David Morriseey and John Simm in the BBC serial drama State of Play.

I just finished watching the 2003 BBC miniseries State of Play and it's fantastic!  It's sort of like All the President's Men and The Wire (Season 3 & 5) with a sex scandal thrown in. The story surrounds a team of journalists investigating the death of a political researcher who was having an affair with the prominant Labour MP who was also her employer.  It's a brainy thriller, with the tension building around the journalistic investigation, minus the car chases and shootouts you often get with American thrillers.  The writing is sharp and the plot a complicated series of revelations and twisty turns. Also, not one performance in this large cast falls flat. Bill Nighy plays the team's fearless editor, mixing his characteristic wry humor with a commanding editorial presence. John Simm plays lead journalist Cal McAffrey with just the right combo of confidence and vulnerability.  The cast also includes David Morrissey, James McAvoy (Atonement), and Polly Walker.  You have to rent State of Play or get it from Netflix.  Hollywood is releasing a film version this year, directed by Kevin MacDonald (Last King of Scotland) and starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn and Jason Bateman.  It's hard to imagine Hollywood preserving the integrity of this intelligent 6-part series when right off the bat they have to boil down the narrative to two hours.  Don't risk it - see the BBC series first.  You'll be hooked.

I'm anxious to share what I've been reading with you, especially a lovely book I devoured on the plane during my trip back east.  It's called Away (now out in paperback) and it's the fifth novel from Amy Bloom (Come to Me).  Away spans many decades as it follows the courageous Lillian Leyb, a young Jewish immigrant whose search for her daughter takes her from New York's Lower East Side to the Alaskan frontier.  Along the way she meets a colorful array of characters, my favorite being the prostitute Gumdrop and her pimp, Snooky Salt.  But there's also the touching Yaakov Shimmelmen and the wounded John Bishop. Bloom writes her way into these characters inner lives with such insight and beauty.  I can't recommend this book enough for its lyrical writing and gutsy heroine.

I'm also reading Annie Leibovitz's new book At Work, which was under the Christmas tree this year with my name on it (thanks, Mom!).  This is not a book of photography but rather a memoir of her working life.  Leibovitz, unlike Bloom, is not a lyrical writer. She's as matter of fact and terse as they come.  However, she's got great stories about the early days of her career with Rolling Stone and the origins of some of her most famous photographs.  She writes of photographing John Lennon hours before he was killed (right) and going on tour with the Rolling Stones. Leibovitz also explains why she doesn’t like photographing live music, and how she began placing her subjects in the middle of an idea, the style of portraiture that has become her signature.  It is the latter that I admire most about her work.  Many of her most famous portraits are also included in the book.  For anyone interested in photography, this is an ideal read.

Musician Will Oldham, aka Bonnie Prince Billy.

Kelefa Sanneh's profile of singer songwriter Will Oldham in this week's New Yorker is a great character sketch of a reluctant subject. You many know Oldham as Bonnie Prince Billy, one of the names under which he records.  Oldham is a prolific musician with a strong fan base and he's become an indie darling, though he adamantly shuns the title (in true indie style). In Sanneh's profile, we learn he has three musical heroes:  Merle Haggard, Leonard Cohen, and...believe it or not...R. Kelly. Oldham even had a role in Kelly's hip-hopera Trapped in the Closet.  His most recent album is Lie Down in the Light.

A cherry ripe inspired macaron dessert.

This site is amazing!  It's called TasteSpotting and features page after page of the most beautiful food photographs.  It really is food porn.  Just looking doesn't quite stasify, so if you click on the photo, it takes you to the original recipe, blog post, or story where it was featured.  For food lovers and even the mildly curious, it's a real treat.

If your brain tends to merge all the media you take in, and you find yourself casting the books you read with the perfect actor or actress for the movie version, than you'll definitely enjoy StoryCasting.  Find your favorite books, cast them, and then compare your choices with other amateur casting directors on the site.

