Category: Entertainment

The Block is back for more stunning home renovations and for the first time ever we are in the country for a tree change.

Five new teams arrive for what really is the biggest block ever and they’re thrown straight into the deep end with a 48-hour House Decider challenge.

Stream the latest episodes of The Block for free on 9Now.

the reality of the block hits hard and fast as the teams battle reno fails and misunderstandings to try to deliver a bedroom good enough to get them first choice of the houses.

And one team’s confusion over some well-intended design advice results in a unique room feature that leaves them fearing they won’t secure their favorite house.

READMORE: Meet the contestants taking on the Tree Change challenge of The Block 2022

Before we get to that we’re reunited with host Scott Cam who is also renovating a house this year.

He’s arrived three months early to get a few rooms ready. The façade, veranda and front lawn are also beautifully landscaped providing the perfect setting to meet the new contestants.

First to arrive on the Gisborne building site are block fans Tom and Sarah-Jane from Victoria.

When they get to Scotty’s front lawn there is no one to be seen, but soon enough another team arrives and it’s sunshiny Queensland couple Dylan and Jenny.

Next up its former AFL player Joel and influencer Elle from Sydney who are instantly recognized by Tom and Sarah-Jane as famous faces.

Then Victoria’s Ankur and Sharon drive up and they’re already vowing not to “break up as a result of The Block“, which is always a good sign.

Last but certainly not least are happy-go-lucky best friends Omar and Oz, who hail from Sydney.

Now everyone’s here Scotty – along with his kelpie Frankie – makes his entrance and explains the 48-hour House Decider challenge to the teams.

“So now what we want to see is what you guys can do over the next 12 weeks with 10 acres. It’s never been done before in block history. The question I’ve got for you guys is simple, have you got what it takes? Why don’t we find out right now?” Scotty asks the contestants.

He tells them there are five homesteads on the property, each a different size and shape with their own unique views of the Macedon Ranges.

To get first pick of the house they’ll be renewing this season they’ll compete in a House Decider challenge. This requires them to makeover a bedroom in 48 hours with a budget of only $5,000 and the help of tradies from hipages.

Scotty allocates them a house for the challenge based on the order they arrived in and the teams run to the properties to get started.

After some debate over which room they’re going to do their bedroom in, Tom and Sarah-Jane settle on a space and get to work. They’re going for a modern farmhouse look with green and white walls.

And then we’re treated to our first reno fail of The Block 2022.

Once the walls have been plastered, Tom tries to save some time by priming the wall during the night. The only problem is, the plaster hasn’t been sanded yet.

“I don’t have to be neat now, just slap it on, that all gets sanded off tomorrow anyway,” he says not realizing his mistake.

The next morning the plasterer returns for sanding and giggles as he greets Sarah-Jane.

“They’re like what’ve you done to the walls? You don’t put primer on until the gyprock has been sanded,” Sarah-Jane recalls.

“I’m not aware it’s like paint,” Tom explains.

That means Tom had to hand sand the walls before redoing the first he stayed up all night to apply.

Later things take a turn when Tom struggles to operate a paint spray gun and ends up in an argument with Sarah-Jane. The stress and overwhelming nature of the first two days on The Block gets to Sarah-Jane as she tears up.

Elsewhere Omar and Oz have hit the ground running after a slow start and are planning a bedroom with a neutral palette, storage and an occasional chair.

Dylan and Jenny are progressing well with their bedroom which has “country vibes” and “Mediterranean farm style texture, nude colors and stuff like that, like luxury”.

As for Joel and Elle, they’re looking far from the country for their bedroom inspiration and doing a coastal cool style. They’ve also decided to forego carpet and pay $750 for timber flooring, even though they’ve got a tight budget and a short deadline.

Scotty pays them a visit and though he claims he likes the features in the room tells them “it’s a room to lose”.

Over in House 4, Ankur and Sharon are having a reindeer fail of their own. Sharon is keen for a reclaimed timber feature wall in the bedroom but Scotty is concerned it might look like a “man cave”.

“I don’t think it should be really rustic, it can be timber – beautiful. I don’t know about the rough rusticity [wood]. You do that in a man cave by the pizza oven, but not in the bedroom,” he advises.

