#^d 2016-02-29 #^h Music Week

Music: Current count 26339 [26298] rated (+41), 410 [420] unrated (-10).

Most of this week's haul has already appeared in Rhapsody Streamnotes, if you noticed. I was rather bummed when I posted a link on Facebook and only got three "likes" and no comments. I put a lot of work into that, and I thought I came up with some really interesting records, most of which got very little recognition elsewhere. It seems that even Facebook didn't like the post, as it swallowed the URI and didn't bother picking up an image (a process which became mysterious and unpredictable a year or so ago). I did check that the link works, but maybe it got assigned some super-low priority that kept it out of readers' feeds. I also don't seem to have any way to share my Facebook posts with the Expert Witness group, which would give them a little broader circulation.

One thing a bit odd about last week was that most of the A- records pictured to the right and listed below came after the Streamnotes post. Usually I find a few things as I'm wrapping up. but last week only Tribu Baharú appeared in time, with two records (Alberto Pinton and Daveed Diggs) found the day after the post. This week's two jazz records are 2016 releases, from my mail queue. The other two appeared on Ye Wei Blog's 2015 EOY list (although it looks like the Diggs album originally appeared in 2012). About half of this week's records are 2015 releases -- consider that half-full or half-empty as you like.

Thought I'd note that we watched the Oscars last night -- using the DVR to speed through commercials, acceptance speeches, and most of those song numbers (my wife had control of the remote). We probably saw a record low number of nominated films, and I've rarely been so ambivalent about the ones I've seen. Some crib notes:

I'll stop there, since most of the rest was won by Mad Max: Fury Road. I can sort of see the logic behind Makeup and Hair Styling, Costume Design, and Film Editing (though I much preferred Carol in the first two and The Big Short in the latter, just to pick the first things that popped into my mind). But the two awards for sound only reinforce my old suspicion that the loudest film wins. By the end I realized that Mad Max: Fury Road would have been less offensive (and probably made more sense) had I turned close captioning on and cut the sound way down.

For context, here's a quick, ranked rundown of 2015 movies we did see:

  1. The Big Short [A-]
  2. Bridge of Spies [A-]
  3. Trumbo [A-]
  4. Carol [A-]
  5. The Martian [B+]
  6. Mr. Holmes [B+]
  7. Brooklyn [B+]
  8. Black Mass [B+]
  9. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel [B]
  10. Star Wars: The Force Awakens [B] -- in IMAX
  11. Mad Max: Fury Road [C+]

As I said, we didn't see much in 2015. We did catch our first 2016 release, Hail Caesar, today: not an especially good film, but it had more than a few great jokes (and a couple amusing dance numbers) [B+]. The Revenant is still in local theatres, and there's a good chance that Spotlight will get another encore. Less likely that The Hateful Eight will come back, but that's another film that we meant to see but didn't find time.

On the other hand I've probably watched more television this year than any time since I was a teenager. While most of it is rather light, I've gotten to where I prefer the pacing of a serial. Something, perhaps, to write about at a later date.

Too late for yesterday's political post, but I should note that we can add Kris Kobach's name to the list of Donald Trump endorsers. Had this happened a day earlier, I would have slotted his name in the Trump fanclub list somewhere between David Duke and Ann Coulter. Kobach is Secretary of State here in Kansas, or as he likes to think of it, the guy in charge of rigging elections. But he also freelances writing anti-immigrant legislation for ALEC, most of which has been ruled unconstitutional. A truly repugnant excuse for a human being.

New records rated this week:

Old music rated this week:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: