Just like that, it’s that time again, where the holiday season is upon us and the mad scrambles down store aisles to find just the right gifts for friends and loved ones commences. It’s a yearly ritual that always seems to come sooner than later. It’s also a sign that the year is coming to a close, and of course there’s no question that 2016 will remain in memory and history as one of the most turbulent, challenging, and painful times ever seen. It is for that reason that the holiday time should hold even extra special positive emotional weight, as community and solidarity run high among people during this time, acting as sort of metaphoric concrete that fills in the gaps that division among many created. And music too, is an eternal, external, and ultimately internal healing agent for the soul, regardless if times are happy or sad, joyous or maudlin. Music also reflects those aforementioned emotions and more. Here’s some of the best released this past year that will for sure excite even the most hardened by the whirlwind of the times and warm someone’s soul like kindling a hearth on the coldest December nights.

Check out our 2016 Holiday Geek Gift Guide for Music…

During a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London earlier this week, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour surprised fans with a special guest: Benedict Cumberbatch, star of Sherlock, The Imitation Game, and the upcoming Marvel title Doctor Strange.

But Cumberbatch wasn’t just there to hang out and enjoy the show. He was there to sing. After Gilmour began playing “Comfortably Numb,” the actor took the center stage spotlight to sing Roger Waters’ parts of the song.

You can see a video of Cumberbatch singing with Gilmour here below.

Synchronicity is not a recent concept in the realm of pop culture, and has become quite well known with regards to the eerie pairing of The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. A long time ago though, I discovered an even more eerie pairing that synchronized in an unnerving fashion: The film Begotten and Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar…

Long ago, I stumbled across references to a film called Begotten. The images that I had seen online from the movie gave haunting and disturbing impressions. Curious, I began looking into the movie, and eventually watched the film. I was always interested in viewing challenging films, particularly those considered to be within the horror genre.

The long and storied history of cinema is one to be studied, admired, and treasured for the many timeless classic feature films it has brought to our astonished eyes. But beneath that history lies buried a mass grave of unrealized films that were either killed at the treatment or script stage or were permitted to proceed in front of the cameras before being shut down and virtually forgotten about for the remainder of time infinite. In an alternate universe many of those unmade movies completed the journey from random idea to the new release section of your neighborhood Target and irrevocably changed the face of cinema forever.

This is the story of one of those great unmades. This is the story of Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s Dune.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear’s path, and only I will remain.”

This week, more updates in the Edward Snowden/NSA case, Instagram adds video, the FAA relaxes rules on gadgets during travel, Barnes & Noble quits making the Nook, is Pandora ripping its artists off?…and much more.