News

Louisa Mellor Jul 29, 2016

Actor Vivean Gray, fondly remembered as Mrs Mangel in soap Neighbours, has passed away at the age of 92...

Vivean Gray, the British-born actor whose Australian on-screen career stretched from the 1960s to the 1980s has passed away, aged 92.

Gray will be remembered for early recurring roles in Melbourne-set television programmes Homicide and Division 4, her cinematic role in Peter Weir's eerie 1975 film Picnic At Hanging Rock, a stint in soap The Sullivans and Prisoner: Cell Block H  and of course, for playing Nell Mangel in Neighbours.

Gray's time on Neighbours was short in comparison to that of some actors who've spent decades on Ramsay Street. She played local curtain-twitcher Mrs Mangel for just two years between 1986 and 1988. Those years though, were Neighbours' boom period here in the UK. Ask anyone over thirty who watched television in the eighties, and they'll remember her fondly.

Our thoughts...

It is with great sadness the Awg reports that Ted Roberts, the highly respected television writer and producer, died of cancer on Monday February 23.. He was 83..

In a career spanning more than 40 years he wrote more than 500 hours of television drama: Skippy, Homicide, Elephant Boy, Boney, Lindsay.s Boy, Rush, Patrol Boat, A Country Practice, Willing and Able, G.P., Mission: Impossible, Water Rats, and Blue Heelers. In addition, he was supervising producer on Water Rats.

He is survived by three children, five grandchildren, and the publisher Pat Woolley, who loved him for 16 years.

Close friends, industry colleagues and family are invited to the wake to mourn and praise him, on Saturday at 2pm in Ultimo, Sydney. Email your interest to books@fastbooks.com.au before Friday 6pm for further details.

Grateful thanks to everyone at Wolper Jewish Hospital, Woollahra, who cared for him so tenderly the last 6 weeks of his life,...

As Jock Blair reflects on a 55-year career as a writer, producer and production and development executive, he identifies the two biggest changes he.s witnessed in the screen industry.

One relates to money, the other to creativity.

.It.s incredibly difficult to finance production,. says Blair, who retired last week after 11 years as director . development at Screen Queensland.

.Television drama is now very conservative as networks are playing it safe,. he tells If. .In the 1980s things were pretty wild and you could produce things you can.t do now. As an industry we seem to have lost our edge creatively..

Blair initially joined Sq.s predecessor, the Pacific Film and Television Commission, for six months to help out in development but he liked the role so much he stayed.

He is proud to have helped the careers of multiple creative types and companies including Tracey Robertson and Nathan Mayfield...

Prolific screenwriter Everett De Roche, who died in Melbourne yesterday, was one of the instigators of the Ozploitation genre movement of the 1970s and 80s.

The Us-born writer, who migrated to Australia with his wife in 1968, was 67. He had battled with cancer for three years. He started as an in-house writer for Crawfords for four years in the 1970s, penning episodes of Homicide, Division 4, Ryan and Matlock Police.

His first feature screenplay was Colin Eggleston.s Long Weekend in 1978. Among his film credits were Richard Franklin.s Patrick (1978), Simon Wincer.s Harlequin (1980), Franklin.s Roadgames (1981), David Hemmings. Race to the Yankee Zephyr (1981), Russell Mulcahy.s Razorback (1984) and Franklin.s Visitors (2003).

In 2008 he and director Jamie Blanks collaborated on a remake of Long Weekend, for which he added two characters, a baby dugong and several scenes. "The basic environmental message works as well today as it did in 1978," he said.

Director, writer, film critic and media academic Jonathan Dawson has died in Hobart, aged 71.

Dawson wrote and directed documentaries, commercials and documentary specials for the ABC and commercial networks and the 1982 feature film Ginger Meggs.

After graduating from Melbourne University, he joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a trainee radio and TV producer/director. He left the ABC to join Crawford Productions as a writer/director on Homicide and Division 4. He then went on to Channel 9 in Sydney to direct The Link Men and write for other series including Rush and The Box.

He continued to publish poetry and short stories but left the fulltime film industry to set up the new media studies department and screenwriting courses at the University of Canberra.

From there he set up Griffith University's Foundation Year in 1975, where he worked to create the then new screen studies and production courses now internationally acknowledged,...

Network: CBS

Episodes: 232 (hour)

Seasons: 10

TV show dates: September 23, 2002 -- April 8, 2012

Series status: Cancelled

Performers include: David Caruso, Emily Procter, Adam Rodriguez, Khandi Alexander, Rex Linn, Jonathan Togo, Eva La Rue, Boti Bliss, Sofia Milos, Rory Cochrane, Brendan Fehr, Brian Poth, and David Lee Smith.

TV show description:

A team of Miami-Dade Police Department forensic scientists investigate the circumstances behind unusual deaths and crimes.

Lieutenant Horatio Caine (David Caruso) leads the CSI team and is a forensic analyst and former bomb squad officer.

Past and present members of his team include ballistics specialist Calleigh Duquesne (Emily Procter), fingerprint and drug identification expert Eric Delko (Adam Rodriguez), medical examiner Dr. Alexx Woods (Khandi Alexander), young officer Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo), Homicide Detective Frank Tripp...

Harold Hopkins, who appeared in several important Australian movies including Gallipoli (right), The Year My Voice Broke, Don's Party, and The Club, died yesterday, Dec. 10, at Neringah Private Hospital in Wahroonga, north Sydney. According to reports, his death was caused by the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma.

Hopkins, who was 67, is supposed to have been exposed to the cancer right after finishing high school, while working as an apprentice carpenter sheeting asbestos in Queensland in the early 1960s.

Following on the footsteps of his twin brother John, Harold Hopkins (born on March 6, 1944, in Toowoomba, Queensland) graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1967. He then performed onstage and began his feature-film career in 1969, landing a supporting part in Michael Powell's Age of Consent, starring James Mason and Helen Mirren.

Film roles were sporadic throughout the 1970s — among those was an appearance in Bruce Beresford's comedy-drama Don's Party — though Hopkins...

Australian film Last Dance has begun production in Melbourne.

Directed by David Pulbrook, principle photography began on Monday in and around St Kilda, Melbourne.

The film is Pulbrook’s debut feature film. Pulbrook has had a long history as an editor, beginning his career in the 60s working on episodes of Homicide and Division 4. He’s since edited Gillian Armstrong’s Smokes and Lollies, Kevin Dobson’s Squizzy Taylor, Michael Pattinson’s Street Hero and Ground Zero which he won an AFI for. Most recently he edited Simon Wincer’s The Cup.

The film stars Julia Blake (Innocence, Bed of Roses), Firass Dirani (Killer Elite, Underbelly) and Alan Hopgood.

Pulbrook said of his film: “Last Dance digs beneath the stereotypes to reveal the basic humanity of the two principle protagonists and transcends the tragedy of their pasts and speaks of optimism, possibilities and tolerance. We were careful not to...

Some may recall that when Frank Brittain's The Set was released in Australia in the seventies, it outraged many with its uncompromising look at teenage sexuality and identity at a time when homosexuality was not only taboo, but also illegal.   While the film went on to become a cult classic, the book, upon which the film was based, remained unpublished. That is, until now. The Set's author, Roger Ward, decided it was time to finally publish the novel.   An established actor, particularly of the "Ozploitation" genre, Ward has enjoyed roles in a slew of legendary Australian films including Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, The Man from Hong Kong and Young Einstein, and a clutch of television series such as Division 4, Matlock Police and Homicide.