Spectrum Culture eased back into operation after a holiday break this week. Even though we had a very limited amount of content, I still squeezed some of my high-falutin’ words in there. On the film side, I wrote about the new film from director Miguel Gomes, which has been turning up on some of the more esoteric year-end “best of” lists. It’s not quite at that level for me, but I certainly see the appeal.

This week also marked the return of a regular yearly feature in which the writers collectively look back at the albums and films from five years ago to provide a fresh, hindsight-enhanced tally of the finest achievements in each form. We actually wrote these blurbs several months ago, so I’d completely forgotten which works I’d written on. As it happens, I was assigned a film for which I’ve already established some pretty significant admiration. As for the music side, I didn’t get to write about my clear-cut choice for the best album of 2007, but the release that was assigned to me was still a helluva record.