The Trip to Bountiful. Peter Masterson’s 1985 film of Horton Foote’s 1953 TV play isn’t quite as good as the stage version–Geraldine Page’s Oscar-winning star turn is a bit too fluttery and flirtatious–but it still captures the essence of Foote’s deeply moving tale of an old woman trapped in a Houston apartment who longs to see her home town once more before she dies. If you’re anywhere near Chicago when the Goodman Theatre’s revival opens in March, make every effort to see it. Otherwise, you won’t go far wrong by renting this DVD (TT).

Bill Evans, Conversations With Myself. Looking for the perfect Christmas present, either for yourself or someone you love? Try this classic 1963 album, on which the most influential jazz pianist of the postwar era overdubbed himself–twice. Listen to Evans Nos. 1, 2, and 3 playing Alex North’s “Love Theme from Spartacus” and see if the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t stand straight up. That was the first Bill Evans track I ever heard, and the impression it made on me back in high school has yet to fade (TT).

Get Carter. No, not the pointless Sylvester Stallone remake, but the original diamond-hard 1971 neo-noir masterpiece in which Michael Caine is out for revenge and doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way. After making this astonishing film, Mike Hodges dropped off the scope for three decades of mostly unmemorable slogging, only to resurface in 1999 with the similarly gripping Croupier. If you liked Croupier, what are you waiting for? (TT).

Van Cliburn, My Favorite Brahms. Middlebrow America’s favorite pianist got a bad rap from the critics, and on occasion he deserved it–but not this time. Cliburn’s 1973 collection of the solo-piano miniatures of Brahms is one of the outstanding piano recordings of the postwar era, a masterpiece of selection, execution, and interpretation. Nobody, not even Wilhelm Kempff, has played these broodingly autumnal cameos more sensitively or comprehendingly. The CD version contains five bonus tracks, all comparable in quality to the ones on the original LP (TT).

The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald. The number-one book on my super-short grab-in-case-of-evacuation list is this Viking Portable edition of Fitzgerald’s Greatest Hits, published in 1945 and, so far as I know, never reprinted. Dorothy Parker chose the selections and John O’Hara wrote the self-important but nonetheless oddly touching introduction: “He was elusive in life, God knows, and all through the writing of this piece he has refused to stay put, but the ectoplasm or the artist need not bother the reader or even me. For after all the stuff is here. The stuff is very much here, and it’s mellow.” The stuff in question is The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and nine of the very best short stories, all packed into a light but sturdy hardcover volume that will just about fit in the palm of your hand. More used copies are available here (TT).

Flannery O’Connor, Collected Works. The Library of America’s compact compendium of O’Connor’s novels, short stories, essays, and letters might just be the best single-volume anthology of anything ever published. Not only does it contain all of her fiction and most of the best of everything else she wrote, but it’s light enough to hold comfortably in one hand, the typography is elegant, and the notes (by O’Connor scholar Sally Fitzgerald) are extensive and impeccable. Speaking as a sometime editor and longtime connoisseur of collections, I consider this to be one of the half-dozen super-essential books in my library, pre-designated for a place in my suitcase in the event of my hasty and involuntary evacuation to anywhere (TT).

Dizzy Gillespie, The Quintessence (Frémeaux & Associés, two CDs). While we’re on the subject of really cool anthologies, this imported thirty-six-track collection is–not to put too fine a point on it–perfect. It contains each and every one of the finest recordings cut by the co-inventor of bebop between 1940 and 1947, all of them in better-than-decent transfers from the original 78s. Charlie Parker deserves all the ink he gets and then some, but Diz rates equal attention, so if you haven’t spent sufficient time listening to and reflecting on the music of the trumpeter who helped change the sound of jazz, start here (TT).

Sidney Bechet/Martial Solal Quartet (BMG/Media). In 1957, Sidney Bechet, who was already playing jazz in New Orleans when Louis Armstrong was still in kneepants, recorded an album of standards with a pair of modern rhythm sections that featured Martial Solal on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums. Some found the pairing incongruous, but Bechet had always had open ears–he’d been recording such harmonically sophisticated ballads as “Laura” and “Love for Sale” as early as the Forties–and the contrast between his straight-from-the-shoulder soprano-sax solos and the bebop backing of Solal and his colleagues is electrifying (TT).