Rattling in my brain-pan

• The Thomas Jefferson Bible is a historic curiosity-slash-oddity. Over at the New Yorker Vinson Cunningham places the book and its creator in historical context. When contrasted with the Bible of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr., Cunningham finds the Jefferson Bible — to put it mildly — wanting. This is a deeply nuanced and frankly disturbing portrait of a particular personality and the eras that were shaped, for better and for worse, by it.

• I had forgotten what a dismal year 1990 was for movies. This was a year when I could, and did, attend at LEAST one movie a week. If I look at the box office for '90 only four American titles jump out as being exceptional: Goodfellas, Joe Vs. The Volcano, Jacob’s Ladder and Total Recall. Kinda sums it up, really. Peter Sobczynski’s (misguided) attempt to give a fair re-viewing of Brian DePalma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities is what put me in this reflective state. And while I appreciate Sobczynski’s intellectual efforts . . . really, that movie is an appalling train-wreck no matter what lens you see it through.

• American Utopia on Broadway: Original Cast Recording is the album that received the most play from me this year. I did not attend Byrne’s Toronto concerts. Nor did I see the Broadway show. And I haven't yet queued up Spike Lee’s movie of the show. But I'll get to it — eventually. Right now I’m enjoying what the music itself conjures for me, and I don’t want the visuals to get in the way. At LARB Sarah Black McCulloch sorts out what makes for an exceptional concert movie — This Should Be a Movie: “American Utopia,” the Concert Film, and Extending a Terrific Moment.