“About Schmidt” — Jack Nicholson deserves the Oscar for the final scene alone. A heartbreaking epiphany of a moment pulled off the way only he could. Overall, a hilarious movie that is deeply moving as well. I’m sorry it wasn’t nominated for best picture.

“The Pianist” — Polanski avoids the Spielbergian excess and just lets this story stand on its own legs, unadorned by anything but the brutal, miraculous reality.

“Cross the Green Mountain” — Bob Dylan’s new original song for Ron Maxwell’s feature film, “Gods and Generals,” has no hook and no chorus. But it features some beautiful organ work and wonderful lyrics and phrasing from the master. My CD came with a DVD that includes a music video for the song — cool!

“The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975” — Once again, a new Dylan from-the-vaults release brings to the official canon what bootleg trades have known all along. Dylan reworks some of his classics to wonderful effect and his intensity on songs like “Isis” is electric. A few of the solo treatments are duds, save a “Tangled Up in Blue” with new lyrics, but the album does feature the best duets with Joan Baez I’ve ever heard. It actually sounds like they’re singing together!

Alejandro Escovedo at Old Town School of Folk Music, Valentine’s Day — The singer-songwriter was accompanied by two cellists, a violinist and another acoustic guitarist. The sound suited some of his songs better than others, but when Escovedo & co. came down into the crowd, only feet away from where Karen and I were seated, for the encore, it was a moment to treasure.

After two hours of music and as the clock neared 1:30 a.m., it seemed we’d gotten all we could ask for. Then Escovedo introduced what would be his last song of the night, which he wrote as a wedding present for a friend. “This is it,” I told Karen. It was his gorgeous “Wedding Day,” which I first heard a year ago and knew instantly would be the song Karen and I first danced to as a married couple. And it was.

What a Valentine to us, especially since Escovedo had, to my knowledge, never performed the song in concert before. When you write a song like “Wedding Day,” you’re doing yourself a favor because you know people will play it at weddings. But it’s a curse, too. You don’t want to wind up as just another wedding singer. Escovedo doesn’t have to worry about that, I don’t think.