READMORE: Why The Block host Scott Cam thinks his dog Frankie will be the star of the 2022 season

Despite Scotty’s advice Sharon heads off to a farm in search of timber off-cuts and reveals a hidden talent for driving a forklift. It seems she’s misinterpreted his comments on her and thought he meant she shouldn’t do a whole wall with rustic timber, so she’s gone and done half a feature wall instead.

“Ta-daaaaa – I listened to you,” Sharon proudly tells Scotty.

“No you didn’t, you’ve done completely the opposite of what I said,” he laughs.

But that’s not the only problem, the timber beams on the ceiling are 30mm short. Scotty recommends fixing it because if they leave it like that the judges will notice and they definitely won’t win the challenge.

And that’s a worry for the couple who have their hearts set on House 4, especially because that’s the house everyone wants.

“It’s a got a big deck that wraps around for that east side, so you get the sunrise in the morning,” Dylan says about House 4’s features.

Joel and Elle love it because the back of the house has direct views of Mount Macedon.

And Sarah-Jane is also a fan of House 4, so winning the House Decider challenge has never been more important.

To find out who gets first pick of the houses, we’ll have to wait until the rooms are judged in Episode 2. But that’s not only thing rocking The Block with one couple set to walk-off the show completely for the first time in history.

In Pictures

Scotty’s house renovation so far

Sneak peek at the first three rooms.

ViewGallery

The Block airs Sunday at 7.00pm and Monday to Wednesday at 7.30pm on Nine. Catch up on all the latest episodes on 9Now.

A former friend left out of pocket by the Duke and Duchess of York says she is “outraged” over Sarah Ferguson’s purchase of a multi-million London mansion because she thought the duchess “didn’t have a penny.”

Isabelle de Rouvre sold her Swiss ski chalet to the Yorks in 2014 but accepted lower payment believing the couple were short of cash and because of Prince Andrew’s sex abuse case.

Prince Andrew and Fergie bought de Rouvre’s chalet in Verbier for about £18 million ($31 million).

READMORE: The Queen Mother’s most spectacular jewels and who wears them now

They asked to buy the seven-bed chalet, which featured an indoor swimming pool, sauna and bar, after renting it regularly for holidays.

They took out a mortgage of £13.25 million ($22 million) and agreed to pay the remaining £5 million ($7 million) in cash facilities to de Rouvre, with interest accruing.

When the couple failed to pay the outstanding amounts, she took them to court in what became a long-running dispute.

Now, the French socialite has told The Sunday Times she was owed about £6.8 million ($12 million), which included interest, but agreed to a lower payment of about £3.4 million ($6 million), partly because she was under the impression that the Yorks were short of money.

De Rouvre said she also chose not to pursue the full payment because of the legal case brought by Virginia Guiffre against Prince Andrew, alleging that he had sex with her when she was 17, which he denies.

She said she “settled for about half the amount” she was owed by the Yorks.

“I understood they didn’t have the money and believed he would be going to prison in America so I thought it best to get what I could,” she told the publication.

Her agreement freed up the Yorks to complete the sale of the chalet. She said of the situation in January: “The war is finished.”

Prince Andrew is believed to have borrowed money from members of the royal family to pay Giuffre an estimated £10 million ($20 million) because of the delay in getting funds from the sale of the chalet.

Last week it emerged the Duchess of York had bought a £5 million ($8.7 million) Mayfair home, believed to be an investment opportunity for her daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

“I am outraged that I am now told she has spent millions on another property,” de Rouvre told the Times.

“It is just incredible and the whole story unbelievable.

“It is a dirty story as far as I am concerned. I thought she didn’t have a penny.”

The address is in the Grosvenor Estate and was owned by the Duke of Westminster, who is a close friend of the royal family and godfather to the future King, prince george, according to The Sun.

Fergie and Prince Andrew, both 62, still live together at the Royal Lodge in Windsor – when she is based in the UK – which is owned by the Queen and on a long-term lease to Andrew.

In 2010 the duchess said she was “continually on the verge of financial bankruptcy”.