And finally, David Denby (New Yorker) and Adam Sternbergh (New York Magazine) go toe to toe over snark and its value to the cultural dialogue.  You can guess who comes down on which side - Denby writes a book attacking snark, and Sternbergh snarkily defends it here. I'm going to read Denby's book, so I'll let you know what I think. 

Do you have any book recommendations?  Articles?  Websites?  Share them with us...

Not only was there ice on my car this morning, for some reason KPBS is FREEZING today.  Since there are greater forces setting the tone for the day, I decided to work with the theme.  Check out these photographs of all things frozen, inspired by the start of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in Harbin, China.  This guy is a total knucklehead, I don't care how enlightened he claims to be. 

A member of the "Optimalist" heath club hacks a hole into the ice covering a canal near the village of Viazynka, Belarus on December 28, 2008. The club promotes a healthy way of living, encouraging its members to spend most of their free time in the countryside. (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko) 

San Diegans rang in the new year in festive fashion and capped off the weekend with a win from the Chargers.  Here are some images from the first weekend of 2009 in San Diego. 

Jake by Sean Dejecacion.

Last Sunset of the Year by zhangchi982514.

Reel Big Fish at House of Blues, by Alan Tran of Cinemorphosis and iShoot SD.

694_San Diego by VincentS.

Deej Strikes a Pose at Coronado by *Miss D*.

001:365 by itssummertime.  She is cooking with her father.

Happy New Year, Culture Lusters.  Today is a day of new beginnings, bucket lists and resolutions, diet plans and newly purchased gym memberships.  It's a day of football, boring parades on television, and nursed hangovers.  In the south, it's all about black-eyed peas.  The media does a lot of recapping on this day and the internets are full of "best of" lists.  I compiled some of my favorites off-beat lists for you to read couchside. 

NPR has a great list of the 10 Best Unknown Artists from the year, with music included.  I love Liz Durrett's (pictured right) voice and am going to spend some quality time listening to Benji Hughes.  The A.V. Club publishes its band names from the year, possibly my favorite year-end list.  The metal genre always features some real doozies, like Engaged in Mutilating and Cemetary Rapist.  Band names from various other genres:  Your Kisses Cause Crashes, Funkmaster Cracker, Anthony Smith's Trunk Fulla Funk, and Shitty Shitty Band Band.  The list is long and truly magnificent!

If you're a big tv fan, than the A.V. Club has another list for you:  the best episodes from the best shows of the year.  I don't watch a lot of the shows on the list so I can't vouge for the curation, but the episode they picked from The Wire is a good choice so hopefully it's reflective of the overall quality. 

Videogum has the Worst People of 2008, which includes Kim Zolciak from Real Housewives of Atlanta, my one guilty pleasure, train wreck viewing experience of the year.  And here's a list of the 10 Worst DVD's of the Year.  I'm pretty sure KPBS film critic Beth Accomando would disagree with the inclusion of Sukiyaki Western Django.

The LA Times has the year's best and worst from the web.  Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog gets the props it deserves, as does Little Bill O'Reilly.  Cool Hunting chose their top five t-shirt designs of the year, as well as the top five art shows, buildings and green projects.  Those Cool Hunting folks know their stuff.

And finally, here are the New Yorker's most popular cartoons from the year.  Enjoy and cheers to a new lusty year in culture!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great title.  I love the word curious, who wouldn't want a name like Benjamin Button, and the title is perfectly balanced alliteration.  It's the title of a 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and, as you've probably heard, also the title of a movie starring Brad Pitt.  The movie stretches the story to span almost three hours and the majority of the 20th century, following the life of Benjamin, a boy born in 1918 New Orleans with the physicality of an old man.  The startling appearance of grizzled baby Benjamin causes his father to leave him on the stoop of an old folks home, where he will be raised by a black woman named Queenie (the terrific Taraji Henson - remember her from Hustle and Flow?) We soon learn two things:  Benjamin is aging backwards, growing younger as the years pass, and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is getting better!  Watching young, but old, Benjamin roll around in a wheelchair and then attempt to walk during a church revival is still impressive, even after Gollum. 

