AJ Schnack dropped a hint on his blog yesterday about the soundtrack for his new film, Kurt Cobain: About a Son, and I followed the link to Barsuk Records to take a look at it. It looks amazing–21 tracks, songs by David Bowie, Butthole Surfers and Iggy Pop, plus scraps of the Michael Azzerad interviews with Cobain that are used in the film. There are no Nirvana songs, but that’s to be expected (rights-wise, they are alleged to be prohibitively expensive), and really — if you’re interested in the film, you probably already own every Nirvana recording that’s been released.
As David Lowery points out, About a Son begins a one-week Oscar qualifying run today in Los Angeles, as part of DocuWeek. It’ll hit additional cities in the fall.
Filmmaker A.J. Schnack, who usually blogs here, has launched a new blog devoted to his upcoming Kurt Cobain documentary, Kurt Cobain: About a Son. I found the above clip from the film on the new blog, but it’s apparently been on YouTube for a while — behold the 78 comments it’s earned, which include such insights as “Courtney love is bitch. I hope she burns in hell.” and “Kurt Cobain is alive, Gods never dies..”
It’s frustrating to see that there’s still so much anger and speculation surrounding interest Cobain’s manner of death, because Schnack’s film (which, in tone and content, is well represented by this clip) really has no interest in any of the conspiracy theories. Based on audio interviews conducted by journalist Michael Azerad for a circa 1993 book about Nirvana, it’s a poetic and introspective portrait that does a lot to puncture the “Cobain was a God brought down by a harpie devil” myth that I’m sure most reasonable people grew tired of about ten years ago.
From my very cold and very snowy perspective here in Grand Rapids, Austin is starting to sound really good. But it always does, right? It’s a great film town, SXSW is a great festival, and March is a great time to head South.
One of the movies in the lineup is Kurt Cobain About a Son, which some of us saw at Denver. It’s a great film, and director A.J. Schnack is a great guy. We were lucky to catch him and Michael Azerrad for a chat about his film and also did a roundtable from Ted’s Montana Grill in Denver where we talk about the film. If you’re heading to SXSW, make sure to catch it.
We’ll dive into the lineup and say more about it here as we get closer to the festival. In the meantime, we’re busy preparing to do the festival’s Spout-sponsored email/webcenter, and dozens of podcast interviews. Rick will also be on a panel “New Dogs, New Tricks: New Media Goes to the Movies,” which is just a great example of what a good fit this festival is for us–the perfect mix of movies and interactive media. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.
Beginning with the premise that “the whole truth is the best truth, AJ Schnack and Michael Azerrad made the film Kurt Cobain About A Son. Schnack directed, using the audio from 25 hours of interviews Azerrad did with Cobain for the book Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. I had a chance to talk to them about how they used the film to show Cobain as a real person seperate from the superstar icon, and how one of their goals was to break the “rockumentary” mold.
Some movies are violent, some are disturbing, and others are just plain wrong. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race is a fun ride with some gnarly crashes, but it can’t hold a candle to its demented predecessor, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975).
Cinema’s favorite weirdo, Cripsin Glover, is taking his film across the country, personally [...]
