I had a lot of stuff go up at Spectrum Culture this week, so let’s just tick them off:

–It’s fairly rare that I write for the book section, but it occurred to me late last fall that I just might be able to get myself a review copy of the massive, intimidating and universally adored new outing from Chris Ware, Building Stories. Evidently, I made my request right before our editor-in-chief, inspiring at least a bit of envy. That’s the proper reaction on his part, by the way. This thing is spectacular. In my many reviews for Spectrum, this is only the second time I’ve felt compelled to give something our highest rating, five out of five stars.

–My turn came up in the “Revisit” series on the film side. These are always especially tough for me, as I have a hard time figuring out my angle. Then I was struck by the idea of going back to look at Steven Soderbergh’s first film on the occasion of his announced intention that Side Effects will be his late outing for the big screen.

–I’ve been anxious to see Rodney Ascher’s documentary on film freaks who dive way too deep into Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ever since I read about its debut at Sundance a year ago. As I note in the review, there are few things I find more entertaining than the Kubrickian conspiracy theorists that flock to that movie.

–Finally, I wrote the latest entry in our ongoing Oeuvre series, surveying the filmography of Brian De Palma. I wrote on what may be his most disastrous movie, The Bonfire of the Vanities. And I did so at my request, which could reasonable be seen as an act of cinematic masochism. This came out in December of 1990, when The Reel Thing, the radio movie review show I co-hosted, was into its first year. It was a movie I should have seen, but I was lucky enough to go on a family vacation to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, and by the time I got back Bonfire was completely gone, theater owners practically rubbing down their screens with bleach to remove the taint of it. I read Julie Salamon’s terrific book about the making of Bonfire and even interviewed her for the radio show, but still never watched more than a couple minutes of the film itself. I liked the idea of taking this opportunity to rectify that. As expected, I was lucky to have missed it all these years.