News

Selections include Ryan Ward’s Canadian magic realism tale Pure Science Fiction, Maria Arida’s Brazilian psychological thriller The Eyes Of Another.

Screen can exclusively reveal the second wave of titles at the upcoming Frontieres genre international co-production market and forum scheduled for July in Montreal.

Scroll down for the full list

Market selections include Ashlea Wessel’s horror Light Of The Void, Ryan Ward’s magic realism tale Pure Science Fiction, and James Watt’s horror Worm all from Canada, alongside Jan Verdijk’s Dutch psychological horror Alice, Peter Modestij’s Sweden-Denmark body horror drama Sub, and Maria Arida...

As Summer approaches Anarchist's eyes turn to Montreal and the promise of another Frontieres Market. A chance to see what may come down the pipeline of genre film production Frontieres arleady boasts a history of successful projects. Films like Raw, Vivarium, The Long Walk and Hatching were all pitched at the market.    The first wave of titles for this year's market and forum were announced today. On the market side we will see new projects from Peter Hengl (Family DInner) and other filmmakers looking to make their feature film debut. A large majority of projects are from female directors (#FundFemaleFilmmakers) and two projects are from Quebecois filmmakers.    Audrey Ewell (Until The Light Takes Us), Jean Mach & Nicolas Alberny (8th Wonderland) and Nyla...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Black metal has never been a purely musical phenomenon, nor was it meant to be. Even the most ardent of Mayhem, Darkthrone, or Gorgoroth fans would concede that its practitioners aren’t virtuosos so much as vessels for an anti-establishment worldview that demonizes Christianity the way punk rock savaged Reagan and Thatcher. If you know anything at all about the genre, it probably isn’t that “Transilvanian Hunger” is a pretty solid album — it’s that, back in the early ‘90s, a group of disaffected Norwegians earned notoriety by burning down centuries-old churches and committing grisly murders.

So don’t be surprised that “Lords of Chaos” offers less insight into Mayhem’s songwriting process than it does into the relationship between Øystein Aarseth and Varg Vikernes (Emory Cohen). The friends-turned-rivals, who performed in the foundational band Mayhem together, have emerged as the most infamous figures from that era — especially because...

I love a good poster about as much as I love a good death metal tune. And so it pleases me that today we can pass along the poster for director Jonas Akerlund's Lords of Chaos starring Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Sky Ferreira, Jack Kilmer, and Valter Skarsgard. For those of you that might not be aware of the film or its killer backstory, Lords of Chaos is based on the 1998 non-fiction book of the same name by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind, which follows a series of crimes that occurred in Oslo, Norway in the early 1990s surrounding the black metal bands Mayhem and Burzum.

The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and has been snagging up awesome reviews and killer word-of-mouth ever since. In fact, the movie currently holds a 91% fresh rating over on Rotten Tomatoes. The site doesn't currently have a Critics Consensus but the score...

Jonas Åkerlund (still possibly best known for his “Smack My Bitch Up” video, whose feature directorial debut was Spun) dives into the pioneering Norwegian black metal scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Anchored by Euronymous (Rory Culkin) and the infamous Varg Vikarnes (Emory Cohen), Åkerlund taps into a scene whose music resonates — even as Vikarnes is now known as a murderer who still produces music from prison. The story was well-told in Audrey Ewell and the late Aaron Aites’ documentary Until the Light Takes Us; here, editor Rikard Strømsodd discusses the challenges of taking on this dramatized version. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]...

“You make a wish and then you make a special offering.”

Just in time for Halloween, it’s time to get witchy with a biting new film from budding horror maestros Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall and their burgeoning Dead Kids Club franchise. Their latest offering, a short entitled “Givertaker,” recently debuted at Fantastic Fest, and now the duo are making it available in full online to anyone looking for a nice twist on an old story.

Read More: Spike Jonze Unleashes a Totally Wild Margaret Qualley in Quirky New Kenzo Short Film – Watch

“Givertaker” introduces a familiar scenario — a talented teen witch uses her powers to take out her enemies — and then flips the entire thing on its head. Sarah (Nell Kessler, in her debut role) is a pissed off teenage conjurer who endeavors to do something super-relatable: Smote the mean girls at her local high school who spread...

