M&M #16

Black Mountain – Black Mountain (2005)

Black Mountain is one of those intense bands that seem to be rising out of the ashes of early 70's heavy metal psychedelic rock. Trends in all types of fashion seem to come back around to the forefront eventually (quite often like a bad meal that never tastes as good on the way back up) and the music scene is just like any other fashion mold out there. Black Mountain avoids the wannabe label though because they simply create fabulous hard rock that makes your upper body sway slowly as the heavy chords rip through your sound system. Being able to add a digital quality to their dense rhythm gives it some light air to breathe with and these songs just keep coming at you until you really start to rely on them.

















The Prestige – Christopher Nolan (2006)
The Illusionist – Neil Burger (2006)

So often in hollywood you have movies with competing storylines being released at the same time. It's like one studio heard that another studio was making a movie about this subject, so they turn around and try to one-up them by making a better movie on the same subject. Then they both feed off the hype of competing films so that they can get people in the theaters and as is so often the case, the movies rarely live up to the hype. In this case both of these movies are actually pretty damn good and even though they are both about magicians, the stories themselves couldn't be more different. The Illusionist is a thrilling love story set in Vienna during the turn of the 20th century, while The Prestige is set just before the turn of the century in London and following the death of a woman two avenging magicians stalk one another over the course of their lives...Hmmm, maybe they're more alike than I originally thought. Well, what's important is that both of these movies are worth watching.