It's that time of year again sukkas.

It's the end of February, which means the Oscars are approaching and the time for our annual blaxploitation special is at hand. Ooh, we made it funky, dropped a few beats, put a l'il stank on 'em, and sent them out to sensuously massage the ears of a grateful public. In between seriously groovy musical diversions from 70s heavy-hitters Quincy Jones and Curtis Mayfield, we discussed the controversial history of the genre and the lingering influence it had on the careers of Samuel Jackson and Quintin Tarantino, to name a few. And, blegh, speaking of funky...we also had to review a truly cloacal film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. I don't even know why this was a Ghost Rider film at all, as it bears no resemblance to its shitty precursor, or even the comic franchise as a whole; it just happens that a fireskull monster appears after Nicolas Cage clearly goes off his bipolar medication. And seriously, this contained some of the best Nic Cage-ing since "Not the bees!!!" and it still wasn't watchable. This is unacceptable.

We heard music from the following:

Across 110th Street, 1972 - J.J. Johnson
Supafly, 1972 - Curtis Mayfield
Roots, 1977 - Quincy Jones & Gerald Fry
Barry Gordy's The Last Dragon, 1985 - Various
Cleopatra Jones, 1973 - J.J. Johnson

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The Nantucket Corn-bucket

A precipitous snowy day turned into a dreary, drizzling mess before today's show - an appropriate forecast rejoinder to tomorrow's Valentine's Day, that saccharine baby of a holiday America should've aborted before grew up to be the sanctimonious, spoiled attention-whore we coddle out of guilt and social pressure. Yes, I'm single, why? We did our best to serve you soft-skulled suckers the gooey, love-jaculate you yearn for through music from several (sarcastically) romantic films. Maybe I'm just cynical because the film I saw this week was Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, which I expect to win the meaningless Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for its sheer emotional brutality. It was a wonderful film, but ye gods, let's just say don't watch it on a weekend that your lithium prescription hasn't been renewed... or you'll be fucked...which is, ironically, what most of us won't be this Valentine's Day. Woe.

Tonight we heard music from:

Big, 1988 - Howard Shore
The Karate Kid, 1984 - Bill Conti
Indecent Proposal, 1993 - John Barry
Blue Valentine, 2010 - Grizzly Bear
American Beauty, 1999 - Thomas Newman

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