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RollerCoaster is about to record its 1000th episode!!! Rollercoaster has been on air since January 31 , 2005

The 1000th episode of RollerCoaster will air on Friday 7th August, 2009.

A little background on the show:

· Airs nationally between 4-5pm weekdays on ABC1

· RollerCoaster began as a website, and the show was then produced to build on the audience/community generated from this website

· Host and writer Elliot Spencer introduces children’s shows within the hour, as well as his own segments including:
1. Elliot & The Surfing Scientist (most popular segment);
2. Professor Slo & Doctor Mo (slow motion experiments);
3. Fetch (Elliot writes anecdotes using words created by the viewers);
4. Feed Me (Elliot makes recipes sent in by viewers);
5. Interviews
6. Competitions including The Best School Ever, which this year will ask students to make a movie about their school

· Elliot was a WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) student, with this being his first television hosting job

· 1000 episodes (will) have been produced out of Perth’s ABC studios

Many of the above segments can be viewed on the website at abc.net.au/rollercoaster

9:50pm – Tuesday, July 21 on ABC1

Recently in Australia as curator of the Luminous Festival at the Sydney Opera House is none other than the man internationally acclaimed as the father of ambient music – Brian Eno.

From his beginnings as keyboard player with 70s glam rock band Roxy Music, Eno’s prolific career has seen him collaborate with the likes of David Bowie, John Cale and David Byrne as well as produce albums for bands including U2, Talking Heads and Coldplay.

Further pushing his creative boundaries, Eno has more recently experimented with soundscapes combined with visual art and light projections in expressions of installation art.

Honouring his 30-odd years of creative achievements, Artscape’s Brian Eno In Conversation features an illuminating Q&A interview between Eno and ABC arts presenter Andrew Frost.

Discussing Eno’s artistic inspirations, ideas and views on contemporary art, the program profiles an artist who continues to be at the forefront of not just music – but also art and technology.

With a Luminous Festival line-up that includes cutting edge music, performance and installation artists from around the world, Eno’s vision presents a curatorial savvy that is indicative of his entire career – the unique ability to gather together and collaborate with a diverse and exciting group of artists who are at the cutting edge of new creative territories.

At the heart of the festival is an exclusive new work by Eno himself entitled 77 Million Paintings. Featuring an ever-changing installation of images and sound projected on to the sails of the Sydney Opera House, the work is an amazing free form explosion of art, colour and digital technology. “It’s a new fusion between music and visual art,” explains Eno.

Artscape: Brian Eno In Conversation will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, July 26 at 7:00pm

9:25pm – Tuesday, July 21 on ABC1

More sardonic parody and social satire from the queen of character and impersonation, Emmy Award-winning Tracey Ullman, as she continues her hilarious tour across America. In this second episode of the series, we meet more of Tracey’s vast array of characters and impersonations in a wide collection of irreverent and hilarious skits.

New characters include: Laura Bush, Celine Dion, Heather Mills-McCartney, Jodie Foster, J.K. Rowling, Silda Spitzer, Tom Brokaw and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, as well as original characters Leslie Katz- Coen, publicist for the Dalai Lama, Wendy Trenton, world-champion hog caller and Jillian Smart, an overzealous soccer mom, to name just a few.

Some memorable characters from last season, including Dina Lohan, Renée Zellweger, Tony Sirico and Padma Perkesh, the Bollywood-musical pharmacist, also return.

8:30pm – Tuesday, July 21 on ABC1

Andrew Ainslie is a dairy farmer, his wife Meryl is an artist who runs a gallery on their farm in Wiltshire. The farmhouse they live in has, over time, been cut off from their land by an expanding village, making it more time consuming for Andrew to look after his 200 dairy cows and farm. So Andrew and Meryl decide to build a new house in the heart of the farm.

The house they build is far from traditional. It is constructed from engineered timber and has a barrel- shaped zinc roof, reminiscent of a Dutch barn. Inside functionality is mixed with high finish craftsmanship by local tradesmen.

Meryl, keen to make her mark on the building, commissions local artisans to create a set of farm gates, a custom-made kitchen and a bespoke, handmade staircase, which is transported to Andrew and Meryl’s property on the back of Andrew’s tractor.

Meryl and Andrew want a lot from this house. It has to look like a barn, function as a farmhouse and an art gallery, and do justice to the surrounding landscape.

9:35pm – Monday, July 20 on ABC1

An emergency Middle Eastern peace summit is being held in London, after a recent Israeli attack on Gaza.

