Kurt Cobain

Directed by AJ Schnack. With the voice of Kurt Cobain. Distributed by Balcony Releasing. 1 hour, 36 mins. No MPAA rating (profanity, adult themes). Playing at Ritz at the Bourse. Less a movie than an illustrated audiotape, Kurt Cobain: About a Son is nonetheless fascinating for what it reveals of its subject, the late lead singer of Nirvana, and what it says about the cult of celebrity, and the banality of celebrities, too. Using excerpts from 25 hours of taped interviews between Cobain, a year before his 1994 suicide, and journalist Michael Azerrad, director AJ Schnack matches Cobain's accounts of an unhappy childhood and burgeoning music career with time-lapse photography of scudding Pacific Northwest cloudscapes, of timber trucks and mossy forests, of hipsters and geeks, music venues and grungy cafes.

ACCORDING TO reports out of London, Courtney Love is said to be despondent and it's not because of rehab, an OD or a bad tab of X. It's because the ashes of her ex, Kurt Cobain, have been swiped from her Hollywood home. News of the World reports Courtney kept the grunge rocker's ashes in a pink teddy-bear-shaped bag along with a lock of his hair. A few weeks back, however, she found the remains of his remains (ashes were also scattered in the Wishkah River near his Washington home and at a Buddhist Temple in New York)

Singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain, 27, whose group Nirvana popularized the rock genre known as "grunge," was found shot to death yesterday morning in his Seattle home, a shotgun lying across his body and a suicide note nearby. Cobain was the unofficial leader and primary songwriter of the three-member band that began in Seattle and became enormously popular with disaffected youth worldwide. Police did not disclose the specifics of the note. A police spokeswoman said that the body, found by an electrician hired to install a security alarm, had been there for about a day. Wendy O'Connor, Cobain's mother, said that her son had been missing for six days and that she had feared he would be found dead.

What can you say about a 27-year-old rock star who died? Kurt Cobain's body was found Friday morning. It was raining, the way it always does in Seattle. He had gone to his brand-new riverfront house, wrote a one-page note that ended with, "I love you, I love you," and shot himself in the head. By Friday night, MTV, which dropped the mantle of Generation X spokesman over Cobain's unwilling shoulders, was in nonstop tribute mode to the singer who catapulted Nirvana to fame. The veejays tried to look somber.

Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the rock band Nirvana, emerged from a drug-and- alcohol coma yesterday at Rome's American Hospital. Cobain, 27, was fully conscious and even asked for a strawberry milkshake along with his meal of minestrone soup, said his doctor, Osvaldo Galletta. Although Cobain's health appeared to rebound, Galletta said, he was still disoriented and having difficulty recalling events of the last few days. "But he looks like he will fully recover with no lingering problems," Galletta said.

Their young, beautiful, brooding faces seem to be everywhere you look on the boardwalks at the Jersey Shore: on airbrushed shirts, buttons, hats, keychains, posters. Store owners report they can't keep Brandon Lee and Kurt Cobain items on the shelves. "The deader, the better," explained Larry Graber, co-owner of Cookie's Fun Shop on the boardwalk, who likens the post-mortem popularity of Cobain and Lee to that acquired by Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. "I've been living off of Morrison and Hendrix for years," said Graber.

This woman is a rock star. Courtney Love came on stage at the Trocadero Monday night in a thin white dress, with a cigarette between her bright red lips. The frontwoman for the Seattle rock band Hole strapped on her guitar and introduced her new bass player, Melissa Auf der Maur. Then she raised her left leg, placed her heel atop a monitor, and slammed into "Plump," from Hole's second album, Live Through This (Geffen). "I don't do the dishes," she screamed. "I throw 'em in the crib.

The reaction among college students yesterday to Richard Nixon's death was - to be kind - somewhat less than mournful. "They all have to pass away sometime," said Jenny Hofmann, 19, of Harrisburg, a member of the University of Delaware crew team. "He was a good liar," said Dave Wiedinmyer, 19, her teammate from West Chester. "I'm a big Republican," added Julie Shernius, another teammate. "But they didn't need to cut into Picket Fences. They could have just said he died.

They were sad. They were disappointed. But few were really surprised. In this city that's proud of its hip image - and grateful to the grunge rock scene that put it on the cultural map around the world - it was a weekend for reflection. The suicide of the tortured local rock idol brought a subdued bereavement to Seattle. A collective shaking of heads. But very little shock. It was a cold, gray, rainy Friday, miserable even by the standards of this dank city on Puget Sound, when Kurt Cobain, the blond-haired, fragile lead singer of the enormously successful Seattle band Nirvana, was found dead at his home in an old-money section of the city.

The auditorium began to fill with what once were the party faithful - long- haired guys decked in backwards baseball hats, plaid shirts and earrings in random places, and slender women in big klunky shoes and funky bell bottoms. It was the opening of the West Chester University "Young Leader Series," but the person who was the topic of the evening - Kurt Cobain - never considered himself a leader. He committed suicide in April at age 27. The students had given up a few hours with the books or in the bars because, along with many other teenagers and twentysomethings around the nation, they are still listening to the music Cobain made with his band Nirvana.