The movie's premise is a whimsical one and I couldn’t glean a greater point for it, other than we are vulnerable and weak at both birth and death, in need of the care of our fellow humans.  The rest of the movie has that "life is a journey" quality as we follow Benjamin's adventures and the characters punctuating his growth. A pygmy takes him to his first brothel, a tugboat captain shows him the world, and a practical aristocrat (played by Tilda Swinton) initiates Benjamin into the world of adult love.  As you can see, the fantastical is alive and well here - I mean, how many of you have ever met a tugboat captain or a pygmy? I didn’t mind the artiface so much, though I did in Forrest Gump - and these two films share the same sappy screenwriter, Eric Roth.  The reason I don't mind it in Benjamin Button is because of the movie's technical attributes, notably the production design and cinematography.  David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, Se7en) directs and I think he's incredibly talented.  It really shows here, and his vision and direction make the movie worth seeing.

I should mention that this is a very romantic film, with Benjamin's love for a woman named Daisy (Cate Blanchett) the connective thread between decades and adventures. Blanchett is always reliable and sometimes great (Notes on a Scandal), but Daisy doesn't give her a lot to do, other than show off her perfect skin, dance in a beautiful scene in a park gazebo, and wear some pretty convincing aging make-up at the end.  Brad Pitt does a decent job as Benjamin, though I think all of the Oscar buzz won't be enough to catapult him past Sean Penn, whose transformative performance in Milk is so deserving.  Benjamin Button's release is an unabashed ploy for the Oscars but it also feels right for this time of year and seeing it in the theaters is key since the period detail, lighting, and evocative interiors look amazing on the big screen (though Fincher doesn't come near the artistry of Wong Kar-wai).  Don't expect to be challenged, only entertained, and give yourself over to the visual beauty of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.   I did and it was worth it.

This is the frosty beach in my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, where I spent the holidays this year.

And yes, it was more than a little nippy.  Still in the wintry north, wearing long johns and wooly socks, I wandered around Flickr as I always do on Sunday evenings, to see what San Diegans were up to this holiday weekend.  Here's a little sampling...

A Golden Christmas by chalifour.eric.

Bernar Venet by (^^RaviN^^). Acclaimed conceptual sculptor Bernar Venet's work is on display in locations around San Diego Bay as part of the exhibit Waterfront Steel: The Tidelands Sculpture Exhibition.

Spilling Lights by findjayson.

SWORLD 2008 by MikeRollerson.

Bacon! by Sarah B in SD.  (Total food porn)

I starting missing my home.  The "band" is Coconut Records (aka Jason Schwartzman), the skater/performance artist is Mark Gonzales.

I'm heading to snowy Pennsylvania this morning but I'll be attending to Culture Lust while I'm away so come back and visit. I guess not everyone was Christmas shopping this weekend because lots of San Diegans posted photos on Flickr.  These are some of my faves.  Enjoy!

Water Life by r.moreira32.

Terrible 2's by Peter J. Carney Photography.

Chili bandito by Mike Brown.  This is a portrait of Derek Shaw and his dog Spot.  Derek is the lead singer of the band Doves and Desperados.

Untitled by d80zoom.

 Caught You! by Papa le Pew. Check out his videos of artist Lisa Solberg working on a mural in Pacific Beach.

AdFreak has a list of the 32 freakiest ads from 2008 and it's a disturbing window into how desperate some ad agencies get in this competitive media landscape.  You can watch most of the ads on the list, but be prepared to be grossed out, stunned, and not a little horrified.  I was completely sucker punched by the Danish Cancer ad about tanning and tried to imagine who thought the Doritos tongue ad was a good idea.  I've included it below so you get a sense of how tasteless and downright strange these ads are.