Chatterbox: Peter Jackson's life behind the camera speaks volumes

It seems that the man who turned one big volume of three books into three movies is getting two books written about him. Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has two biographies in the offing by publishers hoping to exploit his high profile as the maker of the trilogy.

LOTR fan sites have been abuzz with talk of an unauthorised biography by a Wellington writer to be published by Random House and another authorised one by English writer Brian Sibley who has worked on official movie guides for the first two films.

BLEEDING HARD: The winners of the Coke Launchpad Final are (drum roll please ... ) Auckland hardcore punkers the Bleeders. Right now they are in post-production of their debut release A Bleeding Heart EP, scheduled for release next month. The video for the track A Bleeding Heart will be funded as a result of winning the contest for up and comers, and they'll tour the country later in the year.

DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK: 3 The Hard Way, early 90s hip-hop outfit, are trying to launch a comeback with a new song entitled It's On - a reliable title for a hit that one, as Nesian Mystik will attest. The tune is produced by Alan Jansson, the songwriter-producer who helmed OMC's international hit How Bizarre.

3 The Hard Way last had a hit with Hip Hop Holiday, early in 1994, which spent five weeks at the top of the New Zealand charts. The band broke up in 1995 but a chance meeting with Jansson got them back in the studio, signing a deal with his new Joy label, via Sony.

LE PARROT EST MORT: The British cult classic Monty Python's Flying Circus has been given a Gallic twist and sent home for bemused fans at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, watching it on stage performed in French with English subtitles.

French producer Remy Renoux, who said he "could not believe [his] luck", got permission from Python's original members to create the first stage version of the television sketches.

Renoux approached Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam about making a musical and told them it was a shame no one was allowed to perform the original Python material.

After e-mails between Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle and the estate of the late Graham Chapman, they all agreed to let Renoux have the rights.

In Edinburgh, audiences have re-embraced The Dead Parrot sketch and the Lumberjack Song in French with the scripts repeated at the side of the stage in illuminated English subtitles.

"Frankly, it's better than we could do at the time. The text? Obviously inferior! The actors? Better than we were," decreed Gilliam after seeing the show when it was first performed in Paris.

Michael Palin was pleasantly baffled by the mayhem. "It is quite an experience. It was quite hard sometimes to work out which sketch was being done," he said. "Sometimes they hit the mark exactly, sometimes they miss the mark and sometimes they miss it so completely that it is quite extraordinary."

SPLITTING IMAGES: A one-woman show about the life of Liza Minnelli has had to be hastily rewritten for its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after the Hollywood star announced she had split from husband David Gest. Liza! With Love was originally a celebration of the stability and happiness which Minnelli had apparently found with Gest, her fourth husband. But a week before the opening night of the play, the couple announced they were separating.

Director Andy Lock said the news had forced a dramatic plot revision. Now actress Liz Flint, instead of playing Minnelli, plays a "friend". Lock said: "Now she's on stage on a mobile phone getting a call from Liza as her best friend. Liza has decided, because of the split, that she cannot do Edinburgh so she's asking Liz whether she will do it for her, because she looks like her."