Fluff: Family Guy kills off a major character.

Sad news for all Family Guy fans out there – a major character has been killed off.

RIP Brian – the Griffin family’s talking dog. He was killed during Sunday’s episode of the animated series; he was hit by an oncoming car, after heading into the street to play with baby Stewie.

He’s now been replaced by another puppy named Vinny, to be voiced by Tony Sirico from The Sopranos.

Apparently the idea of killing Brian off was brought up in a writer’s meeting and it “caught fire” as “a fun way to shake things up.”

“As soon as this idea came up, we started talking about what the next couple episodes could be, and we got very excited about the way this change will affect the family dynamics and the characters,” executive producer of the show, Steve Callaghan, said.

Fans were absolutely heartbroken – after all, the show is now in its 12th season, and Brian has been there since day one.

Brittany Murphy’s mother disputes poison claim

Last week, it was revealed that Clueless star Brittany Murphy may have been poisoned. Murphy’s father, Angelo Bertolotti, was the one who always held long-standing suspicions of a possible poisoning – and after years of litigation and obstruction, he secured hair, blood and tissue samples from both and had them tested independently.

According to the lab report both Murphy and her husband, Simon Monjack, exhibited symptoms of heavy metal poisoning, which is most commonly caused by ingesting rat poison. At the time of Murphy’s death she displayed many of the symptoms associated with heavy metal poisoning, including headaches, dizziness and pneumonia.

However, Sharon Murphy, Brittany mother, has now penned an emotional open letter for Hollywood Reporter, disputing the claims.

You can read the full thing here – it’s quite long. But in summary, Sharon Murphy has slammed Angelo Bertolotti as “a man who may be her biological father but was never a real father to her in her lifetime”. She reckons that “his claims are based on the most flimsy of evidence and are more of an insult than an insight into what really happened”.

She writes:

In light of the recent publicity about a lab test Angelo had done, I have asked some knowledgeable people, and they tell me that an analysis from a sample of hair is not considered dependable unless it is backed up by tests of tissue and blood and other analysis — which he did not do (the coroner did, but they show no similar results). I am also told one lab may give different results than another lab in terms of heavy metals, and the proper method requires multiple tests before any results are released.

The lab Angelo used, if you can call it that, is an Internet site that farmed out the actual testing and then wrote horribly untrue things under the guise of “analysis.” It mentioned rat poison as a possible cause and claimed to be able to say that a third party murdered my beloved daughter.

All the stars arrive in Australia

Last week, Angelina Jolie and her kiddies officially moved into Sydney to film her latest movie, Unbroken. Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Wiig are also here to attended the world premiere of Anchorman 2 on Sunday night in Sydney.

And now another Hollywood actress has joined us; Oscar-winner Charlize Theron.

The 38-year-old actress actually landed in Sydney last week, with her one-year-old adopted son in tow, to film three weeks’ worth of footage for George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

She’s kept a low profile since she landed, but unfortunately her presecne was discovered yesterday, when she had lunch at Catalina restaurant, metres away from a bunch of Aussie media personalities.

Welcome, Charlize (and everyone else, of course). Maybe Sydney is the new Hollywood?