"Be careful, Izzy... People are fragile." Another intriguing sci-fi short to watch. This one is titled Memory Box, directed by filmmaking team Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell. Sadly, Aaron Aites passed away from cancer and this is his last film as a director. Ewell is keeping his memory alive and has started an Indiegogo for extra funding to release this short (beyond the internet). It first premiered at Fantastic Fest last month and is now out online. Described as a "psycho-sexual sci-fi tinged short film", Mackenzie Davis (from The Martian, Breathe In, "Halt & Catch Fire") stars a young mother who works at a memory-recreation facility where actors recreate clients' memories. Fellow sci-fi filmmaker Shane Carruth also stars. Love the score. Thank you to The Playlist for the tip on this. Description from Vimeo: "Memory Box is the third and final film directed and produced by the filmmaking team of Aaron Aites...

Filmmakers Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell are best known for their work on documentaries “Until the Light Takes Us” and “99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film,” but with the recently released short “Memory Box,” the duo is taking their shot at sci-fi. The short film stars Mackenzie Davis and the voice of Shane Carruth, but there’s more to the story than just what’s onscreen.

Continue reading Mackenzie Davis And Shane Carruth Step Into The ‘Memory Box’ In New Short Film at The Playlist.

Earlier this year, filmmaker Aaron Aites passed away after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind both an enviable and exciting body of work — in addition to his films like “Until the Light Takes Us” and “99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film,” he was also the lead singer of the band Iran — and his partner in both life and work, fellow filmmaker Audrey Ewell. At the time of his death, Aites and Ewell were working on a new film, a sci-fi-tinged short starring Mackenzie Davis and fellow filmmaker Shane Carruth entitled “Memory Box.”

Read More: ‘Memory Box’ Exclusive Clip: Mackenzie Davis And Shane Carruth Star In Sci-Fi Short Film About Memory Recreation

The film — which Aites and Ewell were originally imagining as the proof of concept for a full feature — follows a young mother (Davis, who continues to excel at every role put in front of her) who works at...

Austin’s Fantastic Fest, the largest genre festival in the United States, kicks off this weekend and will feature over a hundred films from around the world. One of these is Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell’s short film “Memory Box,” starring Mackenzie Davis (“Halt and Catch Fire”) and director Shane Carruth, who previously helmed the films “Primer” and “Upstream Color.” The film follows a young mother who works at a facility where actors recreate clients’ memories for them, but when a client pushes her to break the rules and jeopardize her job, she’s forced to decide just how far she will go. In the process, reality becomes upended and memory becomes entangled with fantasy. Watch an exclusive clip from the film below.

Read More: Fantastic Fest Announces Second Wave of Programming, Including ‘Arrival,’ ‘Toni Erdmann’ and ‘The Handmaiden’

This is the third film directed and produced by Aites and Ewell.

99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film

Directed by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell

USA, 2012

In 2009, filmmakers Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell presented Until the Light Takes Us, an enlightening – excuse the pun – exploration of Norway’s black metal movement, a scene that picked up steam in the 90s and became inundated with controversy surrounding church burnings, murders and satanic posturing. The filmmakers brushed aside the media outcry that had tarnished an initially forthright youth rebellion, opening up the process of how these young, isolated individuals had pushed back against the crushing cultural hegemony of globalisation through the power of their music, and had the odds increasingly stacked against them by the many who endeavoured to draw a line under the movement and pervert its meaning, ironically adding fuel to the fire in sustaining the vehemently opposed satanic elements. The film achieved what all good documentaries should, challenging preconceptions and...

Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites, the team behind 99 Percent: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, initially attempted to adopt a filmmaking model as decentralized as the Occupy movement itself. However, the pair soon discovered that the consensus decision process is as complicated for directing films as it is for orienting political movements.

"It just didn't work. We couldn't get anything done," Ewell tells Rolling Stone. "At least with the Occupiers, [they] were in one physical space together. We didn't even have that; we had an email list with hundreds of emails.

[Premiere Screening: Sunday, Jan. 20, 9:00pm -- Temple Theatre, Park City] Our film wasn’t planned. As the events of Occupy Wall Street began to unfold, and Audrey [Ewell] and I decided to make a film around it, we basically went from working on other projects (our own follow-up film to Until The Light Takes Us, as well as the paying freelance work that pays our rent) to instantly being in production on an unbudgeted and risky film project that used an untested methodology to bring it to life, and that relied on the abilities and collaboration of people we’d never …...

