Looks like some lucky folks in France who purchase a brand new Monopoly set might get a lot more than they bargained for. During celebrating of the legendary board game’s 80th anniversary this year, 80 sets that have been produced in France will have real Euro currency inside, according to The Washington Post. The cool total comes to 20,580 Euros, or about $23,000. Not bad for a $15 dollar investment (the general retail price of the game).

All throughout the year, there will be celebrations at hand for the real estate made easy game, which was originally released by Parker Brothers in 1935 and which quickly became a national phenomenon, and eventually, a global phenomenon, which it currently is. Through the decades since its introduction to the gaming market, there have been countless versions which span almost every language known to man, and also countless versions which have highlighted a particular product or brand, as in The Beatles, Spongebob, Family Guy, Star Wars, The Walking Dead and even focusing custom versions on a particular city like New York or Los Angeles. All told, the phenomenology of Monopoly continues to baffle pundits and delights audiences and new generations with each passing year.

M*A*S*H, the 1970 satirical black comedy, which dipped a poison pen in so many sacred cows that had been pretty much off limits and taboo in cinema before it, celebrated its 45th anniversary on January 25th, 2015.

Set during the Korean War of the 1950s, M*A*S*H had right on its sleeve an allegorical backdrop to so many current events of the late 1960s such as Vietnam, life in general during that tumultuous time, and anti-establishment sentiments, feelings, and bents. Done sometimes with an almost cinema verite documentary style, one of the end results of the unique approach taken by the directorial maverick film legend Robert Altman, M*A*S*H was the kind of film that had been unseen before in Hollywood. Running with an almost ragtag, loose visual style, it’s almost voyeuristic in the ways we see the comedy in the film and the film in general, and there are plenty of laughs: ranging from slapstick to witty to punny to sublime and ridiculous, there’s all styles and temperatures, from cool to downright raunchy in some respects. Eyebrows must have certainly been raised when the old guard audience of old guard Hollywood first laid their peepers on the film at certain sequences without question. But all the while, it’s the kind of film that is sort of winking at everyone and everything, 100 percent conscious of what it is; there’s a reverberating feeling that hits the tinderbox every time and creates incendiary types of experiences for the viewer when they watch it.

As part of the ongoing series of Led Zeppelin reissues with coveted bonus tracks, next month will see the re-release of what is arguably the band’s greatest moment in their recorded history, the two-record set Physical Graffiti, which was originally released 40 years ago this year.

A bonus track from the upcoming re-mastered package has gone viral, an early, previously unreleased and rough around the edges mix of one of the band’s most well known tunes, the FM radio staple “Houses of the Holy,” which was originally recorded in 1972 and was intended to be the title song of Zep’s 1973 record of the same name, but was pulled at the last minute as the band felt it “didn’t fit” on that release.

Edgar Froese, who helped pioneer what was to be known as Kraut Rock, which utilized rock elements with electronic sounds, most notably in Tangerine Dream, died on January 20, 2015, of a pulmonary embolism. The musician was in Vienna, Austria, when he died suddenly, according to a post on the Tangerine Dream Facebook page. He was 70.

Starting in 1967, Tangerine Dream was one of the most prolific and versatile bands that ever existed. With Froese as the only constant member through over 100 albums — many which used high amounts of synthesizers most notably the Moog, which had been dabbled with by various artists prior (The Monkees, Wendy Carlos) — Tangerine Dream became one of the leaders of the aforementioned Kraut Rock genre, and they shared success side-by-side with other legendary bands of that ilk like Kraftwerk and Can. Under the aegis of Froese, the band found its peak in the mid 1970s, having much success in the UK. Elsewhere, the band was revered in cult circles, something it remains to this day. In fact, the band was a curio at best to a lot of people, and was immortalized in Gonzo critic Lester Bangs’ unforgettable cough syrup-soaked wild bender piece, “I Saw God and Or Tangerine Dream.” In the piece, which originally ran in Creem magazine back in 1973, Bangs waxes while speeding on Robitussin about the visual and aural joys of attending a Tangerine Dream light show.

Whiplash
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist
Blu-ray | DVD
Sony Pictures Classics
Theatrical Release Date: October 10, 2014
Home Video Release Date: February 24, 2015

In a key scene in Whiplash, the ferociously passionate music teacher Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who is at once intimidating, forceful, powerful, and unapologetic, tells Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), the young, puckish stars-in-his-eyes wannabe-one-of-the-greats jazz drummer, that one of the worst things you can say to someone is “good job.” But with this film, which has been a critical darling paramount of some of the great films of all time in the modern age, director and writer Damien Chazelle has done much, much more than a good job. In fact, he’s done an eye-opening, jaw-dropping superb one.