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2015 was a great year with some excellent films, and 2016 looks like it will do just as well. Zootopia is an example of one of the ones I am waiting for, filled with the kind of animals-as-humans animation Disney is famous for and looking quite tasty in the second trailer for the film. This will be hitting the big screen on March 4th, and has an amazing cast doing the voice overs. Other movies worth checking out in 2016 include La belle et la bĂȘte, The 5th Wave, Ip Man 3, Kung Fu Panda 3… and that is just in January!

New York City is rolling out its LinkNCY FREE Gigabit Wifi access points, which take the place of existing phone booths. When they are done they plan to have 7,500 public hubs throughout the city, each including USB charging ports and a touchscreen web browsing display for those without tablets or smart phones. To defray the cost of this free public service they are using two 55-inch advertising displays at each hub site, which they estimate will generate more than $500 million in add revenue over the next dozen years.

On December 21st SpaceX made history by bringing the first stage of a rocket launch safely back to Earth, as part of a mission that put 11 satellites in various orbits. What makes this important is the fact that being able to reuse the first rocket stage reduces the cost of going to space to 1% of its current price tag. Check out the article about reusability on the SpaceX web site for their take on the topic. The Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral and the first stage landed back there as well. There is an excellent article about the mission at MIT Technology Review if you would like a few more details. Besides covering the launch and landing the video also covers the satellite launches.

If Anomalisa waits for Friday it will not be eligible for the upcoming Academy Awards round, so it is launching on Wednesday, the 28th. As far as I know it is not genre, but it is animated and it has gotten some excellent critical reviews. I have every intention to see this one on the big screen so I will know whether or not to cheer it on for the award.

In Movies Hitman: Agent 47 is the story of a genetically engineered assassin who is not terribly happy about his fate. He teams up with a woman who may be the offspring of one of the earlier iterations in his lineage to try to stop a multinational corporation which is out to unlock the secret of his creation and build an army of unstoppable killers. They are the only thing standing between that group and world domination, and the world could really use their help. Sadly, that seems to be all the new releases we get this week in any genre category, but that isn’t terribly surprising considering the holidays were last week, and the buying gifts season is officially over for this year.

The best music of 2015 has to include the Ulfuls, who had several killer releases this year, with Sporty Party at the top of their list. Did I mention that 2015 was the year of One OK Rock, when after a decade of working their collective tails off they finally broke into the US market with a major record label giving them full distribution across North America? They are the last few tracks in today’s group, truly the best new music of the year.