Quick Picks: What I Like Right Now

You want what’s good. I know what’s good. Let’s do this thing.

Updated June 3, 2009

Book

The Last Place on Earth (Roland Huntford)
The Last Place on Earth
by Roland Huntford

The story of Scott and Amundsen's epic race to the South Pole. My copy of this book was awkwardly-bound and rife with typos, yet I could not put it down. Huntford hates Scott to the point of frothing mania and does not even try to hide it, so I did take some of his nitpicking with a grain of salt; most of the mania, though, is entirely justified, because Scott had the organizational and leadership skills of an unconscious penguin. It's not an inspiring story by any means — the last chapter or so is almost unbearably tragic, and not just for Scott — but it's gripping and well-paced and perfect for hot summer nights.

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Movie

Brick (2005)
Brick
2005

If you are going to see one film noir set in a modern-day Californian high school, it should definitely be this one. Not that you should need any prompting to go see anything with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it, because he is brilliant. Read the full review.

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TV Show

Wallander (PBS, Sundays)
Wallander
PBS (Sundays)

I thought Alan Cumming was kidding when, in his intro, he described Kurt Wallander as a guy so miserable he made Inspector Morse look like a ray of sunshine. Turns out Cumming was, if anything, underplaying Wallander's angst. The plots are rather far-fetched, but the angst is believable, so I'm enjoying this series. Thanks to my local PBS station's constant money-grubbing, they keep bumping this show off the schedule and replacing it with concert reruns and other boring crap, so I had to watch the last episode online. Can't wait for the next series to come out.

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