And during her decade-long marriage to Prince Andrew there were reports she had debts of up £4.2 million ($7 million) in debt during her ten-year marriage.

Recently, Fergie secured a 22-book deal with an Australian publisher as a children’s author.

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Might we be missing some of Hamlet’s advice to the players? Did Shakespeare’s words of wisdom get lost over the years? Perhaps, for example, there was a bit that went: “Whatever you do, don’t try this narrative ballet – even when you’ve got a knight of the realm in the cast.”

Such a tip would have spared us this eccentric staging by director and choreographer Peter Schaufuss, whose Edinburgh Festival Ballet has taken residence in a freshly kitted-out St Stephens. His big draw of him, of course, is Sir Ian McKellen, who first played Hamlet at the Edinburgh King’s in 1971.

Now at 83, he is a little on the old side for the student prince, despite his recent starring role in an age-blind production at the Theater Royal, Windsor. He would make an even less likely classical dancer. Instead, he gamely turns up to deliver a greatest-hits mix of Hamlet’s speeches, while dancer Johan Christensen, in matching costume, mimes his way through a 75-minute version of the tragedy.

McKellen, as you would expect, gives the part the full orotund treatment, his echoing voice carrying the weight of morose old age, rather than impetuous youth, while a floppy-haired Christensen writhes about the big thrust stage. Good on him for continuing to treat the fringe as a place for experiment, but this is boil-in-the-bag Shakespeare with all the nutrients sucked out.

Aside from McKellen’s speeches, the rest, as we should have predicted, is silence. The large Schaufuss company does the whole thing in mime, every emotion signaled, every gesture underscored. You get the high-contrast plot points, but none of the textual subtlety and no sense of why such a pantomimic version should be told.

Entirely lacking in wit (and I include a bouncing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in that), it has an aesthetic straight out of the 1950s – all doublet and hose, brooding poses and bombastic score. The chorus trots around with folderol enthusiasm while the solos, with their flowing arms, high kicks and billowing skirts, could have been lifted from a Kate Bush video. The closing fight is refreshingly dynamic, but it comes too late to offset the enterprise’s crassness.

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Jayne on Mark

What were you hoping for?
To have an experience outside my comfort zone, which it was.

First impressions?
He was smiling and easygoing.

What did you talk about?
There are conversions. Parenting. Veganism v plant-based diets.

Any awkward moments?
The conversation showed signs of drying up occasionally, so I leapt in a bit too enthusiastically to save us from the void.

Good table manners?
Yes – we shared food, which I thought was very pleasant.

Best thing about Mark?
He let me have a cube of his tofu.

Would you introduce Mark to your friends?
No I wouldn’t. He seems quite reserved so I think it would be difficult.

Describe Mark in three words.
A chip lover.

What do you think Mark made of you?
Maybe he thought I was too chatty, just not his type.

Did you go somewhere?
To the tube station.

And…did you kiss?
Nope.

If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be?
To have eaten something that day so the cocktail didn’t hit me so hard!

Marks out of 10?
7.

Would you meet again?
Definitely not – no offense, Mark. He’s a nice guy but we were not a match.

Q&A

Want to be in Blind date?

Show

Blind date is Saturday’s dating column: every week, two strangers are paired up for dinner and drinks, and then spill the beans to us, answering a set of questions. This runs, with a photograph we take of each dater before the date, in Saturday magazine (in the UK) and online at theguardian.com every Saturday. It’s been running since 2009 – you can read all about how we put it together here.

What questions will I be asked?
We ask about age, location, occupation, hobbies, interests and the type of person you are looking to meet. If you do not think these questions cover everything you would like to know, tell us what’s on your mind.

Can I choose who I match with?
No, it’s a blind date! But we do ask you a bit about your interests, preferences, etc – the more you tell us, the better the match is likely to be.

Can I pick the photograph?
No, but don’t worry: we’ll choose the nicest ones.

What personal details will appear?
Your first name, job and age.

How should I answer?
Honestly but respectfully. Be mindful of how it will read to your date, and that Blind date reaches a large audience, in print and online.

Will I see the other person’s answers?
No. We may edit yours and theirs for a range of reasons, including length, and we may ask you for more details.