The team is responsible for the security of the event, which will attract VIPs from all over the world, including the United Nations Chief Negotiator. Amidst the preparations, an internet filter on Malcolm’s computer reveals that a key part of an assassin’s toolkit is being sold on-line. Ros is concerned, especially with all the VIPs in town for the summit, and orders Lucas to collect the piece of kit. Lucas discovers the vendor is a teenager, Dean Mitchell, who lives on a council estate with his mother and is about to be kidnapped by an armed snatch squad. Lucas rescues mother and son just in time and hides them in an MI5 safe house, but he must find out who else is in pursuit of Dean. Who else knows about – and wants – this weapon? Back on the Grid, it dawns on the team that this is an inside job, and it has to be MI6 who is after the boy. It seems Dean accidentally stumbled upon MI6 black op to assassinate the UN Chief, and MI6 want to keep him quiet.

Meanwhile, Harry sits in private torment, pondering the prospect that his friend, Bernard Qualtrough, is a traitor. Unexpectedly, he receives a message from Asset K, a Russian sleeper agent he recruited 20 years ago, saying she needs to make contact urgently. Harry believes that she might have proof that Qualtrough is the mole, so with Connie’s name cleared, Harry entrusts Connie to make the meet whilst he acts as a decoy. But Harry is alarmed to find that, when he opens Asset K’s file, the evidence marks him as the mole. Is Harry really a Russian double agent, or has he been set up?

Monday 20 July 2009 on ABC1

“I think we can win. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll never give in. Long as while I’m alive. If they come on, they take me out in a box.”(George Clift, farmer)

The Liverpool Plains in northern New South Wales has been called the food-bowl of Australia, the nation’s most fertile agricultural land. The key to its productivity is its rich volcanic soil and a ready supply of underground water. Massive aquifers run below the plains making the region almost drought proof.

This land produces massive quantities of wheat, corn, sunflower seeds, canola, sorghum along with sheep and cattle.

“I’ve only lost one crop in 70 odd years I’ve been farming… Jimminy crickets, when the good lord gives us something like that why would you even take a chance of destroying it?”(George Clift: farmer)

The answer to that question is simple. Coal and lots of it. It’s estimated there may be up to one and a half billion tonnes of coal under the plains and in the hills nearby. Now two mining companies, BHP Billiton and the Chinese owned Shenhua Corporation, say they want to explore and mine for coal. To show just how serious they are they’ve paid a staggering 400 million dollars for mining exploration licenses to the cash strapped New South Wales government.

“I respect the rights and the interests of farmers to have a say, to make a determination, but I don’t admire people who come to the table with a prima facie view that there is incompatibility between mining and agriculture because that is just silly. And that’s because we have such a good record and a good track record of doing that.” (Mitch Hook; Minerals Council of Australia)

Inevitably a series of massive coal mines would change the region. Farmers claim there would be pollution from the mines. But their real concerns are below the ground.

They say the massive long-wall mines that would be used to extract the coal would cut into the fragile underground water system, resulting in contamination and diverting it from productive farming use.

Now the conservative, National Party-voting farmers have begun an activist campaign that green groups would be proud of. For the past 12 months they have manned a blockade to stop the mining companies’ exploration work. The action has meant court hearings and the issue has split the National Party. Outspoken Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce was slow to react to the issue but now he’s come down firmly on the side of the farmers:

“I’m a great supporter of coal mining as our major export, but there are certain peculiar areas in Australia where the quality of the land is so exceptional that you should not be compromising that for coal.”

The mining companies fear that by excluding the Liverpool Plains, a dangerous precedent could be set that could keep them off other valuable mining land.

The battle for the Liverpool Plains though is more than a land-use dispute. The water that runs below the plain ultimately drains into the Murray-Darling Basin. As a result the farmers have joined forces with the Greens to demand the Federal Government stops any mining that would destroy water flowing into the endangered river system.

“The lack of logic in the government allowing BHP Billiton to move in on the Murray-Darling Basin like this screams at you.” (Bob Brown, Greens’ leader)

In an attempt to find a way through the issue, the New South Wales government has agreed to a major study that would look at the aquifers that locals say hold the key to the region’s future agricultural prosperity. Will this resolve the clash between Australia’s two great primary industries?

