Culture Surfing - Phillip DePoy's top five

Atlanta playwright and director Phillip DePoy moonlights as an Edgar Award-winning mystery novelist. He recently published A Minister's Ghost (St. Martin's Minotaur), the third hardback original in his Fever Devilin series. Recently, he took a break from imagining murders in the Georgia mountains to talk up some other new favorites.</
1) Les Pas du Chat Noir — Anouar Brahem (ECM Records): "This absolutely hypnotic CD counts as something of a departure from Brahem, but still a perfectly French example of romantic melancholia. Genius."</
2) Twilight of the Ice Nymphs: "Though not as well known as The Saddest Music in the World [in which Isabella Rossellini has glass legs], Guy Maddin's movie replaces Eraserhead as the strangest movie I've ever seen. It's more fun and less disturbing, so you can see it more than once or, you know, eat while watching it."</
3) The paintings of Duy Huynh — Aliya Gallery: "These poetic acrylics are absolutely stunning. My wife and I have one of a woman walking on water under a full moon, and every footprint she's left behind on the surface of the lake has turned into a water lily."</
4) Chateau de Segries Cuvee Reservee Lirac (2001): "The best Rhone wine imaginable. It's unfiltered, costs less than $15 at the DeKalb Farmers Market, and may be the perfect wine to drink while reading a mystery."</
5) Famous Last Words — compiled by Ray Robinson (Workman Publishing): "I read this compilation of deathbed sayings just to get to page 31, Yankee Gen. John Sedgwick's pronouncement, as everyone else was ducking behind rocks to avoid Confederate sharpshooters: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--."