The team behind "99% - The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film" -- Audrey Ewell, Aaron Aites, Lucian Read and Nina Krstic -- have between them a very diverse resume, from feature doc producing ("Until the Light Takes Us") and songwriting, to war photography and film ethnography. Below they discuss the Occupy movement and their goals as filmmakers. What It's about: "99% is about power. We peel back the curtain to show the mechanisms and gears that shape our world and then show this era’s response." -- Ewell. What It's Really About: "Our film captures one of those critical moments is U.S. history where everyday people stepped forward to demand justice for themselves and their fellow citizens from a broken system. Our collaborative method allowed us to express the wide range of experiences that compelled people to come forward - a sense of service, the fear of losing a home, losing a job,...

Cue the giddy glee of film nerds everywhere. With the Sundance Film Festival lingering just over the horizon, the festival has today announced their first wave of programming – and they’ve pulled absolutely no punches when it comes to this first big wave of information. Today’s announcement includes the in-competition films for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary sections, along with the out-of-competition films of the Next <=> section. Make no mistake, this is a giant swath of programming, a list filled to bursting with titles that will be the talk of the festival come January. These are the big guns, kids. While we attempt to tone down our excitement, here are a list of titles that immediately pop out at us from today’s list: David Lowery‘s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck), Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s C.O.G. (Alvarez first earned our admiration with his Easier With Practice, now...

Factory 25 has acquired world rights to writer-director-editor Sophia Takal’s “Green,” which won the Chicken & Egg Award at the SXSW Film Festival in 2011. The specialty distributor has scheduled a September 7 theatrical release in New York and Chicago, followed by a VOD release in November. “Green” explores the roots and results of jealousy in the story of a New Yorker who moves to the country with her boyfriend and how their relationship is changed by the friendships they each develop with a blue-collar local girl. Kate Lyn Sheil, Takal, Lawrence Michael Levine, Louis Cancelmi, Alex Ross Perry and Robert Malone star. Lawrence Michael Levine produced; Matthew L. Weiss and Robert Malone co-produced. Read Eric Kohn’s review from SXSW Brooklyn-based Factory 25 has recently released “The Color Wheel,” “The Oregonian,” “Convento” and “Until The Light Takes Us.” Forthcoming...

The Dead Air crew is in full effect in episode 15 with Prometheus being the feature film. Jeff Konopka, Shawn Savage and Kristy Jett (Returns!) to give you their take on the mega-controversial film created by Ridley Scott and who’s place in the Alien franchise is somewhat confusing. Through in depth review and discussion (and quite a bit of wanking off) these guys and gal break out the myths that have been circulating internet wide and put the haters in their places. The number one question on any fan of the original Alien is is it a prequel? Tune in to get in on the debate. You have to listen to back talk us later. This film has a near hypnotic effect on its audience which has the side effect of convincing everyone that there are inherent flaws beyond explanation. Remember, there’s a non-spoiler section in the main review...

It’s Friday! That means it is time for another podcast episode! Sorry this one is a little later in the day but I was catching up on some website issues from earlier this morning. This episode is longer than we wanted but there was a lot to talk about. Not only do we talk about The Raid: Redemption but we talk about the future of 35mm film which ate up some time. Kick back, crack one open and enjoy Episode 81 of the Destroy The Brain Podcast!

Show Notes

Intro

What We’ve Been Watching (2:51)

Michael: Rosemary’s Baby, Rabid Dogs (aka Kidnapped), The Changeling Andy: Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (on Amazon Instant & Netflix), Until the Light Takes Us (on Amazon Instant & Netflix), The Pitch

News/35mm Discussion (42:56)

Pick of the Week for May 1st Releases (1:17:21)

Link to La Weekly Article discussed Link to...

Welcome to the Popcast Podcast Episode 45

Our panel today consists of: Mal, Dan and I am your host Jim Napier.

We have a great show lined up....

Hot Song Of The Week - simple song by the shins

First Up is this weeks Review Recap. What did you watch this week?

