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.

Music, Fashion, Film, the new Charli XCX album

7 August 2026

British musician Charli XCX released her eighth studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, in July 2026. Not so much of the glitchcore this time around, though there’s one or two (digital) scratches in the mix.

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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.

Are bloggers the same as writers, journalists, under the Australian AI framework?

21 July 2026

Last week the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled his government’s AI strategy. Part of the proposed framework includes a provision to ensure Australian writers, musicians, artists, and journalists, are paid in the event their work is used in the development of AI agents.

This is as it should be. Anyone else who wants to access copyrighted material needs to pay. It should be no different for the big tech, and AI, companies.

As someone who writes predominately online, a blogger, I see myself as either a writer and/or a journalist, in terms of this framework. I know it sound like I’m being pedantic, and surely most people would assume a blogger is regarded as a writer or a journalist.

But is that the way I would actually be viewed under the proposed AI framework? Albanese, after all, made no mention of bloggers, or other online content creators.

Of course, the Prime Minister’s speech was a statement of policy intention, and the finer details, will, I assume, come later as the AI strategy is devised.

The matter is of interest though, as I’m one of who-knows-how-many Australian bloggers whose writings have been harvested in recent years, most likely by AI companies. Would bloggers also be subject to the provisions being proposed for writers, musicians, artists, and journalists?

Or does the exclusively digital nature of a blogger’s work somehow diminish its stature? Will any sort of payment for work copied or used by AI companies only apply to mediums that exist firstly in a physical form, such as books or paintings?

These are mediums that can be digitised (somehow), making them attractive fodder for knowledge hungry AI agents, but does their physical form still give them precedence?

To be clear, I’m not talking about copyright. Any work created in Australia is protected by copyright laws, including that of bloggers. Generally for copyright to apply, a work must be created by a person, be original, and be “fixed”, that is, the work must exist in a tangible form.

This includes content on a web page. Australian bloggers are covered then by copyright. Regardless of whether anyone actually takes notice.

But while Australian copyright laws apply to “people who express original ideas and information in certain forms“, the proposed AI strategy, based on what we know at present, seems far more specific. Writers, musicians, artists, and journalists. Not bloggers, or other content creators working online.

Time will tell though whether Albanese was being specific or not.

As I wrote last week, given the amount of scraping and copying that has already occurred, a large number of Australian creatives will have already lost out, in terms of compensation.

It’s my feeling then any payments that AI companies may be required to make, will only apply to works created after any legislation is enacted. Anything else could be complicated to say the least.

Again though, time will tell.

Kylie: a documentary about Australian singer, actor, Kylie Minogue

30 May 2026

Kylie, trailer, is a Netflix produced documentary about Australian pop-singer Kylie Minogue.

I was writing about the work of Kylie (her family apparently refers to her as Minogue, for the rest of us it’s Kylie) in the earliest iterations of disassociated.

Spotify partners with Bookshop.org to sell paper books

21 April 2026

Spotify members in the United States and United Kingdom will soon be able to buy paper, or physical books, through the music streaming app, by way of a partnership with Bookshop.org, supporters of local and indie bookstores.

With just over seven-hundred-and-fifty million monthly active Spotify users, the partnership will surely be a shot in the arm for authors and book publishers.

It would of course be ideal if the joint venture (I hesitate to say deal, the word seems a little overused at present) more favoured indie and small publishing houses, but sales of any book, by any author, can only be a good thing.

Hopefully Spotify members worldwide will be able to buy paper books through the app eventually.

Olivia Dean tops 2025 Triple J Hottest 100 countdown

26 January 2026

The London based neo-soul singer and songwriter was voted into the number one slot with her song Man I Need. Dean also scored a second spot in the Hottest 100 top ten, with Nice to Each Other.

Such amazing music to listen to, especially while working.

The Hottest 100 countdown is an annual poll conducted by Australian new and alternative radio station, Triple J, and ranks listener’s favourite songs released in the previous calendar year.

I find the Hottest 100 great for new(-ish) music discovery, as I seldom seem to listen much radio, or random music streams, anymore.

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SXSW Sydney cancels 2026 event, leaves Australia

15 January 2026

Eleanor Dickinson, writing for Mumbrella:

South by Southwest (SXSW) has cancelled its Sydney event — which has been held just three times — citing a “changing global environment that is impacting major events, festivals and cultural programs worldwide”.

Purely anecdotal, but one or two of the tech people on my social feeds, who attend such events, had described SXSW Sydney speaker lineups as “not too inspiring”, or words to that effect.

Despite this — from what I can gather — attendances at the past three Sydney events were not disappointing. The cancellation however seems tied to factors other than speaker lineups, and attendances though, with cost being one of them.

I wouldn’t have minded going to SXSW, but I would have preferred that be in Austin, in the US state of Texas, where the festival originated in 1987.

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EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, with 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes

15 December 2025

While making the Elvis biopic, which was released in 2022, Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann succeeded in finding unseen, but rumoured to exist, footage of American singer Elvis Presley.

The reels, located in a Warner Bros. archive in the US state of Kansas, featured much unused footage of Presley, originally recorded during the production of two documentaries made about him in the 1970’s. The found footage also contained interviews with Presley which apparently have not been heard before.

Combining the unseen footage and the interviews, Luhrmann has produced EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. The documentary, though Luhrmann prefers to see it as a continuation of the Presley story, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, where it was reportedly received enthusiastically by audiences.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert will begin screening in cinemas from February 2026.

But how good is the trailer?

Spotify listeners shun Australian music says Wrapped 2025

5 December 2025

The suggestion, made by The Daily Aus (TDA), is that few Australians listened to local music in 2025. On Spotify at least.

Zero local acts featured in Australia’s most listened-to artists, tracks, and albums on Spotify in 2025.

You’ll have to go to Instagram (IG) to read the slide card since TDA mainly publish their news reporting on IG, because their target audience, mainly Generation Z and some Millennials, consume news and current affairs reporting on the socials.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the world needs more niche blogs, and TDA, with their fine writing would slot nicely into news and current affairs niche. They do republish articles to their website, but sadly there is no RSS feed to subscribe to.

But back to the headline. I checked my 2025 Spotify Wrapped, and found Moon Motion, by Brisbane based Australian act First Beige (er, Instagram page), was my second most listened to track this year.

Tame Impala, Peking Duk, RÜFÜS DU SOL, and Vera Blue, are among Australian acts on my liked songs playlist. I can’t be the only person in Australia with local acts on their playlist.

It seems surprising to me that not one floated to the top, or at least near it, on the overall most-listened to lists. But maybe it’s some sort of Spotify quirk, and maybe next year we won’t be talking so much about them.

I also learned I have a music listening age of twenty-two (thank-you Spotify), why then all this talk about niche-blogs and RSS feeds? At my “age” I’m meant to be all in the socials.

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