Will you find me The One?
We’ll try! Marriage! Babies!

Can I do it in my hometown?
Only if it’s in the UK. Many of our applicants live in London, but we would love to hear from people living elsewhere.

how to apply
Email [email protected]

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Mark on Jayne

What were you hoping for?
A fun and happy night out with some nice food.

First impressions?
Jayne has lovely blue eyes and is an all-round nice human being. I immediately felt relaxed and at ease.

What did you talk about?
Being on the blind date. The amazing restaurant menu. Familia. Work. Festivals. Holidays.

Any awkward moments?
Nothing springs to mind.

Good table manners?
Perfect.

Best thing about Jayne?
She was welcoming and easy to talk with. I felt comfortable the moment we met.

Would you introduce Jayne to your friends?
Only the nice ones.

Describe Jayne in three words.
Chilled, grounded and upbeat.

What do you think Jayne made of you?
You will have to ask her.

Did you go somewhere?
No, Jayne had a long journey home and was worried about missing her last train.

And…did you kiss?
Nope.

If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be?
Nothing, it was perfect.

Marks out of 10?
10.

Would you meet again?
Sure, as friends – but I suspect the distance between our homes might be a blocker.

Mark and Jayne tie at Holy Carrot, London SW1. Fancy a blind date? Email [email protected]

There was a time when being sent straight to video was about the most ignoble fate a would-be movie blockbuster could suffer: the vision of its makers confined to the dimensions of a television screen, never to be enjoyed by more than a sofa-full of people in one sitting. In the modern age, that fate became less tangible still: demoted to streaming, many good films even now float in a strange digital purgatory, sometimes connecting with sizeable audiences, yet rarely acquiring the tangible cultural currency of a hit in cinemas.

Still, such films-like Preyfor example, a surprisingly good predator prequel that skipped cinemas to premiere last week on Disney Plus – can at least be seen, and widely so, by those inclined. Right about now, the creative team behind Warner Bros’ addled comic-book film batgirl would gladly accept that outcome, after being dealt a far rarer and more egregious humiliation. Last week, it was announced that the near-complete film, having already racked up a budget of $90m, would not be released at all – not even on the Warner-owned streaming service HBO Max.

Also scrapped in the same announcement was the streaming-oriented animated Scooby-Doo prequel Scooby!: Holiday Haunting, though that unsurprisingly generated fewer headlines: in this age of superhero saturation, the industry was immediately abuzz with questions about how Batgirl’s wings could have been so brutally clipped. “Just how bad is it?” people asked, as reports of chilly test-screening reactions were dredged up. trade rag the wrapping reported that Warner’s new management team, led by CEO David Zaslav, felt the film “simply didn’t work”: once conceived for HBO Max, then lined up for theatrical distribution, it was allegedly felt that the Batman spin-off didn’t have the event-movie heft the studio required of its DC Comics properties.

Others suggested the issue wasn’t one of quality but cold hard numbers, which weren’t tracking well enough to justify the expense of marketing and releasing the film at any level: taking a tax write-down on batgirl and Scoob!: Holiday Haunting was, reported Variety, seen as the safest way to recover their costs. “We are incredibly grateful to the film-makers and their respective casts and hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future,” read the studio’s bland statement, though you have to wonder why the talent involved would follow up on that tentative invitation.

Batgirl’s directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah – a flashy Belgian-Moroccan duo who had a 2020 smash with bad boys for Lifeand whose far smaller-scale arthouse provocation Rebel premiered at Cannes in the spring – have been vocal in their blindsided dismay; the film’s Latina star, Leslie Grace, has limited herself to thanking her fans and collaborators. Industry watchdogs, meanwhile, wonder whether the studio’s accounting gambit is worth the ugly optics of junking a superhero film made and headed by people of color. El Arbi, Fallah and Grace can’t even count themselves in especially distinguished or plentiful company: the list of major films produced but never released in any capacity is not a long one.