Daniel - Carnage

Jim - Young Adult, TinTin,

Mal - Until The Light Takes Us, The Exorcist

Trailer Park:

Moonrise Kingdom GI Joe 2

Box Office or Bust

1.Contraband - 24.1 mil

2.Beauty and the Beast 3D - 18.5

3.Mi: Ghost Protocol - 11.5

4.Joyful Noise - 11.3

5.Sherlock Holmes - 8.4

Opening This Week:

Red Tails

Coriolanus

Haywire

Underworld: Awakening

Conclusion

Subscribe/Rate on iTunes | Follow on @InvasionRadio | "Like" Us at facebook.com/ScreenInvasion Tune in next week for your weekly pop culture injection and hang around after the show to listen to the full song.

Source: ScreenInvasion (http://screeninvasion.com/2012/01/popcast-podcast-ep-45-tintin-causes-carnage-for-young-adults/#.TxTk...

by Steve Dollar

One thing documentary filmmakers have to be good at is knowing to jump when a story's hot. Occupy Wall Street bubbled under the radar for a while before it became a media lighting rod. On Oct. 1 last year, Audrey Ewell was hanging out at home in Brooklyn, working on her current film project, with the laptop streaming a live video of the march onto the Brooklyn Bridge that became the first flashpoint in the movement. "Arrests were happening and people were chanting and a giant scene was going on," she recalls, "and the guy who was filming it said his batteries were running out and all of a sudden the screen cut out. At this point I was completely addicted. I switched on the news and there was nothing happening. A black out."

Ewell's last film, the 2008 documentary Until the Light Takes Us [listen to our podcast], delved into the Norwegian black metal scene.

Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol

The cinematic Trojan horse returns, smuggling short film-makers into the big league, even more so now it's a qualifying festival for the Oscars and Baftas. Admittedly, some of this year's entries hardly need a leg-up. Pitch Black Heist, for example, stars Michael Fassbender, while animation Bertie Crisp features the voices of Tamsin Greig and Kathy Burke. Notable first-timers this year include the Jesus And Mary Chain's Douglas Hart (Long Distance Information, starring Peter Mullan) and Matthew "Garth Marenghi" Holness (A Gun For George), but with 180 new live-action and animated films, there are plenty of new names to be made for sure.

Watershed & Arnolfini, Wed to 20 Nov

Soundtrack Film Festival, Cardiff

As the title suggests, music and cinema come together here, and not always in predictable ways. Ok, so Guillemots are playing an improvised score to Fw Murnau's 1926 silent classic Faust but how will Ivory Tower,...

Iconic director, Werner Herzog takes on the death penalty in his latest documentary, in select theaters Friday, November 11th

This Friday, November 11th, acclaimed director Werner Herzog brings his latest documentary Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life to select theaters across the country. A fascinating exploration of a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas, the film probes the human psyche to explore why people kill, and why a state kills. In intimate conversations with those involved, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry (scheduled to die within eight days of appearing onscreen), Werner Herzog achieves what he describes as "a gaze into the abyss of the human soul."

We recently caught up with Werner to chat about Into the Abyss, as well as his recent decision to take on the villain role in Tom Cruise's One Shot, and his thoughts on Bill & Ted 3.

Here is our conversation.

As most of you probably know, there are a bunch of people hanging around Wall Street these days. Making signs, waving them, voting to see what they do next. It’s a growing movement that’s recently been joined by Anonymous threatening to remove the New York Stock Exchange from the internet on October 10th. Normally in a situation like this, the whole world would watch as it plays out before hearing that some studio has optioned the rights to tell the story fictionally, but in this case, independent documentary filmmakers are banding together to make sure that the event is showed in its purest form. A Kickstarter campaign was started for 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film by Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites (the filmmaking team beyond the Black Metal doc Until the Light Takes Us). Other filmmakers involved include Tyler Brodie (executive producer for Another Earth and Pi), Michael Galinsky (Battle for Brooklyn), Ava DuVernay (publicist...

If you happen to be kicking around Seattle on the 16th, 17th, or 18th of September I’m here to let you know that you should definitely check out the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival. Over the past three years the fest has quickly become a small, but ass-kicking collection of genre mayhem that you’re unlikely to find in most other places. Previous years have featured such films as “Until the Light Takes Us”, “Dark Souls”, and “A Serbian Film”, just to name a few. And Mifff has just announced the full lineup for the 2011 festival, and the schedule includes action, horror, sci-fi, and animation. Over three days Mifff will screen five feature length films and more than 40 shorts. The features include: “Absentia” A woman and her sister begin to link a mysterious tunnel to a series of disappearances, including that of her own husband. “Boy Wonder” A young...

