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A while back, I posted Closing Moves on YouTube but never posted it here. Just in case any of you haven’t yet seen it, here it is. The resolution isn’t as high as the download on the official Closing Moves site, but you don’t need Quicktime 7 to watch the video on YouTube.

Here is the direct URL to the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWEGVgbolbM

Feel free to share widely!

Monday nights are starting to be my movie night out while my wife runs her Creative Memories scrapbooking workshops at our home.

This week I saw The Lives of Others, winner of yesterday’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This claustrophobic story about Wiesler (a top East German Stasi officer), Dreyman (a prominent law-abiding playwright), and Sieland (a leading stage actress and Dreyman’s lover) begins in East Germany a few years before the wall came down and ends a few years after. When Wiesler is assigned to spy on Dreyman for a party official, both become enmeshed in a drama which eventually places all three at odds with the state. Significantly ratcheting up the suspense is the ever-present paranoia — experienced by both Stasi and their prey — of life in East Germany.

The acting, especially that of Ulrich Mühe, who plays Wiesler, is outstanding. Mühe is able to portray Wiesler’s awakening human emotions while somehow maintaining the cold, emotionless facade necessary for his job.

Both a remarkable character study as well as a political thriller — replacing the physical violence of a Bourne Identity with subterfuge and an omnipresent threat of physical and psychological violence — this film is a slow burn gripper. Highly recommended.

I regularly follow A.O. Scott’s movie reviews in The New York Times (here is his review), but if you’d like to see a more comprehensive list of reviews for any particular movie, check out Rotten Tomatoes (and here are those other reviews).

A couple of months ago the Manly Men’s Book Group^TM read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. This is quite possibly the best non-fiction book we have read. Pollen examines four different approaches to food in the U.S. — conventional corn and soybean based industrial, industrialized organic, local “slow food” organic, and hunter/gatherer.

While Pollan has clearly come to some conclusions regarding the relative merits of each, he is able to acknowledge the attractions of the other approaches. Less a polemic and more a nuanced exploration of what we tend to take for granted, this book is a must-read.

If you’re pressed for time (aren’t we all?), and are wondering whether reading the book is worth the time commitment (or loved his book so much that you google “Pollan” regularly), check out his essay Unhappy Meals in last week’s New York Times Magazine. While not a summary of Omnivore’s Dilemma, it’s a variation on a theme and an excellent read.

And if you’re really really short on time, yet have somehow managed to get this far in this post, here’s the thesis — and opening sentences — of his essay:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I have tickets to hear him talk at City Arts and Lectures in May. I can hardly wait.