It is not the first superhero property, however, to be barred from release. In 1993, Hollywood B-movie master Roger Corman helped produce a bargain-basement adaptation of another Marvel comic, Fantastic Four – a world apart from the vast, corporate Marvel machines filling multiplexes today. Made on a budget of $1m with a no-name cast, it was scheduled to premiere in 1994 and even had a trailer go out – before the studio abruptly canceled all plans to screen it publicly and confiscated the negatives. The late Marvel chief Stan Lee fed rumors that a release was never planned, and the film was made solely for the purposes of retaining the rights to the property; Corman has insisted otherwise. Albeit at a very different price point from batgirlit seems the film was also ultimately scuppered in the name of bookkeeping, but bootleg leaks readily available on YouTube indicate that no great art was lost in the process.

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Sometimes, a perfectly seaworthy film is simply sunk by the individuals involved. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, many have had to change course because of toxic talent; some have given up entirely. gore, a Gore Vidal biopic shot in 2017 with Kevin Spacey in the lead, was in post-production when Netflix pulled the plug on the entire project. (Spacey’s role in the expensive Ridley Scott drama All the Money in the Worldon the other hand, was small enough to make a reshoot with a recast Christopher Plummer viable.)

Very occasionally, a film can be scotched even after it’s out in the world: Louis CK’s I Love You, Daddy, a dark comedy hinging on a teenage girl’s seduction by a sixtysomething film-maker, had premiered, to some warm reviews at the 2017 Toronto film festival, when the indie distributor the Orchard dropped it a week before its scheduled cinema release, as sexual misconduct allegations against its director-star emerged. Louis CK bought back the distribution rights. Rose Byrne, one of its stars, stated, “It’ll be a while before the film can be seen, and I think that’s right” – though such sentiments didn’t stop the film popping up on torrent sites.

Here in the UK, the ill-fated hippie hippie shake has become the ultimate cautionary tale for the vagaries of British film financing and production. Intended as a jaunty trip through the radical magazine publishing scene of the swinging 60s, the film was first announced in 1998 by Working Title Films – then in their post-Four Weddings and a Funeral glory days – before cycling through a procession of directors and additional writers; the cameras finally rolled in 2007 under director Beeban Kidron, with Cillian Murphy and Sienna Miller heading the cast. Nearly two years later, Kidron quit during post-production; a scheduled 2010 release date came and went before Working Title announced it would be shelved for ever. Reports vary among the few who have seen it as to how much of a misfire it is. But how the film, which was never going to be a blockbuster, could warrant such veil-drawing treatment remains an industry mystery.

If it’s hard to see on paper how hippie hippie shake could be unreleasable, the same can’t be said for The Day the Clown Cried, for decades regarded with morbid fascination as a kind of white whale of old-guard cinema. The European-produced 1972 Holocaust drama was written and directed by goofball comic Jerry Lewis, who also stars as a German circus clown imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and charged with leading children into the gas chambers. Aghast testimonies from the few who saw a rough cut at the time suggest it was every bit as misguided as it sounds; Lewis himself later admitted to being “embarrassed at [his] poor work”. In a rare case of a film being suspended by its own maker rather than by studio enforcement, it has been kept under lock and key for half a century, though Lewis donated the negative to the Library of Congress in 2015, two years before his death , requesting that it not be shown for at least a decade.

Will we eventually see the wreckage? Films buffs should be careful what they wish for. More often than not, even the most cursed productions eventually find their way to the light, and it is rarely for the best. Directed but disowned by David O Russell, the political satire nailed had a troubled, disrupted shoot that eventually ran aground in 2008, leading to years of financial disputes. In 2014, an independent distributor bought it from its bankrupted studio, cobbled together a final cut and released it as Accidental Love, directed by one “Stephen Greene”; the result was not a film anyone would want their real name attached to.

The glowing exception, meanwhile, is Kenneth Lonergan’s sprawling, knotty, rather magnificent Manhattan morality drama margaret, which sat in legal limbo for six years – with the director and studio Fox Searchlight locked in tortuous disagreement over a lengthy final cut – before it was finally freed in 2011, to critical acclaim that it has only escalated over the years. At present, it seems unlikely that batgirl – or, less likely still, Scoob!: Holiday Haunting – is in line for quite such a redemption. But such fairytales keep hope in a cutthroat industry alive.