Free screenings of Until The Light Takes Us are returning a favour.

"We were very sad to hear that so many lost stock in the Sony warehouse fire, and would like to do whatever we can to help support the stores that supported us," says Audrey Ewell, director and producer of acclaimed documentary Until The Light Takes Us. The film, which explores the origins of the Norwegian black metal scene and came out in cinemas last year, was supported by many independent record shops who promoted it for free. Now Audrey and her partner Aaron Aites want to return the favour by offering free...

Cuz sometimes the stuff that ends up in my in-box is too good, bad, weird, interesting, or otherwise notable not to share. Sometimes, the news is good... Until The Light Takes Us To UK record stores: Free screenings and DVDs to any record stores affected by the Sony warehouse fire (or any damage from riots) The makers of Until The Light Takes Us, the award winning film about the 90’s Norwegian “black metal” music scene, are offering free screenings and DVDs to all UK record stores affected by the riots. The fire that occurred late on Monday the 8th at the Sony warehouse in London destroyed the stock held by Pias, the biggest distributor of independent labels in Britain and Ireland. Affected UK record stores can contact the filmmakers directly by writing info@blackmetalmovie.com. The film will be made available for free, to be shown as in-store or off-site events,...

If it's too cold to leave the house for your local theater, there's plenty of options if you stay inside online, on demand and on DVD. What follows is your guide to all the new releases coming your way between now and April.

Online and On Demand

My French Film Festival

Thanks to bids for Oscar consideration, the winter is traditionally one of the rare times foreign films get plenty of attention in the States, particularly at West Coast festivals such as Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. However, Francophiles in particular will be excited to know you won't have to go to California or New York -- or even Paris for that matter -- to be able to catch some of the most recent cinema from France since uniFrance is unveiling My French Film Festival, which is being billed as the "first exclusively online film festival celebrating French talent" that...

Ever since forming in Suffolk in 1991, Dani Filth's Cradle of Filth have been one of England’s highest profile extreme metal bands. Over the years their musical style has evolved from a classic black metal sound to a cleaner, more "produced" mixture of Gothic metal, symphonic black metal and other extreme metal styles. Thematically the band’s imagery has pretty much remained the same: one that is heavily influenced by Gothic literature, poetry, mythology, sex and horror films.

In early November, 2010, after having already released eight albums and assorted E.P.s, they put out their newest record, the lushly evocative Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa, which is a concept album based on the legend of the lascivious demoness and wife of the Biblical Adam, Lilith. Within the narrative of the album are references to diverse topics (such as Greek mythology, The Knights Templar and Carmelite Nuns) woven into a...

I recently had the opportunity to interview the directors of a very insightful documentary concerning the Norwegian Black Metal scene. Having a very healthy interest in this genre myself, it was amazing to get the chance to conduct an interview.

Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites took their interest in a niche musical genre to Norway itself in order to gain access to some of the leading figures of the industry.

Until The Light Takes Us is a fantastic look at a fantastical event. One that never has, and likely never will be, repeated. You meet the front runners of the scene and hear their personal accounts of the events that unfolded in the early 90′s black metal arena. Ewell and Aites explain here how the project came about and how it felt to interview some of the most infamous characters in modern music history.

FilmShaft: How did the film come...

n order to create Until the Light Takes Us, Aites and Ewell traveled to Norway and immersed themselves amongst the black metal scenesters for several years, establishing the trust and friendship of this film’s subjects. Their focus is on the anti-establishment ideologies of the scene, not to mention how the film’s subjects have historically been misunderstood by the media (for example: though black metal is anti-Christian, that does not mean it is pro-Satan). In other words, it is obvious which side Aites and Ewell are on -- most of the negative aspects of the scene are either shrugged off or ignored altogether, their primary goal is to provide black metal an opportunity for rebuttal against the media’s claims.

