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Photo: Rod Yates, editor of Empire Magazine inter­view­ing Michael Azer­rad on his movie, Kurt Cobain About a Son.

Kurt Cobain looms out of the cinema screen like a mel­an­cholic Vik­ing, ready to pil­lage our minds. Like the images of other dead celebrit­ies, the image sets off thought pat­terns and we clas­sify: drug addict, father, musican.

Like all nar­rat­ives per­petu­ated by the one dimen­sional main stream media, he was also a son. A tal­en­ted per­son with real prob­lems, real skills and dreams.

A son of divorced par­ents, a com­mon aflic­tion of chil­dren of the late 20^th cen­tury, this and the times haunted Kurt. The lyr­ics and music of Nir­vana described the world of the US Pacific North­w­est: dark with low hanging fog and cloud. This descrip­tion also applies to his life, and the life of many of Generation-X. Cold war, AIDS, unemployment.

The movie, About a Son, is Kurt nar­rat­ing his life in his own words. As cap­tured by bio­grapher, Michael Azer­roth in 25 hours of taped inter­views dur­ing 1992–3. The imagery paints a Wash­ing­ton state that Kurt lived in. A child of his par­ents, age and area.

Using Kurt’s own words, and show­ing the real life Aber­deen, Olympia and Seattle one gets a sense of the angst of Nir­vana. Kurt also talks about his addic­tion via self med­ic­a­tion to opi­ates to escape pain; depres­sion and scoli­osis.

The movie is about an ordin­ary per­son; it human­ises a driven per­son. An com­plex artistic soul that expressed the nihil­ism of my generation.

Most import­antly, Kurt touches the ulti­mate poison that is the cult of celebrity that has only grown in the last 15 years. Espe­cially fight­ing the neg­at­ive narrative.

Any Nir­vana fan or mem­ber of gen­er­a­tion X should see this movie.

Thanks to Pop­cornTaxi for bring this movie to Australia.

I had com­pletely for­got­ten about the Munge His­tory of video pro­duc­tion.

In the early 1990s, when Adobe Premiere was a new thing, and Quick­time over­shad­owed any­thing Microsoft had until at least 1995 — we cre­ated this video.

Star­ring Uncle Mike, Uncle Paul, Uncle Peter (Peter Har­ris) and myself — the DOSBOX (ori­ginal Munge Car) and Mike’s pas­sion for wind­surf­ing inter­sec­ted my pas­sion for the New­ton PDA. We cre­ated this little advert­is­ment as an advert­ise­ment for Ran­dom Access Con­sult­ing; or the Munge Brothers.

Amaz­ing what you can see online these days.

Liam and I returned from the new Clint East­wood dir­ec­ted movie, Flags of Our Fath­ers.

It is less phys­ic­ally intense than Sav­ing Private Ryan, as it tells the stor­ies of the men sur­round­ing the rais­ing of the US Flag over Mount Suriba­chi on Iwo Jima in Feb­ru­ary 1945.

The movie cap­ably tells this story; and to a lesser extent the bonds between men thrown together under intense cir­cum­stances. The story is his­tor­ic­ally accur­ate, as is Band of Broth­ers. Rep­res­en­ted to a greater accur­acy is the psy­cho­lo­gical leg­acy war leaves.

A wry quote from Neal McDonough to Barry Pep­per: “We’ve done this before”. Neal was in Band of Broth­ers and Barry in Sav­ing Private Ryan.

Stay for the cred­its: actual pho­to­graphs are shown; and detail how close the real film is to reality.

Update, 9:20pm Watched Sav­ing Private Ryan to con­trast the two movies. Spiel­berg is a true artist. Whilst the two stor­ies are dif­fer­ent, one being based on actual people; the sound, vis­ion and cine­ma­to­graphy of Sav­ing Private Ryan is a league ahead.

Paul Brick­hill, ori­ginal Aus­tralian author of The Dam Busters may be turn­ing in his grave. The mas­ter of fakery is now in charge of re-kindling the memor­ies of the bravest men who never had the chance to pass on their bravery to younger generations.

The dir­ector of the longest movies I am thank­ful I’ve never seen: Lord of the Rings; Peter Jack­son, is now remak­ing the clas­sic 1950s Brit­ish movie of the book of the fam­ous raid on the dams of the Ruhr val­ley in 1943.

If he des­troys this like he has decim­ated the love of his child­hood, King Kong (1933) , almost as much as the 1976 ver­sion: I am going to be livid. This movie is not about ILM/Weta tech­nical gee-whizzery. It is about the men who flew in World War II, and those who lost their lives on both sides for reas­ons the cur­rent young un’s have forgotten.

The Dam Busters movie/book is a salute to quirky Eng­lish sci­ent­ist (Barnes Wal­lis) and to the bravery of air­men of the Empire; in a time that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion has quickly for­got­ten. Richard Todd, him­self a vet­eran, played Wing Com­mander Guy Gib­son (Vic­toria Cross), who died in a de Havil­land Mos­quito in Hol­land, Septem­ber 1944.

Dur­ing the Dam Busters raid in May of 1943 Guy was in com­mand, and merely 25 years old. I trust that an appro­pri­ate age (that is, young) actor is chosen to provide real­ism to what oth­er­wise could go the way of King Kong.

We need to remem­ber; and I hope the movie does for the air­men of the Empire what Sav­ing Private Ryan has done for the vet­er­ans of D-Day. To remem­ber, not be entertained.

David Brent Man­age­ment Train­ing videos — of the same ilk as the John Cleese post Fawlty Towers man­age­ment and sales train­ing films on the 1970s — shows Microsoft UK has a sense of humour.

And way more import­ant, is an Eng­lish sense of humour.

It is obvi­ously internal only: talk­ing about Microsoft Val­ues — in a very indir­ect and humour­ous way. How this leaked I do not know, and I am sure that it breaks a bazil­lion copy­right and internal rules.

I won­der if head office signed off on the con­tent. Some­how, I think this one slipped through the cracks.

A must see!

Tech­nor­ati Tags:
microsoft, david.brent

The Italian Job (2002) — maybe not as hip/cool com­pared to the 1960s ori­ginal The Italian Job (1969) but still using MINIs!

Gor­don Woolf, the God of all things Page­Maker, includ­ing Page­Maker script­ing, runs Wors­ley Press — pub­lishes a reg­u­lar bul­letin called Format.