I was kept plenty busy by Spectrum Culture, this week. For one thing, this week was a fairly uncommon instance of me having two films to review instead of one, although that was more a product of a slight tangle with the prior week’s schedule than any ambition on my part. So even though I shouldn’t have been scrambling to get it all in, that’s exactly what happened.

I started with a significant disappointment: Lynn Shelton’s new film. I really enjoyed her prior directorial effort, but the new film is a mess, entirely wasting her best cast yet (and sadly the latest indicator that Ellen Page, a supremely gifted actor, has either very bad luck or questionable taste when it comes to picking her indie film outings). It actually pained me a bit to assign the low star rating, but the movie is clearly subpar.

The other film I reviewed is a documentary about a former left-wing activist turned FBI informant. The story is interesting, infuriating and surprising in the way of all the best documentaries, but I wound up having some problems with some of the staging of the information, knocking my assessment down to sort of a soft recommendation. I am pleased that some of my spite directed toward the Andrew Breitbarts of the world made it through the editorial process of the review, because even I’ll admit it skates right up the ice rink border between pertinent and extraneous information.

I had a new music review, covering the latest album from Braids, which is another instance of me deliberately picking up a release a little bit outside of my usual zone. As if almost always the case when I do that, it was a tough haul to get to the finished review, but I’m pleased with the result.

I also wrote on my favorite Bishop Allen song for a new List Inconsequential on the songs that bring us immediate joy when we hear them. I do love the song I selected, but I sort of which I had thought of my fellow writer Tabitha’s choice, which wound up slotted in right after mine. Also, had I not just written about Too Much Joy, I may very well have gone with “Crush Story,” actually the first track I thought of given the prompt. I’m sure the specific use of the word “joy” had something to do with that.