A Future on Stage, adapting Back to the Future to the stage

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A Future on Stage, adapting Back to the Future to the stage

7 August 2026

We missed the sadly short-lived stage adaptation of the 1985 time-travel escapade movie Back to the Future (BTTF), during its brief Australian run, in late 2025. I did however catch A Future on Stage, trailer, a documentary about bringing the original film to the stage as a musical.

The words “we didn’t think we could do this”, and “we had no idea what we were doing”, and similar such, may have been uttered a few times too many throughout — since we know the show eventually succeeded — but otherwise the feature was fun to watch.

Producing films and stage shows are probably equally difficult in their own ways.

It was reassuring to hear Bob Gale, co-creator of the BTTF film trilogy categorically rule out prequels, sequels, and spinoffs, at least so long as he and Robert Zemeckis retain control the story rights.

Despite relatively long runs in the United Kingdom and United States, Back to the Future The Musical didn’t fly in Australia, and played for just four months in Sydney. The disappointing run was attributed to cost-of-living pressures, and the high cost of staging the show locally.

David vs Goliath Australian film classic The Castle being adapted for stage

30 July 2026

Feel good Australian comedy classic movie, The Castle, made in 1997, is set the join the likes of Back to the Future, The Color Purple, and Titanic, in being adapted for the stage. The story follows a working class family trying to stop cashed-up property developers seizing their home.

The producers of the film, including Tom Gleisner, Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy, and Rob Sitch, will be involved in the writing and production of the stage show. Fingers crossed then the adaptation will retain the quirkiness and candour of the original film.

Talking of Kennedy and Sitch, I stumbled upon a satirical show they starred in about thirty years ago, Frontline, a send-up of Australian current affairs shows, in the iView archives. It’s a great show, but a lot has changed since the mid 1990’s. I’m not sure something like that could be made today.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, by Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol

25 July 2026

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, trailer, is a bat-shit crazy (to say the least) time-travel caper I found while perusing the movie listings on Kanopy last week. It’s a story about two musicians, Matt Johnson, and Jay McCarrol, portraying themselves, who live in Toronto, Canada.

Both are in a music act named Nirvanna the Band, where they usually improvise their songs.

Although they’ve been at it for nearly two decades, as of 2025, success has eluded the duo, and many of the city’s live music venues refuse to book them.

Matt is convinced a daring stunt might sufficiently impress the Rivoli, a Toronto bar they’ve long wanted to perform at. He thinks parachuting from the top of the city’s CN Tower, into a nearby sports stadium, during the middle of game, will do the trick.

When that doesn’t quite succeed — so close, yet so far — Matt quickly formulates a plan to trick Rivoli management into believing they are time travellers from the year 2008.

He fits out their RV with a mock flux capacitor, as seen in Back to the Future (BTTF), which somehow ends up sending the pair back to 2008.

It’s at this point the making of the story becomes as an impressive as the story itself. Much of the feature is made using guerrilla filmmaking techniques.

Johnson and McCarrol filmed many of the people, members of the public, they encountered with hidden cameras, usually without their knowledge. Nor did they seek approval from city authorities, or CN Tower operators, to film, meaning many (but not all) of the scenes on the tower were not staged, they were clandestinely recorded.

Some years ago I went on a Sydney Harbour Bridge climb. I was lucky to be able to take my sunglasses up with me, let alone anything else (parachutes, secateurs, etc). Bridge climbers had to strip to their underwear, and dress in boiler-suits before setting out.

Smartphones were stowed in lockers at street level, with just about everything else we arrived with. We could wear sunglasses and bridge climb issue caps, but these were latched to our outfits. This was of course so objects didn’t fall on people and vehicles using the bridge.

I’d have thought the same requirements applied to people on the outside platform of the CN Tower. Indeed everyone was dressed in boiler-suits, similar to those of the bridge climb, but Johnson and McCarrol managed to conceal extraneous, and potentially dangerous, items under them.

You need to see Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie to appreciate just how astonishing parts of it are. Johnson and McCarrol did not obtain clearance to use excerpts, or theme music from BTTF either, something I was certain — while watching — they must have.

Johnson and McCarrol claim use of BTTF footage constitutes fair use, saying their film is parody.

The film is not a one-off affair either. It was based on a web series Johnson and McCarrol made between 2007 and 2009, called Nirvana the Band the Show. That went on to spawn a TV series Nirvanna the Band the Show (note the changed spelling), which screened in 2017 and 2018.

In 2023 Johnson directed BlackBerry, which traced the rise and fall of the once popular smartphone.

Netflix reportedly considering buying Letterboxd

23 July 2026

Coleman Spilde, writing for Salon:

Since its expansion from movie rentals and streaming into original content, Netflix has made it clear that its sole priority is Netflix, not its customers, and certainly not the art of visual media.

Members of Letterboxd, a social network for lovers of film, founded in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, are up in arms.

I can understand creators of popular products/platforms eventually wanting to realise some reward for their efforts. It can only be hoped, should rumours of a sale have foundation, that any new owner has a bona fide interest in film.

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A trailer for Klara and the Sun, a film by Taika Waititi, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

25 June 2026

The first trailer for the Taika Waititi directed adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, Klara and the Sun has landed. I’m not one to complain about differences between the book and its movie counterpart — mainly because adapting a novel for the big screen is far from straightforward — but this two minute glimpse of the film version shows up some obvious differences with the book.