At the beginning of the year I saw a brilliant documentary by Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites about the Norwegian black metal scene in the 1990s, where church burnings, media panic, far-right politics and murder occurred alongside the rise of a new, harsh music aesthetic. Until The Light Takes Us will now be released in the UK on DVD from 15th December.

We reviewed the film back in March (read it here) and thought it was a must-watch for those interested in music history that goes against the norm. The names Burzum, Eronymous, Darkthrone might not mean much to the majority of X Factor, American Idol fans, but Norway burned a trail in metal that perhaps went a bit too far.

To support the DVD release the film is also getting a two week run at the Institute of Contemporary Arts – talk about a ‘black Christmas’! If you want to...

Until The Light Takes Us

DVD | 2-Disc DVD | Blu-Ray

Directed by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell

Starring Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, Varg Vikernes, Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg, Kjetil "Frost" Haraldstad

Factory 25

Released: October 19, 2010

It was the early 1990s, and for metalheads, change was in the air. "Alternative" was the buzz word being bandied about by music marketing, Grunge had taken over the charts, new bands and new sounds were coming... but among metal fans there was a desire to search and find something new and something different -- and many were looking for more extreme and brutal movements.

Enter the Norwegian Black Metal movement. A lot of metal fans were first introduced to this scene when news hit international media of Varg Vikernes (Burzum) being arrested and tried for burning a number of churches across Norway. The media across the world had a field day with the story, labeling the initially...

In the last few years—and much to the chagrin of its most devoted followers—the musical subgenre of black metal has grown in popularity. Once the most cultish of cult art forms, black metal (characterized by highly theatrical visuals, low-fidelity sonic intensity, and lyrics focusing on Satanism and paganism) has attracted the attention of casual fans, cultural thrill-seekers, and even academics. For better and for worse, the latter group’s approach stands out in the documentary Until The Light Takes Us. Directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell came to the black-metal scene as outsiders, but they gained unprecedented access ...

It's a jam-packed DVD release week for a change, with plenty of titles both new and old worth digging into (especially if you're looking for something Halloween-related). Nimrod Antal's Predators hits stores today, along with Dario Argento's Giallo, Alejandro Amenábar's period drama Agora, the Night of the Demons remake and Jewish crime drama Holy Rollers starring Jesse Eisenberg. We've also got some interesting non-fiction releases in the form of DisneyNature documentaries Oceans and Crimson Wing: The Mystery of the Flamingo, plus the black metal doc Until the Light Takes Us, and Smash His Camera, which focuses on celebrity photographer Ron Galella. On Blu-ray, we've got new editions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Psycho and Apocalypse Now, and on TV we've got the first season of the original Bionic Woman. Do you see anything worth picking up this week? Predators [1] (+ Blu-ray [2]) Oceans [3] (+ Blu-ray [4]) Crimson Wing: The Mystery of...

The number of home video releases on October 19th is not as abundant as in recent weeks, and fewer re-released titles means those that are available are much more special. In this batch one Adrien Brody flick competes with another, and at least two independent horror titles are making a splash. Two beloved classic films return in Blu-ray where one is supplemented by a documentary treatment of it.

Also, don't forget to strum & drum out with some tunes from Rob Zombie on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Finally, foreign horror gives us an over-the-top Japanese gorefest, a British zombie flick where the $70 budget was spent on tea and biscuits for the zombies, and Norwegian black metal.

Predators

Directed by Nimród Antal

Robert Rodriguez presents Predators (review), a bold new chapter in the Predator universe. Adrien Brody stars as Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors mysteriously brought together on a jungle planet.

We have an interesting bunch of DVD titles this week as well as a special book appearance. On the DVD list we have foreign monsters (from UK & Japan) competing with each other as well as against remakes of big screen features. There is also a special on Norwegian black metal that some may find more interesting. Finally, the book is the second in a trilogy of books co-authored by Guillermo Del Toro.

The Experiment

Directed by Paul Scheuring

This shocking psychological thriller unfolds when 24 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a study designed to evaluate the affects of power and control. Values are tested and lines are crossed when seemingly normal participants are pushed to the breaking point as the experiment spirals out of control. The Experiment is a remake of Das Experiment (review) and stars Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker, Clifton Collins Jr.,...

