Moneyball

oof.

Maybe I'll catch it on cable.

Not reading that (yet), but you guys do know that the key word in "based on a true story" is "based"?

No!

Ouch. I'll wait for Morbs' review before deciding how long to put off seeing this.

Not reading that (yet), but you guys do know that the key word in "based on a true story" is "based"?

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 14, 2011 2:37 PM (1 hour ago)

lil b is in this?

I thought it was "on"

I hope no one's told you that at the end Billy Beane kills Hitler in a movie theater.

Morbsies, did you like The Blind Side?

(if so, gfy)

oh hell, I don't see movies that have amything to do with football (or, hardly ever, Sandra Bullock). They sent me a disc and I've still never watched it.

It was pretty bad.

so I assumed from the Oscar and the fortune it made

look at all the sneering that stuff like The Fighter got for being a pretty trad sports flick

see above! (2 Oscars)

It was regular bad, not Oscar bad.

Brandon McCarthy
My tweets during the Moneyball premiere tonight will be brought to you by my crippling social awkwardness, and a need to be on my phone.

well, I have to write this up, but there are vocal performances by Bob Costas and Tim McCarver!

And Pitt never says "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs."

like or no like?

wait for it

http://0.media.sportspickle.cvcdn.com/22/95/d95516f8957255fe96cead3c5384ad78.jpg

moneyball 2: the jack cust years

If this movie is a big hit, look for Ryan Gosling as Bill James in The Pork-and-Beans Genius.

If a medium hit, Zach Galafinakis.

(btw the scouts and Art Howe get off lighter in the book than here, quite predictably)

http://0.media.sportspickle.cvcdn.com/67/65/80b52b542773108c21528098493f2d43.jpg

too bad you guys weren't cast as scouts, eh? whose trolly site is generating these?

yeah i liked that one better too

sportspickle?

http://9.media.sportspickle.cvcdn.com/72/15/95e674e72648226fc43e6826bc2dcec5.jpg

"Joe Morgan Strikes Back", would be best imho.

There's a brief audio clip of Morgan in the film too, and a very Morganesque speech castigating moneyball that's v/o'd by a Joe soundalike.

I always find it disorienting when Morgan is tagged as the anti-Sabermetrician (I mean, I understand why)--as a player, he was probably the first guy that James swooned over as the perfect sabermetric player.

to use a metaphor I just read, the chef doesn't nec know how to run the restaurant

skipped the best one:

http://4.media.sportspickle.cvcdn.com/61/50/dd0d448499e6ef71e40a07c843c9545d.jpg

so many Yankee fans

That part about the Carlos Pena trade is pathetic.

What, that they reduced it from a 3-team trade to make the scene simpler? Movies do that shit all the time (no one cares), and that's the least of this one's problems.

seeing this for review next Tuesday. (They like to give the online writers a good 24-36 hours to crank something out.)

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, September 13, 2011 10:16 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

The Fog of WAR by Dr Morbius

Keep in mind that this was written for civilian readers. But I did work in E.M. Forster.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/moneyball/5768

^^Nice review. I saw this last night, with a director talk afterward. I thought it was entertaining, at times meandering, and at times needlessly cheesy. I don't know enough about the book or baseball to be particularly offended by any of it. The best part was probabaly the Sorkin dialogue stuff, along with Brad Pitt's mugging for the camera. A few dudes in the audience were in full A's regalia.

great review morbs

I rather hate Sorkin. The John Henry-Beane scene in Fenway is an example of what he can do quite well. The quasi-screwball banter (Hatteberg and Justice on H's graeatest fear, the Hill/Pitt comedy act) I have little use for.

As a Mets fan, of course, I'm fine with Art Howe being portrayed as a mulish boob.

nice, thanks for posting

Good review. Also: 133 minutes?!

Civilian readers? Are there any other kind?

a total absence of romance, plentiful industry-specific jargon, and worst of all, math.

Reminds me of what I hated about A Beautiful Mind (having read the book)--they took out all the excellent math and replaced it with silly CIA agents and other figments of Nash's imagination.

Costas-Beane-Pitt roundtable on MLB Network this weekend, I think.

Here the nuances are replaced with the little Beane tween asking Dad if he's gonna get fired. And flashbacks to young Billy striking out.

Robin Wright Penn (sic) is also wasted as Beane’s ex-wife who is apparently married to a closeted gay man.

Well, KLaw, it is California.

WmC, that Redford-Levinson travesty of The Natural was 134 minutes. And where ya been, all films that aspire to OSCAR must be over 2 hours long, it's in the Academy bylaws.

Posnanski blog post on the Chuck Yeager of Moneyball: http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/09/ballad-of-bill-james.html

I didn't realize Moneyball had any Oscar aspirations! Adapting that book to film never seemed like a good idea to me, so I've let most of the hype go past unnoticed.

the screenplay is credited to the guys who wrote Schindler's List & The Social Network *HINT*

btw I considered opening my piece w/ "There are two good baseball movies, and this isn't one of them."

Bull Durham and Pride of the Yankees?

Sugar and Eight Men Out?

Major League and Major League II?

Two good baseball movies is probably two more than any other sport I can think of (assuming you aren't counting docs in this.)