Overrated/Underrated: Celebrating jazz in ‘Playing Changes,’ and let’s mock the Oscars one more time

UNDERRATED

“Random Acts of Flyness� on HBO: Created by artist and filmmaker Terence Nance (best known for the revered 2012 feature “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty�), this newcomer is billed as a sketch comedy series, but its methods and material stretch well beyond that format’s usual reach. Functioning at times like a surrealist sequel to MTV2’s weirdo comedy series “Wonder Showzen� from the mid-’00s, “Flyness� artfully addresses various realities of the experience of being black in America and, like all the best comedy, walks fearlessly with a sense of real tragedy with bits like an imaginary children’s show called “Everybody Dies� and Jon Hamm’s “White Thoughts.� (Warning: The video below includes foul language.)

Nate Chinen’s “Playing Changes�: If you’ve been paying attention to jazz of late — or, from time to time, this column — you might get the impression we’re in the midst of a fertile, boundary-pushing time in the music. That fact gets a thorough and thoughtful examination with this book by NPR contributor and jazz critic Nate Chinen, who looks at the work of a generation of artists that includes Kamasi Washington, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Jason Moran and finds a level of imagination and expression that has stretched the genre beyond the “jazz wars� of years ago into an ever-expanding sound of endless possibility.

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OVERRATED

The Oscars’ pandering: In a move that — like some of its previous broadcasts — must find its biggest fans inside the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offices, the Oscars elected to address its declining ratings by, among other things, introducing a category that’s called, more than a bit condescendingly, “outstanding achievement in popular film.� You know, all those movies that drag people away from Netflix to the multiplex. The change begs the question of why the academy feels its show needed a glorified participation trophy, to say nothing of how to characterize the rest of the nominees. Should we assume they’re “unpopular�?

Our reality TV reality: If you were to have placed a bet some five years ago that for a time the year 2018 would be consumed by drama between the U.S. president and allegations in a tell-all memoir from former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman, the length of those odds might have been enough to fund a very long vacation. While it’s already been said that the sense of political theater by the current administration is undeniably informed by the mind of “Apprentice� creator Mark Burnett, our current capacity for new and strange story lines is outpacing the source material. What’s the best way to get voted off this island?

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