Shaggy Dog Story ‘Runt’ to Shoot as Movie in Western Australia

Kaiser Chiefs drummer and songwriter Nick Hodgson has revealed the original inspiration behind the band’s hit song ‘Ruby’.The Leeds group released ‘Ruby’, the lead single from their second album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’, in 2007 which went on to become their first UK Number One.In a new video feature posted by The Other Songs where Hodgson retold the story for a live audience, he recalled playing a verse on the keyboard when someone called Ruby walked in, prompting him to sing the tracks famous hook, “Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby…“.“At the time we didn’t say who Ruby was,” he shared. “But I can tell you now that Ruby was a dog.”Hodgson also elaborated on the meaning behind ‘Ruby’ in a TikTok last year in which he sang a stripped back version of ‘Ruby’ and played the piano.A text box flashed onto the screen, which read, “Ruby was our family dog”, alongside a picture of a black labrador, adding: “When I was writing it Ruby (the dog) walked in and I sang…”He then played the chorus and concluded with the text: “I’m very glad she did.”The song naturally sounds like it is about a woman, opening with vocalist Ricky Wilson singing, “Let it never be said that romance is dead/ ‘Cause there’s so little else occupying my head,” before he asks Ruby in the chorus: “Do ya, do ya, do ya, do ya (ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)/ Know what you’re doing, doing to me?”This is the piano that i started writing Ruby on.

JLS’ Aston Merrygold has gone viral after the singer failed to complete a backflip during one of their live shows.The moment happened on Saturday night (November 11) as the band played the final date of their 2023 reunion tour with a stop in Sheffield.At one point in the show, the singer went to perform a backflip off a ledge on the stage, as the other three members continued singing.

Scots singer Emeli Sande has been forced to call off her wedding just one year after she announced her engagement to pianist Yoana Karemova.

Livingston skipper Mick Devlin insists they all have to pitch in to help get the most out of the club’s strikers.

Ethical cosmetics chain the Body Shop has been bought over by a private equity firm in a multi-million pound deal.

Classic rocker Bob Geldof is the latest high-profile name to pass through what is turning out to be a bustling and A-list edition of Poland’s EnergaCamerimage Film Festival, where he is presenting a screening of his 1982 feature Pink Floyd – The Wall.

FX has renewed Welcome to Wrexham for a third season and is set to premiere in Spring 2024.

EXCLUSIVE: Kevin James announced on Tuesday that his new stand-up special Irregardless — his third in total, and first for Prime Video — will debut on the streamer this winter.

YouTube has issued new guidelines for AI-enhanced videos uploaded to its platform.

Fans of premium beauty brand Liz Earle are rushing to Boots to get their hands a bestselling product that's been slashed to its cheapest price yet. Liz Earle's high-end Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion has been hailed a 'game changer' for anyone who wears makeup, and has been praised for its ability to soothe tired and puffy eyes.

A murderer who killed the son of a former Manchester United star has died in a Lancashire prison.

This Morning viewers were divided as Rylan Clark and Cat Deeley returned to the show for more fun and frolics. The pair have spent the past two days at the helm of the ITV daytime show amid the constantly changing presenting line-up.

Fans were left asking 'why' as Stacey Solomon showed off the latest festive addition to her home. The Loose Women star is using any free time she has in her busy schedule to get her home ready for Christmas.

It’s that time of the year when Manchester city centre transforms into a Christmas wonderland. The Christmas Markets are finally up and running, welcoming hordes of shoppers to buy food, drink and presents from the picture perfect wooden huts.

BBC Radio 2 presenter Vernon Kay will be taking part in an exhausting challenge to help raise cash for Children In Need. Veron started his 115-mile ultamarathon on Tuesday - which he aims to complete by Friday night.

Prince William will visit Manchester on Thursday - making good on a promise he gave to a Moss Side woman he met at Buckingham Palace.

Fans have been left saying the exact same thing as Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright showed off their home Christmas makeover. The couple will be celebrating their second festive season in their mega mansion, but the first with it officially complete.

Applications have opened for dog owners to register their XL bullies before the breed is made illegal, the Government has announced. From today (Tuesday November 14), owners have been advised to 'take necessary steps' should they wish to keep their pets.

Rylan Clark echoed plenty of others as he took a swipe at Jamie Lynn Spears after she was revealed in the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here line-up. The presenter was discussing the news on This Morning on Tuesday (November 14) alongside new co-host Cat Deeley.

Friends actor donated a generous amount of money to his Parkinson’s charity.The actor, who is best known for starring in the Back To The Future franchise films, revealed in a new interview that Perry once gave a hefty sum at a benefit event for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.Fox, who founded the charity in 2000, two years after announcing that he’d already been dealing with the disease for several years, told Entertainment Tonight about the star’s kindness – and how the actor made the donation quietly.“I hope this isn’t indiscreet, but when the [Friends cast] first made their big sale and were made millionaires for the rest of their lives, he wrote a big fat check to the foundation,” Fox said.“We were really early on and trying to find our feet, and it was such a vote of confidence.”“And it wasn’t accompanied by any self-aggrandising or anything,” Fox added.