0:00 - Intro 4:05 - Headlines: Karl Urban is the New Judge Dredd, Sam Worthington to Star in Commando Remake, Terminator 3-D Animated Remake, Lights Camera Jackson: The-11 Year-Old Film Critic 20:35 - Review: The Expendables 57:45 - Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World 1:47:30 - Trailer Trash: Skyline, Enter the Void, Unstoppable 2:03:30 - Other Stuff We Watched: BBC's Sherlock, Man v Food: Season 3, Lock Up, 12th & Delaware, Marooned, Billion Dollar Brain, Cropsey, Johnny Handsome, Until the Light Takes Us, And the Pursuit of Happiness, The Last Lovecraft, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, Standard Operating Procedure, Spartan, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Cobra 3:05:45 - Junk Mail: Film Junk Mega Mix, Favourite and Best Actors, Devil Trailer, Movies with Right Wing Agendas, Tiff Tips 3:26:20 - Twitter Poll: Why did Scott Pilgrim Fail at the Box Office? 3:31:30 - This...

Until The Light Takes Us

Featuring: Gylve Nagell, Varg Vikerness, Bjarne Melgaard, Kjetil Haralstad | Directed by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell

Until The Light Takes Us focuses on the beginnings of Black Metal, and the bands who were at the forefront of this movement; Deaththrone, Burzum and Mayhem. Inevitably this means looking at the arson and murder cases of the early 90s.

While this could have been a sensationalist piece, instead directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell have produced a fascinating documentary that calls into question the perceived aims of Black Metal. It focuses mainly on two key figures, Gylve Nagell of Deaththrone and Varg Vikerness of Burzum, who at the time of production was still in prison for the murder of Øystein Aareth.

The film has no narrative voiceover, no obvious editorial commnent, relying instead on interviews, archive material and footage of Nagell on a day to day basis.

New documentary Until The Light Takes Us shows that, while pop was eating itself, Norway's black metal stars were busy burning churches and killing one another

"It's like New Zealand … only grimmer." Darkthrone's Fenriz is attempting to explain why the tranquil, prosperous surroundings of Norway gave birth to one of the most extreme musical movements in history. The brooding drummer provides the focus for Until The Light Takes Us, a new documentary that picks over the short life and long aftermath of Norway's black metal scene.

Black metal can be roughly traced to the early-90s when Sweden's Bathory parlayed the cartoon satanism of Venom and death metal of Cannibal Corpse into an epic form glorifying Scandinavia's pre-Christian past. The Norwegians then pushed this idea even further, with a tiny scene coalescing around Mayhem, Burzum and Darkthrone. Sporting corpse paint and weaponry, spouting anti-Christian rhetoric and releasing badly recorded, ear-splitting anti-music,...

If you think bands such as Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Slayer or the Jonas Brothers are the zenith of musical depravity, you’ve never heard of the black metal scene predominant in early 1990s Norway. There were no masks and no melodic yet harsh rock music with killer riffs. There was make-up, silly names and killers sans riffs. At the time, the movement caused a national sensation and an international one, too. Why? Well, it wasn’t the music and more to do with the murderous rivalry and church burnings.

Until The Light Takes Us is an exploration of a forgotten era that fused musical theory and production design with larger issues of nationalism and anti-religious stances that became erroneously called “Satanic” by the world’s media.

The name Burzum may not mean much to anybody but the man behind it, Varg Vikernes, was sentenced to 21 years in prison in 1993 for...

From MTV.Com: My favorite Norwegian black-metal story, well-known by now to connoisseurs of the demented, is the one about the singer called — prophetically, as it turned out — Dead. Per Yngve Ohlin was his real-world name, and he fronted the influential black-metal band Mayhem. One day in the spring of 1991, at a house the group shared not far from Oslo, Dead blew his brains out with a shotgun. ("Excuse all the blood," his suicide note said.) His body was discovered by the band's guitarist, Euronymous, who of course realized the police would have to be called. Before doing so, though, Euronymous scurried out to buy a cheap camera, returned to the house, arranged the death scene a little more photogenically — the shotgun carefully positioned next to the corpse, with its frontal lobe still slopping out of the cranium — and snapped some pictures. He also gathered up a number of skull shards,...

