Until the Light Takes Us

A bunch of friends create an entire music scene.

Not from nothing of course, black metal was influenced by the thrashy 80s but in Norway during the early 90s something came out of the frozen forest - bands like Burzum, Emperor, Mayhem and Darkthrone.

The music is somewhat overlooked due to one of the guys committing suicide and another stabbing his "friend" to death oh and a lot of churches were burnt down.

A misguided section about some art guy who does a show on black metal which includes a gay performance art piece with Frost from Satyricon "I like his look" but I guess like any underground scene the media eventually gets hold of it, the fashion gets adopted and $$$$$ so hopefully these scenes are commentary on those inevitable aspects.

But back to the suicide and murder, let's put this in context,  plenty of people commit suicide and dicks kill their friends everyday over disagreements, It's not something particular to black metal music however anti religious sentiment is (anti religion means all religion including satanism) they're anti organised religion, especially those that force their beliefs on others - many of those stave churches were built by Christians over pagan sites dedicated to norse gods.

YES - these guys are artists not satanists

Gimme Shelter

sour scene baby

First of all I'm not a fan of the rolling stones. I watched this movie because it's a documentary of a free concert that went to shit.

In 69 the stones along with some other bands played a free concert at altomonte speedway to a crowd of over 300 000 (that's almost the population of my home town)
The hells angels san francisco were invited to chaperone the stones to the stage, which they do in spectacular style but when trying to stop the tripped out kids from climbing on the stage, booze vs drugs turns into brawls and someone gets killed.

Some incredible scenes in this and it looks amazing, pristine. With older film stock there's a tendancy because of the film quality to be somewhat removed from the watching experience but this is so clean it's easy to become immersed.

My favourite scene is when Jagger is singing the haunting Under My Thumb and the camera kind of zooms in on this hells angel that looks exactly like the terminator. Meanwhile a random guy is having a strange meltdown on stage which no one seems to notice until he starts taking off his clothes and the angels snap into action and throw him off the stage - scary.

This is one of those brilliant documentaries that becomes so much more by happenstance like Capturing the Friedmans and The Staircase. There's a scene where Mick is being interviewed and he says that this event will be an example of how the people of america can behave at large gatherings and he's right, now it seems you can't have a school disco without someone being stabbed or a concert without someone being arrested or taken away in an ambulance so I guess it was all downhill from that 1969 concert only 4 months after woodstock.

 

YES - very good and you don't have to be a fan of the stones.  

The Bridge

Eric Steel recruited some people to film the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransico for an entire year in which they captured a number of people jumping to their deaths.

And it's all sorts of people - old guys, young girls, middle age woman, guys dressed all in black they just fuckin climb over and off they go.

The film then shows interviews with friends and family and you find out that these people did have something in common in that they all had some form of mental illness some mild and some severe.

Apart from seeing the first person jump the thing that stuck out to me was when the guy who jumped but survived is telling his story about how he's on the bridge balling his eyes out about to kill himself, it's the worst fuckin day of his life and a tourist comes up to him and asks him to take a picture of her - she doesn't notice he's crying or anything. I think he took the picture and then jumped. I wonder if the tourist noticed him doing that?

YES - I really hope that I would notice someone on the bridge about to do this but I don't think so...