The first thing I had go up on the site this week was a book review. Embarrassingly enough, this was something I could have and should have written months ago. Yes, that’s months. There was just always other material that was more pressing and it stayed simmering on the back burner until the bottom of the pan was covered with a crusty blackness as impenetrable as concrete. Needless to type, I’ve been very reluctant to sign up for further book reviews.

Movie reviews, though…I’m all over that. This week I got the chance to review the new documentary from Errol Morris, which is very good. It’s very much in the cheekier vein of his earlier work, albeit combined with the amazingly stylistic technical approach he’s developed.

I also reviewed the film Rapt, which required a certain amount of restraint on my part to avoid once again noting the clinical chill that is practically inherent to French film. Good as it is–and it’s quite good–the last portion gets a little compromised by the French tendency to cast emotions in crystalline ice. There’s a key character transition that could have used a little more American showiness to it.

On the music front, I got the opportunity to feel my age by writing about the 25th anniversary reissue of Lifes Rich Pageant by R.E.M. The album’s initial release predated my time at the college radio station by a couple of years, but it was recent enough that it felt like a fresh, vital part of the music library. And now it’s a quarter-century old? Off. Excuse me while I sit down to avoid causing any damage to my frail, withered bones.