Film
This isn’t new, but I watched Your Sister’s Sister on a plane a couple weeks ago and highly recommend it. You can read a good review of it here, but basically all you need to know is that it’s a finely wrought, beautifully acted story about family and friends and all the ways in which we hurt each other and then, the ways we fix it. And that its setting — a gorgeous mountain cabin on an island outside Seattle — is one of the most gorgeous I’ve seen in the movies in awhile. And that Mark Duplass is the most charming person alive. Not on Netflix, but you can rent it from the Apple Store.— Ellen Cushing
Start the New Year with a bowl of black-eyed peas. Credits: Sanjay Acharya via Wikipedia 
New California Writing 2012 is an anthology of the year’s best writing from the Golden State. Credits: Heyday Press
