THE red carpet premiere is still four months away, but early reviews from a test screening of Baz Luhrmann's sprawling epic Australia have started trickling onto the internet, flouting lengthy confidentiality clauses.

Despite some confusion from the US audience about Aborigines ("who are the Australian version of black people in the 1950s", wrote one blogger), reviews about the film, set in the outback in the lead-up to World War II, were generally positive.

There was praise for the two leads, Nicole Kidman as the "stuck-up and snooty" aristocrat, Lady Ashley, and Hugh Jackman as the "rugged Marlboro Man" drover. "But the little kid playing the aborigine [sic] boy is the one who steals the movie".

Another amateur reviewer wrote that even though there were far too many references to The Wizard Of Oz ("If I have to hear the song Somewhere Over The Rainbow again, I may claw out my eyes"), with a bit of tying up, Luhrmann was on a winner.

From Marlboro Man to Batman: MySpace yesterday announced a free pre-release screening of The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, for users of the networking site. See myspace. com/blackcurtainau.

KYLIE GONG SHOW

As if appearing on Dr Who wasn't enough, Kylie Minogue will tomorrow be made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. The award, for her services to the music industry, will be presented during a grand ceremony in Buckingham Palace's ballroom. With the Queen away in Scotland for the week, Minogue is expected to be presented with her honour by either Prince Charles or Princess Anne. "I am almost as surprised as I am honoured to be awarded an OBE by her majesty the Queen," the singer said last December, when she discovered she would receive the award.

In May the former Neighbours star was awarded France's highest cultural honour, the Order of Arts and Letters. Minogue is on the British leg of her 2008 concert tour.

ADAM AND EVE ACT

Never one to shy away from the limelight, God keeps on treading the boards in Sydney with yet another religion-themed play. Hot on the heels of Her Holiness and Altar Boyz, Paradise is to be performed as part of Shorter+Sweeter, a mini-festival of nine 10-minute plays. Alan Flower and Olivia Solomons, who will strip off to play Adam and Eve, are hoping history doesn't repeat when they take the stage at Newtown Theatre on Tuesday. When the battle-of-the-sexes comedy by Steven Hopley was performed by two different actors on the opening night of the festival at the Opera House three years ago, a stage-hand forgot to place a rather important prop for performance - the apple. The actors drew on their improvisation skills to mime the scenes with the tempting fruit.

Flower and Solomons said they would double-check the stage before leaving the wings.

HOT TO HANDLE

The former television anchor Anne Fulwood may have been too hot to handle for ABC News Radio listeners yesterday. The former Ten and Seven newsreader was presenting the afternoon segment on the continuous news network and strayed into steamy territory, interviewing a "sexpert", followed by a cheeky broadcast of the 1976 harmony hit Afternoon Delight. "Then my computer screen in the studio blew up," Fulwood told SiT yesterday. Fulwood started with the network this week and will present the afternoon segment for three weeks. After stepping away from broadcast journalism in 1999, working for Telstra and, most recently, as a spokeswoman for the APEC summit, Fulwood said the network gave her a chance to return.

"I realised news is in my veins and it is what I do," she said, adding she was looking forward to "no hair and make-up issues" working in radio. Not that she is ruling out a return to television, a medium she worked in since the mid 1980s. "I never said never. I never did the farewell interview."

FASHION POLICE Next Top Model

THE host Jodhi Meares wasn't there, forcing Charlotte Dawson to step into a floor-length gown and into the job. It was the cosmetics king Napoleon Perdis, however, who had jaws dropping across Luna Park when he arrived at the live finale of the Foxtel reality series Australia's Next Top Model on Tuesday night, where he served as both judge and example of what not to wear.

As part of her winner's package, the Wollongong teenager Demelza Reveley, receives a year-long contract as the face of the Perdis brand.

Dressed in lime-green pants and jacket, with trademark tan (courtesy of a liberal application of his own bronzer), a portly Perdis wedged himself between fellow judges, Vogue editor Kirstie Clements and the modelling agent Priscilla Leighton-Clark, both in black. At the after party, the now-LA-based make-up man, dubbed the "jolly green giant" by Dawson, held court flanked by personal security guards.

The guards were not - as SiT suspected - there to protect his outfit. Rather they were a requirement of the Hollywood studio producing Perdis's make-up artist reality series, Face-On. The stylist for the series was reportedly also the one responsible for that jacket. "I'm still under contract in LA … I had to get special permission to leave LA to come here, so they came with me," a wide-eyed Perdis told SiT.

Meares reportedly piked on hosting the live show only days ago, still smarting after a nerve-wracking performance at last year's finale. Her decision left Dawson - a judge and widely tipped as Meares's successor - with only three days to prepare. It also left plenty of frock-watchers questioning whether Meares should have her contract renewed for next year's series.

The unimpressed included some of Foxtel's newest reality TV darlings, the designers from Project Runway Australia, who were dragged along for a spot of cross-promotion. Alison Davis, from Sydney, slammed the host's disappearing act as "seriously unprofessional".

"I'm sure she's got her reasons but if she was nervous, she should have at least made a presence. It shows a friggin' lack of commitment." A Brisbane contestant, Mark Antonio, said he couldn't imagine the host of the new fashion show, Kristy Hinze, deciding not to turn up.