Blinded by the neighbour’s house.
The Best Albums of the Decade
As a data scientist, applying machine learning to my listening patterns has led to this quantitative analysis of the albums of the decade. I can therefore reveal that these are officially the best albums released during the previous ten year period:
Or rather, I had Emacs tally up which albums I’d listened to most over the previous decade. However, that just led to the oldest albums winning, of course, since they’ve had most time to be listened to.
So I experimented with various way to apply decays. The question is: If I listened to an album ten times per year since 2010, is that an album that should have the same rating as an album that I’ve listened to ten times this year? Probably… not? My default mode of listening is to direct Emacs to play me the newest music I’ve bought, so I listen to almost all things I buy 5-8 times, whether I like them or not.
Like any data scientist, the solution is obvious: Fiddle with the hyperparameters until I get a list I kinda agree with.
Right?
Right.
The result is above. The album I listened most to was 50 Words For Snow by Kate Bush at a whopping 50 times (which ended up as number 6, but was bought in 2011), and the winner here, Dani Siciliano, I’ve only listened to 28 times (but bought in 2016).
Science is hard!
For giggles, while we’re gazing into the abyss of my navel, here’s the list of albums I listened the most to, in total, no matter how old they are:
Geez! You’d almost think I like Talking Heads and Kate Bush or something. (The winner, Remain in Light I listened to 100 times this decade, and Diamond Dogs, at number 12, I listened to 51 times.)
So are there any further ways to torture this data set? Uhm… OK, let’s look at albums I bought this decade, but were made earlier. (But this time I removed the weights, just because.)
There.
NFLX2019 December 6th: Marriage Story
Marriage Story. Noah Baumbach. 2019. ☆☆☆☆★★
Oh, I’ve seen reviews of this movie in all the newspapers. And it’s always that way: A Netflix movie either has no presence whatsoever in mass media or it’s absolutely everywhere. So I guess that there’s certain Netflix movies that Netflix pushes really hard, and the rest they just drop into the void without any trace?
Scarlett Johansson is a great actor, of course, and Adam Driver is… er… a big name at the moment?
It starts off well with a double monologue thing that’s intriguing, but it’s over a bed of schmaltzy classicalish music that absolutely drives me nuts. How can anybody stand that stuff?
So I’m conflicted right from the start.
Emacs tells me that I’ve seen one of Baumbach’s movies before: Frances Ha at 20150411T211713. But that was before I was blogging about any random movie, so I have no idea what I thought of it.
See? All The Reviewers. Hm… OK, it had a very limited theatrical release — sixteen cinemas? But that’s enough to get all these newspapers to write about it?
Fortunately the musical bed disappears. I would have gone totally nuts.
Hey, this is pretty funny! One good line after another.
Adam Driver is surprisingly good. The constant stream of really famous actors doing supporting roles gets a bit “wha but wha” after a while… perhaps it’s too much? But I don’t mind. It’s fun.
Laura Dern is pure awesomeness.
Except the cringe comedy passages. I just can’t deal with that.
I think this movie worked perfectly for the first hour, and then it takes a nose dive. In between the interesting scenes, there’s scenes of pure tedium. I kinda started hating this movie at certain points.
This post is part of the NFLX2019 blog series.
NFLX2019 December 5th: A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby. John Schultz. 2019. ☆☆★★★
Oh, this is part of a series? At least, while searching for it, there seemed to be some other movies with suspiciously similar names.
And it starts with a recap.
Check.
Man, it just immediately seems like a super-cheap film: The early crowd scenes seems to have a whopping 30 extras.
It’s supposed to be set in an obscure kingdom in Europe, so of course all the actors (except the princess I mean queen) talk Estuary. So this is supposed to be kinda Britishish but more freeform?
Savage!
I want to say that this is easy, breezy, Xmas fun-zy, but it’s not. It’s a rather annoying movie; schmaltzy performances fully scored by the Now That’s What I Call Generic Copyright-Free Xmas Music vol XIII. I mean, I may not be the target audience for this, but… I almost am? I like silly, romantic nonsense? But this is just so uninspired and unfunny.
I guess Netflix is trying to stock up on these unoffensive movies? The ones you can have on at Xmas without actually watching? But this is not going to be one of those movies, because it’s just too bland.
I do like that they use really bright colours. It’s so unusual these days when everything is colour-corrected into blue/orange or teal/er orange, and the rest is shades of grey. Are? Is. I mean, look at this:
That’s a lot of colour.
This post is part of the NFLX2019 blog series.
NFLX2019 November 28th: Holiday Rush
Holiday Rush. Leslie Small. 2019. ☆☆★★★★
I think we’re getting to a certain … time of year. I think Netflix has done at least half a dozen Xmas movies this year? But interestingly enough, each one seems to target a lightly different genres. Or audiences.
So this is the black one.
Uh-oh. OK, but these day with all the racist brigading going on you can never trust audience scores.
That’s a weirdly specific reference! Who hurt you, Jeffrey! Who!
Well, nobody likes mild language; we all want some fucking swearing.
If I’m reading the director’s imdb right, he’s only done one feature movie before (in 2004). The rest of them are TV episodes, comedy specials and documentaries about famous comedians? I can see that. It’s got a slight TV vibe going on, and while it’s not about a stand-up comedian, it’s about a radio host.
That said, there’s things here I like. I like the slightly restless camera work: It’s not frantic or anything, but it sort of slides around a bit in many scenes; very attractive framing. The performances are good, especially the lead and his producer are fun to watch.
It’s kinda really extremely boring, though.
This post is part of the NFLX2019 blog series.