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This year, Australia.s longest running children.s series, Play School, celebrates 50 years on air. To mark the occasion, ABC Kids has enlisted some famous faces to join with Big Ted and Humpty Dumpty to host a special series. Entitled Play School Celebrity Covers, the mini-episodes will feature a lineup of popular Australian personalities, actors and musicians turning their hand to being a Play School presenter, either performing a song or reading a story. Daily episodes will air from July 4 on ABC Kids, as well as on iview. Featuring in Play School Celebrity Covers are: Adam Goodes, Annabel Crabb with Leigh Sales, Architecture in Helsinki, Benita Collings with Don Spencer, Bernard Fanning, Carrie Bickmore, Costa Georgiadis, Dami Im, Dan Sultan, Delta Goodrem, Emma Wiggle, Guy Sebastian, Hamish and Andy, Jeremy Fernandez, John Hamblin, Josh Thomas, Kate Ceberano with her daughter Gypsy, Kate Miller-Heidke, Katie Noonan, Kurt Fearnley with Rachael Coopes,...

Nine features have been nominated for this year's Awgie Awards for performance writing.

Eight telemovies and miniseries are in contention. The Australian Writers. Guild says nominations in the 25 categories for the 48th Annual Awgie Awards reflect the abundance of outstanding work currently being produced in Australia. Nominees for best original telemovie are Steven McGregor for Redfern Now: Promise Me and Katherine Thomson for House of Hancock, while Christopher Lee.s Gallipoli and Jan Sardi and Mac Gudgeon.s The Secret River contend for best adaptation in a television miniseries. There are four nominees for original television mini-series: The Principal by Alice Addison and Kristen Dunphy; The Kettering Incident by Vicki Madden, Andrew Knight, Cate Shortland and Louise Fox; Deadline Gallipoli by Jacquelin Perske, Stuart Beattie, Shaun Grant and Cate Shortland; and Love Child: Series 2 from Tim Pye, Cathryn Strickland, Chris McCourt, Jane Allen and Tamara Asmar. In the categories...

Earlier this week we caught up with Australian filmmaker Phillip Middleton to discuss his short film The Ghost as well as chat about his planned supernatural feature The Disappearing. Read on for that flick's teaser art, synopsis, and more!

Written and directed by Middleton, The Ghost short was filmed over the course of one day in his hometown of Sydney, Australia, on the 5D camera with cinematography courtesy of Damian Wyvill. Produced by Kylie Connell, the flick stars Rachael Coopes, Max Cullen, Bel Delia and Valentino del Toro.

"My inspiration for The Ghost came from a dream I had, where the person in the dream - it was me, but not me, if that makes sense - saw [himself] as dead," explained Middleton. "From that, I just thought it would be freaking scary if someone trapped in a house kept seeing themselves as dead, thinking the ghost that had them trapped...