was inadvertently cured of vampirism and became human again, and Stefan became the victim of the nastiest cliffhanger ever.

4. Season finale #2: The Good Wife season 4 finale takes place on election day and Alicia’s son Zack believes he witnessed vote tampering by one of the candidates. Courtroom drama ensues and eventually everyone but Alicia realises her husband was doing the tampering. The episode ends with a neat twist: she decides to join Cary’s breakaway firm and leave Lockhart Gardner. I’m happy with this if it’s to avoid awkward workplace scenes with the love of her life Will Gardner, but I hope it doesn’t mean we see less of Kalinda.

5. In The Call, Oscar-winner Halle Berry plays a 911 operator who takes a call from a kidnapped teenager (Abigail Breslin) who’s locked in the boot of her kidnapper’s car. It shapes up as a very exciting action thriller with convincing plot twists, right up until the last 15 minutes when it goes off the rails. The last scene left me with a bad taste in my mouth but for most of the way it’s a pretty satisfying genre movie.

Hansika Bhagani's Daily Top 5 Picks: Thursday

1. Gelato manufacturer Messina has created a True Blood dessert which combines burnt caramel and pear gelato, with a bitter dark chocolate. The Darlinghurst eatery has started selling the human heart-shaped dish this week, which is injected with plum syrup (the blood) on top of the holey heart. True Blood's fifth season has just been released on DVD this week too, a perfect chance to pig out in front of the TV.

2. Coca Cola has released the heart-warming results of an innovative project in which vending machines were used as portals to connect citizens from the divided nations of India and Pakistan over three days in March. Find the video ad here.

3. The success of Eurovision last weekend had us clamouring for host Julia Zemiro back on our screens, and this weekend we'll be tuning in to RocKwiz's eleventh season on SBS. Tune in on Saturday 25th May from 8.30pm. RocKwiz hasn't had much competition of late, but the return of Spicks and Specks later this year with new hosts means a win for music enthusiasts around Australia.

4. Vogue Australia has released a one off issue of Vogue Brides. The magazine featuring a selection of beautiful real weddings – both local and international (including Candice Lake, Jacquetta Wheeler, Vanessa Traina and local model Annika Kaban), main fashion (including a personally narrated 10-page feature with soon-to-be-wed Dan Single and Bambi Northwood-Blyth) and market pages displaying everything from dream gowns and bridal hair and beauty trends to honeymoon destinations and stationery suppliers. Vogue Brides has been edited by the Vogue Australia team and network of regular contributors.

5. The Sydney Writer's Festival's isn't over with plenty of talks and panels still on the calendar till Friday. Tonight 702's Dominic Knight hosts his radio show from the Sydney Dance Lounge in Walsh Bay. It's a good chance to catch up with international authors and local speakers.

Lauren Barripp's Daily Top 5 Picks: Wednesday

1. 2 days to go until the annual Vivid Sydney festival of Light, Music and Ideas begins. The festival is held from the 24th May till the 10th June and displays an array of immersive light installations and projections on Sydney’s top landmarks, live musical performances at the Opera House and the Vivid Ideas Exchange which features public talks and debates from leading global creative thinkers.

2. Aussie artist Gotye took out 4 major awards from his hit ‘Somebody that I Used to Know’ at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, held last weekend in Las Vegas. Taylor Swift took out 8 awards, whilst R&B star Rihanna took out another 4 awards. The broadcast featured several daring outfits on the red carpet, followed by performances from Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Pittbull, and Ed Sheeran inside the MGM arena.

3. US network CBS have postponed airing the season finale of the sitcom ‘Mike and Molly’ in the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado’s due to the fact that the plot revolves around a tornado which threatens the couple. The show, which stars Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell, is a comedy about a couple who fall in love after meeting at an overeaters support group. The season finale will be broadcast at an appropriate date.

4. After just one survey of unfavourable results, 2Day FM have reclaimed their title as the number one FM radio station in Sydney. Previous number one station WSFM dropped 1.5 points to post a 7.0% market share, where 2Dayfm posted a 0.1-point increase to gain an 8.5% market share. The general manager of Austereo Sydney, Jeremy Simpson, says that "The station has a solid history of ratings wins and huge audiences, driven largely by the ever successful Kyle & Jackie O"

5. Season 4 of Offspring premieres tonight on Channel Ten at 8.30pm. Starring TV’s golden girl, Asher Keddie, the show picks up from the end of last season where Nina (Keddie) and Patrick (Matt Le Nevez) announced they was expecting a baby. In conjunction with the new season, Channel Ten have launched its very own iPhone app; The Offspring: Moving In App.  The free app allows fans to view exclusive scenes and insight into the characters. 

Neil McMahon's Daily Top 5 Picks: Monday

1. The glitz! The glamour! The grandiose hair! The glorious, happy,  horror of it all. It could only be The Eurovision Song Contest, now well-established as one of SBS's biggest audience pullers of every year. As hosts, Julie Zemiro and Sam Pang have made the schlocky show their own, guiding Aussie audiences through proceedings with a nudge, a wink, lots of wit and an essential affection for this most curious of pop culture baubles. Last night's final, with Denmark crowned winner, was watched by around 600,000 in the capitals, and was again a hit on Twitter - perhaps because few other events so effortlessly lend themselves to communal viewing and extreme levels of social media snark.