“The Good Earth” goes to air at 8.30pm on Monday 20th July on ABC1. It is repeated at 11.35pm on Tuesday 21st July.

www.abc.net.au/4corners

6:30pm – Monday, July 20 on ABC1

Richard Roxburgh is a surprisingly candid guest on this week’s Talking Heads. He’s known for pushing himself hard as an actor and director, for his control and perfectionism. He’s even been called a Rottweiler for the extent to which he sinks his teeth into a role.

“I want to be afforded some creative satisfaction at the end of these experiences, otherwise there’s just no point in doing it, even if you get paid a lot of money.” Roxburgh tells Peter Thompson that his favourite roles were as Roger Rogerson in the ABC-TV drama Blue Murder, and the buck-toothed Duke in Moulin Rouge. He says he doesn’t have a problem with playing villains, except that the Hollywood variety is often so badly written.

Indeed, Hollywood itself seems to leave him cold. “I can remember in LA being at a urinal and a guy turning to me while I was peeing and saying, ‘Hey dude! You’re the dude from MI-2.

Dude!’ and bringing his mates in. It freaks me out.” He meditates on the problem of making a meaningful life, and confesses with some surprise that being comfortably married has been a release from the meaninglessness of life as a ‘man about town’. Although he found directing his 2007 film Romulus, My Father to be extremely draining, it afforded him the opportunity to comment on the significance of relationships.

“I think one of the most important things that you can describe is the matter of life being extremely difficult, awful, sometimes an unremittingly tragic event, but that there is hope and that the hope is only to be found in love.” Look out for Roxburgh in series two of East of Everything starting this Saturday on ABC1 at 7.30pm.

Talking Heads will be repeated on ABC2 – Tuesday, July 21 at 5:00pm

8:30pm – Sunday, July 19 on ABC1

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in The Last Enemy, a thriller about a man whose search for the truth about his brother’s death catapults him into an international conspiracy – and a passionate love affair.

The Last Enemy takes an arresting and compelling look at how technology could transform Britain into a surveillance society – threatening human relationships and destroying trust.

When the reclusive Stephen Ezard (Benedict Cumberbatch) returns to London for the funeral of his brother Michael (Max Beesley), an aid worker killed by a landmine, he feels like a stranger in his own country.

Britain has been transformed into a security state after a major terrorist attack, ID cards are strictly enforced and citizens’ every movement is watched so the government can catch the terrorists before they strike again.

After four years abroad, Stephen is confused and vulnerable and doesn’t know who he can trust.

A pawn in a mysterious conspiracy, he discovers to his cost just how far the country will go to protect its people. But, even as time is running out, Stephen becomes determined to find out what really happened to Michael… even at the risk of losing his own identity.

The Last Enemy is a thriller set in the future; a future that might just be a lot closer than you think.

Also starring Robert Carlyle as David Russell, David Harewood as Patrick Nye, Eva Birthistle as Eleanor Brooke, Anamaria Marinca as Yasim Anwar and Geraldine James as Barbara Turney.

7:30pm – Sunday, July 19 on ABC1

The arrival of the summer sun along the coastal waters of Alaska and British Columbia triggers an explosion of plant life greater in scale than the Amazon rainforest.

The massive amount of plant life draws in huge amounts of wildlife to feast – including billions of herring and jellyfish, and sea lions and humpback whales that migrate all the way from Hawaii.

Remarkably, the basis of all this life is something so small that it’s hardly visible to the naked eye. The sun sparks the growth of phytoplankton – the microscopic floating plants that are the basis of all life here. In late summer the plankton bloom is at its height and vast shoals of herring gather to feed, attracting a number of other animals.

Murres, small diving birds, round up the herring into balls. They dart up from below to pick off the fish, while gulls dive down from above. Pacific white-sided dolphins and sea lions also join the feast. After six months of little food, and thousands of miles travelling, the mightiest predator of all – humpback whales arrive. They not only take advantage of the balls of herring – a ready-made meal – but have also devised their own unique way of hunting in groups, by surrounding the herring with bubbles, in order to take the largest mouthful possible.

5:00pm – Sunday, July 19 on ABC1

This week on Sunday Arts, Chris McAuliffe looks at Salvador Dali’s enduring legacy.

Salvador Dali A treat for lovers of Surrealism this week on Sunday Arts as the National Gallery of Victoria hosts the first full retrospective of Salvador Dali’s work ever staged in Australia. The exhibition attests to his legendary status as a self-promoter par excellence. Art historian, Chris McAuliffe examines Dali’s enduring legacy to contemporary art and culture. Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire is on at NGV International until October 4.

Sunday Arts will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, July 19 at 7:30pm