Co-directors Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites weren't black afficianados when a friend of theirs at Amoeba Records in San Francisco turned the two indy-music fans onto a sub-genre, that strangely enough, these days is also being appreciated by even the low-fi and roots music scenes. Delving a little deeper, and becoming aware of the notorious history of true Norwegian Black Metal, which includes arson, suicide, and murder, Ewell and Aites decided the subject would be perfect for their feature debut.. So they set off for Norway, where they lived for two years, and ended up getting what I think is the clearest and most ambiguous look at what is often a very misunderstood subculture.

One thing that really sets Until The Light Takes Us apart from the few Black Metal docs that have come out over the past 10 years is the on-screen inclusion of Varg Virkernes, aka Count Grishnak of the band Burzum.

Rating: 7.5/10

Directors: Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell

Studio: Variance Films

Be warned, Until The Light Takes Us is not a standard rock doc. You’re not going to find tricked out concert footage here, glory shots of rock stars wailing away. It’s a much quieter documentary, much sadder, and much more effective. It’s a film about what could have been and what never was, a film about what happens when dreams and people die, a film about dark endings and the people left behind to make sense of it all.

Read more on Theatrical Review: Until The Light Takes Us…...

The Alamo Guide

for November 19th, 2009

It’s totally fall, you guys! I know this, because my allergies have exploded with this cold front, it was 40 something degrees last night, And I Get To Eat Turkey Next Thursday! Oh so much turkey will I eat! With extra dressing and gravy. I will be doing this with my biological family, which, if you consider the other options we have at the Alamo, actually sounds pretty boring. While I’ll be way too full falling asleep staring at the football game that I don’t really care about on my grandparents couch, You can be way too full, falling asleep, staring at the Ut vs A&M football game that you probably Do care about at the Alamo Ritz! Or you can be watching any movie at any of our theaters, because our annual tradition still stands. We’ll be your second...

Stunning black metal documentary Until The Light Takes Us opens Friday!

Controversial, beautiful mindwrecker Antichrist opens Friday too!

This weekend, The Alamo Ritz will unveil two of the most masterfully made and potentially disturbing films of the decade!

Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist has already cemented a reputation for crowd-pleasing and stomach-turning from One Single Screening at Fantastic Fest ‘09. It is explicit, it is challenging, it is grotesque, it has been called offensive, misogynistic and dangerous…but it has also been called a masterpiece and perhaps the Danish auteur’s finest work.

Charlotte Gainsbourg (who won best Actress for the role at Cannes) and Willem Defoe star as an unnamed couple seeking comfort in their country home after the sudden death of their child. While in their forest retreat, as summed up by the unofficial slogan of Fantastic fest ‘09, “chaos reigns.”

Antichrist tickets are Here!

On the all-too-real side of the coin,...

New black metal documentary written and directed by Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites Until The Light Takes Us is out in Us theaters December 4, 2009 (NYC), December 11, 2009 (Los Angeles).

Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. Until The Light Takes Us goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of "Satanists running amok in Europe" to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and beliefs that led to this rebellion against both Christianity and modern culture. Watch the trailer...

To capture this on film, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived with the musicians for several years, building...

With the recent success of such docs as Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Anvil! The Story of Anvil, it seems that heavy metal is a pretty popular topic in the world of non-fiction right now. In Sam Dunn’s Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, one of the most fascinating (and creepy) segments was the stuff involving the Norwegian Black Metal bands, who were also featured in a short doc that was included on the DVD release of the film. Well, if you wanted to know more about this disturbing and violent subculture of musicians who supposedly burn churches and commit murder in the name of their music, you probably should check out Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell’s feature-length film Until The Light Takes Us. The filmmakers supposedly moved to Norway and lived with the various band members for several years in order to gain...

There is no shortage of documentaries on the infamous Norwegian black metal scene, but it seems until now there has yet to be one that gathered together the figures that truly mattered on film, and got the key players in the movement to speak without censoring themselves. Filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites have pulled off the nearly impossible task of penetrating the inner circle of a very secular scene with their new documentary, Until The Light Takes Us. Moving from their homebase of New York city to Norway for two years, Ewell and Aites have not only put together what looks to be the most cohesive and fleshed out documentary on the subject, but have also made something that is much more beautiful to look at than it’s counterparts, which all seem to suffer from a Vh-1 Behind The Music asthetic.

The fact that Varg Vikernes, of the one man band Burzum,...