2. Still with Eurovision: what perfect timing it was that the final was being held in ABBALand - aka Sweden- just as one of the band's alumni was showing the kind of superstar chart power that was the foursome's routine achievement in the 1970s. Agnetha's Faltskog's comeback album A soars into the ARIA album chart at No. 3 this week - off the back of a savvy global PR campaign that included an intimate profile on Seven's Sunday Night a fortnight ago. As an ABBA aficionado  of some years standing, I can report that Faltskog's solo smash warrants the attention. It's a reminder that those ABBA girls could turn their vocal talents to anything - from ballads to disco, and all in a foreign language. In the ABBA tradition, the album does have a couple of duds - but overall, one of pop music's greatest voices delivers the goods. As ABBA's Aussie handmaiden Molly Meldrum used to say: do yourselves a favour.

3. Agnetha's perky chart debut saw it pip the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby by one spot on the ARIA ledger, but there's another 10 days to go to see what local moviegoers rather than music-buyers think of their compatriot's controversial re-imagining of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic. Whatever the merits of the film, you have to dip your lid to the Bazmachine - watching the man make and flog his movies has become a compulsive entertainment all on its own. Reviews of Lurhmann flicks are especially entertaining, given Baz's inclination to send some critics into paroxysms of delight, and many others to emerge from the cinema feeling as if they'd been locked inside a pinball machine for a couple of hours. This movie has had it's share of clunking notices, but Baz surely won't care much given the big business it's doing at the US box office.

4. The revolution continues: Melbourne's Herald Sun got some welcome News Limited company in its year-old canary-down-the-coalmine role of testing reader willingness to venture beyond a paywall. Sydney's Daily Telegraph is there now, too, with The Courier Mail (Brisbane) and The Advertiser (Adelaide) to follow soon. But the rules have changed: News has gone the metered route, meaning you get a certain number of stories for nix, before being asked to pony up a subscription fee. To coincide with the new paywall launch both papers were given an online overhaul as well last week. Will it work? Find out what Herald Sun editor Damon Johnston has to say on his paper's prospects in my interview with him, in the next issue of Mediaweek.

5. Media moments don't come much bigger - or more weighted with TV industry history - than the retirement of American broadcast queen Barbara Walters, who at 83 has announced she is going at last. She will be missed - by everyone from female colleagues who hail her as the woman who led the way, to comedians who've made hay with her style of interviewing and her speech impediment (The late Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa" skits on Saturday Night Live cemented Walters place in the culture, even if Walters herself didn't much like them at first.) I highly recommend Walters 2008 memoir, Audition. And for your classic Walters interview moments, try these two. Here is one she never lived down, asking of Katharine Hepburn: "What kind of a tree are you, if you think you're a tree?" And I've always had a soft spot for Walters' encounter with presidential paramour Monica Lewinsky - "A lot of people don't know what phone sex is."

Brian Watson's Daily Top 5 Picks: Friday

1. The Place Beyond The Pines stars Ryan Gosling as a stunt motorcyclist who turns to robbing banks to pay support for his illegitimate son and Bradley Cooper as the cop who becomes his deadly adversary. Fifteen years later their sons wind up at the same high school and the movie shapes up as an epic drama. Full marks to the teen actors Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen but especially to Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne as their mothers.

2. Remember Bon Iver, the indie group whose eponymous second album enjoyed worldwide success two years ago and won two Grammy Awards? Many of their fans still prefer their first album, For Emma, Forever Ago (2008), which included their original version of “Skinny Love”. Imagine my surprise to find one of its tracks, “The Wolves (Act I and II)”, plays right through the end credits of The Place Beyond The Pines. The music supervisor certainly had good taste.

3. Another surprise this week was the name of Bart the Bear in the end credits of this week’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”. Bart, an Alaskan Kodiak bear, appeared in many movies and TV shows before he died in 2000. This week’s Bart is another Alaskan Kodiak, born in 2000, raised by the same trainers, with a similarly long Hollywood career. If you haven’t already seen it, be prepared for his terrifying appearance in this week’s episode.

4. I’m excited about an ad on TEN for their upcoming show The Americans. A dozen or so episodes have been shown on the US FX network and the premise is intriguing. Keri Russell from Felicity and Matthew Rhys, who played the gay brother in Brothers & Sisters, are highly trained Russian KGB agents posing as a American couple in suburban Washington DC in the early 80s. Also in the cast are Richard Thomas, who won an Emmy as John-Boy in The Waltons, and Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy as the villain in season two of Justified. Critics say it’s a gripping spy thriller.

5. The Music Is You is a newly released tribute to John Denver. Artists including Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Amos Lee, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dave Matthews perform his songs and the most successful tracks tend to be the biggest hits – some of the others are pretty forgettable. My favourite is “Leaving on a Jet Plane” with My Morning Jacket breathing fresh life into Peter, Paul and Mary’s hit.

Entries in Julie McGauran (1)

Wednesday
May162012

Seven commissions series six of Packed to the Rafters

DateMay 16, 2012

Seven has announced Australia’s number one rating drama series Packed to the Rafters will return for a new season in 2013, with production of series six to begin later this year.
Rebecca Gibney and Erik Thomson, much loved as Julie and Dave Rafter, will find their lives ‘packed’ again, with returning family members and new faces.
Angus McLaren, Hugh Sheridan, Michael Caton, George Houvardas, Hannah Marshall, Zoe Cramond, Brooke Satchwell, Ryan Corr, Merridy Eastman and James Stewart are all set to return for 2013, with further cast announcements to follow.

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