Boygenius have reflected on the positive LGBTQ+ representation across the 2024 Grammy nominations.The supergroup – comprising Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus – were nominated for six 2024 Grammys awards last week, including Album and Record Of The Year for ‘The Record’ and ‘Not Strong Enough’, respectively.Bridgers also earned a seventh nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for her SZA collaboration ‘Ghost In The Machine’.In a recent interview with Billboard, Boygenius reflected on their nominations and shared their thoughts on the wider LGBTQ+ representation across all the nominees like Victoria Monét, Miley Cyrus and Brandy Clark.A post shared by boygenius (@xboygeniusx)When asked what it means to see that kind of representation in the nominations, Baker replied: “It’s cool, because when you’re saying ‘this class of people,’ or ‘this demographic of folks’ … it’s like, if there’s enough people that fit that category within the organisation, it stops becoming a novelty.”Bridgers added “or even just as much of a commodity”, to which Baker replied: “Exactly, it allows all of those people to be individuated more.”Dacus continued: “It would be so sick if the way all queer people were treated got more normal too. Like, we have a friend that, during Pride Month, said, ‘It’s cool to see the rainbow on this Shell gas station sign.

André 3000 has shared details about his first solo album in 17 years, an 87-minute long album of experimental flute music.Announced today (November 14), the OutKast rapper revealed to fans that the album is not a rap record and even includes a label on the cover warning that the LP contains “no bars”.Titled ‘New Blue Sun’, the album is instead an 87-minute long record of both minimalist and experimental music, which hears André take on a variety of woodwind instruments including contrabass flute, Mayan flutes, bamboo flutes as well as other digital wind instruments. No bars, beats or vocals are included.“I’ve always kind of been analysing it or figuring out how I wanted to approach it… I have to feel happy about sharing it,” André 3000 told NPR about his approach to a new solo album.“That’s why ‘New Blue Sun’ was something that I realised, whoa, I really want people to hear it. I really want to share it.

Bush‘s Gavin Rossdale had reflected on his old feuds with Dave Grohl and Trent Reznor, describing them as “stupid” and mere “bitchy exchanges”.The vocalist and guitarist was speaking to NME in a recent Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! quiz when he reflected on the past beef with his fellow musicians.Rossdale’s feud with the Nirvana drummer/Foo Fighters vocalist and guitarist dated back to the ’90s after Grohl wore an anti-Bush T-shirt and implied that they were a cash-grab band, along with making some barbs in the press.“Yeah, he wore a shirt which put the dollar sign through Bu$h – so we [the band and crew] later put similar dollar signs through our T-shirts. That was the gig I went up to Dave and said, ‘I don’t understand what the problem is.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australia’s Rialto and the U.K’s Vertigo Releasing have joined forces to launch Galaxy Pictures, a new film distribution company in Australia and New Zealand. The company will focus on “broad-appeal, star-driven commercial pictures that cater to consumers attuned to an increasingly digital landscape.” The two companies have already been cooperating for the past three years and handle 120 titles.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Vietnam-based sales agent Skyline Media has closed multi-territory deals for two of its current titles “The Soul Reaper” and “Vietnamese Horror Story.” The deals follow Skyline’s recent trip to Busan’s ACFM and come ahead of its participation as exhibitor at a string of further final quarter sales events – Tokyo’s TIFFCOM, Santa Monica’s American Film Market and Taipei’s Taiwan Creative Content Fest. Folk horror film “The Soul Reaper,” currently in the final stages of post-production, was licensed to GaragePlay for Taiwan and to Westec Media Limited (WML) for Laos, Cambodia and nine other Southeast Asian territories. The film, adapted from Thao Trang’s best-selling horror novel “Lunar New Year in Hell Village” (aka “Tet O Lang Dia Nguc”), is set to be released in Vietnam cinemas on 08 December. GaragePlay is one of Taiwan’s leading distributors, and recently handles releases of “Suzume,” “John Wick: Chapter 4” and “Someday or One Day.” WML is the biggest content distributor in Cambodia and has distributed more than 1,000 titles theatrically since its establishment.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A TIFFCOM seminar on Thursday demonstrated both a sense of incredulity that Japanese animation “Suzume” could have enjoyed such wide international success and conveyed the depth of passionate behind-the-scenes strategizing that made it happen. Since its release in Japan at the end of 2022 and international expansion in spring of 2023, following a Berlin festival competition slot, “Suzume,” a fantasy drama about a girl who helps avert natural disasters, sold more than 47 million tickets worldwide. “And most of those people don’t even speak Japanese,” said the session’s moderator Sudo Tadashi, journalist and professor at the Japan University of Economics. Sunami Kazuki, MD of producer CoMix Wave Films and the Takeda Akihiro, an executive attached to the president’s office at the film’s worldwide distributor Toho, said that “Suzumi’s” success was not a foregone conclusion. Its success was years in the making and based on the growing performance of director Makoto Shinkai’s previous movies as well as growing international understanding of the Japanese anime genre. At the beginning of their collaboration, Shinkai and CoMix had little expectation that Shinkai’s works could appeal to non-Japanese distributors and audiences. But, within Asia at least, fans are tuned in to certain kinds of content from other countries. “We also owe this success to the cumulative impact of Studio Ghibli and ‘Demon Slayer 2’,” said Sunami. Shinkai’s 2013 film “The Garden of Words” was initially a Japan-only theatrical release, but it registered in China after Japanese box office success.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iranian drama film “Empty Nets” was Monday named winner of the AFF Feature Fiction Award at the Adelaide Film Festival. Directed by Behrooz Karamizade, it collected an A$10,000 ($6,320) cash prize.