The tone of the film, at least the little we see of it in the trailer, is somewhat lighter (no pun intended) than that of the novel. Bordering on the comedic at times. It is not without dark moments though, which the novel is replete with.

Klara, portrayed by Jenna Ortega, as an AF (Artificial Friend), looks startlingly human in appearance. AF’s, being humanoid robots, were meant to look like people to a degree, but it was obvious they were not human. Ishiguro’s novel, for instance, created the impression AF’s were usually shorter than the teenage humans they accompanied.

Here, Klara looks as human as Josie (Mia Tharia), the fourteen-year-old girl she was bought to be friends with. A two-minute long trailer isn’t much to go on of course, but if Taika Waititi is directing, we’re going to get Taika Waitit. That includes lines such as “you’re not the droid we’re looking for”, delivered by Amy Adams, as Chris, Josie’s domineering mother.

Entirely Waititi’s idea that one, I’d say.

George Miller wants to bring Mad Max stories to an end, a slow end

18 June 2026

The Australian film director thinks it’s time to bring the story to an end. But a movie, and a separate TV series in addition, sounds like at least another several years worth of work.

The first Mad Max film was made in 1979, and another four have followed, albeit with decades long gaps in between. Assuming the sixth movie, and TV show eventuate, the franchise will have been running for the best part of fifty years.

It’s probably been said before, but I could see Mad Max going the way of stories such as Star Trek and Star Wars, in other words indefinitely. After all, Miller seems interested in selling the franchise at some point. I think this might only be the beginning.

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Backrooms: McDonald’s versus Kane Parsons

15 June 2026

You don’t see too many mentions of global hamburger behemoth McDonald’s here, but their take on Kane Parsons’ 2026 horror/thriller film Backrooms, is simply finger licking good.

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Teaser for The Social Reckoning, a film by Aaron Sorkin, follow-up to The Social Network

12 June 2026

Although hints of what was to come were there to see, The Social Network, the 2010 dramatisation of the founding of Facebook, had the hallmarks of a feel-good story.

At least from the perspective of would-be entrepreneurs, whose next-big-thing idea, had, against the odds (of course), become the next-big-thing.

A lot has happened in sixteen years though, and there’s not much left in the Facebook story for many people to feel good about today.

Aaron Sorkin, who co-wrote the screenplay for the David Fincher directed 2010 feature, has tapped into the darkness pervading the world’s largest social network, to write and direct a follow-up to the 2010 film, titled The Social Reckoning.

Sorkin initially floated the idea of a sequel in 2024. At that point the American playwright and screenwriter sought to cast a critical light on the part he felt Facebook played in the January 6 insurrection of 2021, in the United States.

But Sorkin’s focus has changed. In The Social Reckoning the negative impact on users mental health is among subject matter explored. As is co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s seeming dictatorial style of management.

Darkness permeates the teaser/trailer. Gloom is banished, but only momentarily, by the glare of bright spotlights shining in our faces. There are no frat-house parties, or swimming pool high-jinks, in this chapter of the social network’s story. This is a bleak world indeed we now find ourselves in.

The vinyl revival spreads to CDs, DVD, other physical media

8 June 2026

Some people are tired of streaming, says Iskhandar Razak, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

I’m not sure if it’s the actual process of watching, say, a movie online, or having to deal with streaming content providers, that’s fatiguing viewers, it sounds like a bit of both

I’m hardly the biggest consumer of small (not so small) screen media, it’s usually after nine in the evening before we lounge back on the sofa to watch something. The good news there, with such low consumption, is we only need to deal with one (subscription) streaming provider.

We’re fortunate to also have access to the likes of Kanopy, and iView, and their extensive repositories of movies and other shows. But I don’t even regard streaming as streaming, it’s simply a means by which to view a show or movie.

Others see things differently though. Some think streaming is too transient. They have come to miss owning physical copies of the films and shows they enjoy, and keeping them in a home library, sitting a on a shelf.

Surprisingly perhaps, the sentiment is not limited only to people with fond memories of watching movies on DVD‘s twenty-years plus ago. Many buyers of DVD’s and — incredibly — VHS cassettes, in 2026, are in their twenties.

It’s one thing to own all this physical media though, but a way to view it all is still needed. I assume VHS players, in working condition, are available. We still have a modest DVD collection, but need to hook up a small DVD player to a laptop, then to the TV screen, if need be, to watch them.

The DVD player, which isn’t much bigger than a DVD really, is fine. I’m not sure I’d be in favour of a larger player, and having to haul it around, let alone a VHS player. Plus a whole load of DVD’s and VHS cassettes. I’m having flashbacks to VHS cassette tape getting jammed in the player, and rental DVD’s glitching because of damage to the disc.

Streaming has made those particular playback hassles a distant memory. But that’s just the situation here. For others though, it seems owning a large collection of physical media, in addition to the required playback paraphernalia, adds to the viewing experience.

It has also offered a lifeline to some retailers of physical media, whose businesses were brought to the verge of collapse by streaming.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, coming to the big screen

4 June 2026

The news we’ve been waiting for. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the 2022 novel by American author Gabrielle Zevin, is to be adapted to film.

Daisy Edgar-Jones, who starred in the screen adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, has been cast in the central role of Sadie Green, a games designer.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow sadly remains on my TBR list all these years later. Maybe I’ll get to experience the screen adaptation of the story instead.

As an aside, and I don’t by any means know the ins and outs here, but I’m surprised it’s taken so long for this to happen, given the interest in the novel when it was published.

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