Jen Aniston happy for Brangelina I'm so glad Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie waited until Brad's ex — Jennifer Aniston — found a man (Justin Theroux) before announcing their plans to wed. I don't think we could have managed the tears — and the endless media verbiage that would otherwise have ensued. "[Jen] is so in love with Justin that she is really grateful how things turned out," Anonymous Source tells gossip site HollywoodLife.com. "In a strange way, if it weren't for Angelina, Jennifer would not have connected with Justin in a romantic way. " Isn't it great how things turn out?

George Clooney , who seems to be everywhere these days, led a demonstration against the government of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir Friday outside Sudan's embassy in D.C. It wasn't long before the cops clapped Georgie in cuffs and led him away. What did his mom, Nina Clooney , think of the prospect of his arrest? "He's a big boy. He'll be OK. " Yes, he will. So will his dad, Nick Clooney , who also got arrested. George has been active investigating reports of war crimes by Bashir, reports that outspoken George says are true.

By Jacob Lambert The death of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs on Wednesday brought forth a global tide of tributes: "iLove Steve" was spray-painted near a Manhattan Apple Store; similar messages were written in chalk on the walk outside Jobs' California home; bouquets were laid from London to Shanghai. One writer described Jobs as "Silicon Valley's radiant Sun King" - and, indeed, many seemed to feel they had lost a benevolent monarch. All of this helped to obscure a salient fact about Jobs: He was the chief executive - and by many accounts a ruthless and difficult one - of a consumer-electronics firm.

YOU EITHER HAVE SOMETHING or you don't. Claiming you have something you don't actually have is not something you can lie about for too long. Eventually, it catches up with you. So Tattle is baffled by the report on RadarOnline.com that Hustler claims it has a sex tape of leggy "S&M" singer Rihanna and rapper J-Cole , (who may have really been) her opening act on her recent "Loud" tour. " Hustler is in possession of the Rihanna and J-Cole tape," said a rep for Larry Flynt's porn empire.

C RYSTAL HARRIS, former fiancee of Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner , told Howard Stern on Tuesday that Hef lasted "like two seconds" in the sack. But she's apparently had a change of heart. "The Stern interview scared me, he's harsh," Harris tweeted Thursday night. "I was unprepared and blurted out things I shouldn't have said, I'm sorry. " Hef, who denied Harris' original claims on Twitter, despite being an 85-year-old man who should be lucky to last "like two seconds," tweeted that Harris' original comments "didn't have much to do with reality" after Harris retracted her statements.

When the headline "Amy Winehouse found dead at 27" came barging into our Saturday afternoon, the word dead felt like a long-promised punch to the gut. It may not have surprised anyone, but it still hurt like hell. And then there was the "27" - rock-and-roll's most dangerous number. It's the age that took Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and now a singer whose battles with drugs, drink, and depression were nightmarishly publicized in a mediascape her forebears never could have imagined.

Amy Winehouse, 27, the Grammy Award-winning pop singer-songwriter whose sultry and profane compositions reflected - and ultimately were overshadowed by - a turbulent personal life and struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, was found dead Saturday at her apartment in London. Police sources confirmed her death, but the cause was not immediately available. The British-born performer's train-wreck-style public behavior often threatened to eclipse her talent. Although she had high-profile engagements, such as Nelson Mandela's 90th-birthday concert at London's Hyde Park in 2008, she routinely canceled or missed many.

Some famous musicians died at age 27, and the recent antics of English singer-songwriter-rehabber Amy Winehouse have observers worried if she could be the next. Radio yakker Danny Bonaduce raised the grim fear on his CBS3 commentary this morning, following news about problems on her concert tour. On Saturday she was booed in Serbia for staggering, mumbling, looking lost, forgetting lyrics and disappearing from the stage, then on Sunday, without further explanation, she canceled dates this week in Istanbul and Athens.

Others may continue to bandy about identity issues concerning Cage the Elephant; few seemed to care at the exuberant rockers' sold-out Electric Factory show Saturday. Animated fans were later heard asking one another about "the Elephant's" killer new encore song and how it combined the best elements of Cage live. Which it did: front man Matt Shultz hopping about, dirty blond hair a-whirl when not delivering grainy, occasionally yowling yet tuneful vocals; his brother, the shorter- and darker-haired Brad Shultz hunched over his guitar, furiously strumming; the other guitarist, Lincoln Parish (oft-mistaken as the singer's sibling, given his own blond mop)

For a primer in Meat Puppets history, one needs to know of just two milestone events. In 1984, Arizona brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood debuted Meat Puppets II, a genre-melding masterpiece that found the missing link between country and psychedelic rock. In 1993, Kurt Cobain canonized three of the record's songs by covering them for Nirvana's historic MTV Unplugged taping. The Puppets, then little more than an obscure indie band with one very famous fan, had their place in rock history, secured when Cobain committed suicide and MTV aired the session ad nauseam the following year.