Studiocanal has boarded the big screen adaptation of Australian author’s Craig Silvey’s award-winning 2002 bestseller Runt, about the friendship between a young girl and a stray dog she takes under her wing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The inaugural edition of the Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival will be held next month (Nov. 23-29) on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Acclaimed film-making duo Kamila Andini and Ifa Isfansyah take a calculatedly side-on approach to Indonesian societal history in “Cigarette Girl,” a new Netflix series that releases on Nov.1 and which premiered its first episodes at the Busan International Film Festival earlier this month. Starting with a wealthy family about to lose its aging patriarch in 2001, the series uses flashbacks to the 1960s to uncover not only the origins of the family’s herbal cigarette or ‘Kretek’ fortune, but also the hidden romance underlying it. And it highlights the overbearing and only slowly changing societal pressures placed on women, from high and low ranks, even as Indonesian politics and government underwent tectonic shifts. Ahead of the Busan premiere Andini and Isfansyah told Variety how their lush and romantic treatment is both a product of changing society and a way of facing up to recent Indonesian history.Watch the new trailer here.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taking a positive look at visual impairment, rather than focusing on it as a disability, “Coyote Ugly” star Adam Garcia joins producer and actor Tsu Shan Chambers in the lead roles of “My Eyes,” a drama film now shooting in Melbourne, Australia. When optometrist Alana discovers her daughter has a rare inherited eye disease, she must look into her past to realize her vision for the future. She discovers that a judo athlete with a visual impairment halfway across the world may hold the answers she seeks.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief VVS Films, a leading Canada-based film distributor, will expand its operations to Australia and New Zealand. A24’s Nicolas Cage-starring comedy “Dream Scenario” is set as its first title for the new markets and will release on Jan. 1, 2024.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dynamic Singaporean producer Jeremy Chua is to receive the FIAPF Award for Outstanding Contribution to Asia Pacific Cinema, at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) on Nov. 3 on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief K-pop concert movie “BTS: Yet to Come” will play exclusively on the Amazon-owned Prime Video platform, launching on Nov. 9.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Causeway Films, the Australian film production house behind recent breakout “Talk to Me,” has opened a U.K. operation. The company has hired Daniel Negret, formerly of Head Gear Films, as its CEO. Causeway Films was established by producers Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings in 2014, launching with Jennifer Kent’s Sundance hit “The Babadook.” It followed that by producing Kent’s follow up feature “The Nightingale,” which won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2019. Innovative horror film, “Talk to Me,” from filmmaking duo Danny and Michael Philippou screened in Sundance, Berlin and SXSW 2023 and was acquired by A24.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Unrecognizable from her co-starring and breakout role in 2018 hit “Burning,” Jeon Jong-seo is the centerpiece, the tortured protagonist and the athletic avenger, but not the titular dancer, in Netflix movie and Busan International Film Festival selection “Ballerina.” In the hands of fast-rising director Lee Chung-hyung, Jeon is a coolly calculating female former bodyguard who, until roused, looks like she is half dazed. The suicide of her best friend, a sweet wannabe ballerina, who had been blackmailed into sex slavery by a nasty gang, however, is enough to set Jeon’s character, Ok-ju, on the path towards “John Wick”-like ultra-violence. While Lee never leaves the audience in much doubt as to where the film is heading – an early scene in a convenience store is cool, shocking and righteous – his “Ballerina” is typically Korean in that it spends most of the first two reels establishing Ok-ju’s moral standing and motivation for the bloodshed that is going to dominate the latter portions. Once justified, Lee pours it all on, with a dose of weapons fetishization, a horde of mostly disposable villains and heaps of neon-lit bloodshed.