Moneyball

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.)

Sugar and The Bad News Bears ('76)!

(Bull Durham's good, but it's about sex. And Babe Ruth and Teresa Wright are about all I like in TPotY. "Is it three strikes, Doc?")

ML1

if the movie does well, i'm sure a musical won't be far behind; as is the trend these days.

actually, even if the movie bombs it's a distinct possibility.

You don't like 8MO, Morbs? It's not as good as the book, I guess.

I think it's one of Sayles' more lugubrious films.

Sayles has non-lugubrious films?

:p Lone Star, Passion Fish

Baseball movies, damn it, BASEBALL MOVIES!

damn yankees!

Hometown paper gives a weak rave, replete with typos (Paul Podesta!):

http://www.mercurynews.com/movies-dvd/ci_18947085?nclick_check=1

Great review, Morbs. And the movie version of 8MO pales in comparison to the book. Maybe it depends on which you saw/read first (I read the book first).

Good review, Morbs. I debated whether to spend two hours-plus watching this.

Small correction: Forster himself didn't use "Only connect..." in the text of Howards End; it's an epigraph.

!

http://www.online-literature.com/forster/howards_end/22/

He uses "Only connect," but it's not dialogue. Oh well, print the legend.

I had to get my distance-running, non-baseball fan ed to change the homepage headline from "Math Ruins Moneyball's Scorecard."

morbs, your charlie wilson's war review is really good! (it wz in the Related Articles links)

Well, thanks...

The critics really love Moneyball, so my I-hate-everything rep is again burnished.

whoa 87 on metacritic? wtf

would be in the 90s w/o you included

That not being a SABR member correlates with liking this film is obvious.

also any movie with a tech angle instantly = internet crit score inflation

burt Rex Reed loves it. I'm sure he has an assistant turn on his computer for him.

i thought this was pretty good? i dug the melancholy vibe (or at least that's the vibe i got). the sorta sad idea that the moments of "romanticism" are manufactured or meaningless. actually seems more relevant to "how we live now" than something like The Social Network.

I dont follow baseball too much, but I am a Rockets fan so I'm a little familiar with the "statistical revolution." Rockets GM Daryl Morey wrote an article for Grantland on all this: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7001767/moneyball-houston-rockets

Yeah, apparently moneyball concepts are more transferable to basketball than football.

i didnt know the A's story too well, so i was surprised how it basically paralleled the Rockets for the last 5 years or so--winning a lot more regular season games than seemed possible, an improbable record breaking winning streak, and little to no postseason success.

just thinking out loud, i wonder if football is the most difficult because there's the most "moving parts" out there on the field. 11 versus 5 create an exponentially higher level of complexity. plus i think a single play in football has several different possible positive outcomes other than "score" or "deny scoring." baseball often seems to boil down to a 1-1 matchup.

1-1 matchup which may or may not lead within a fraction of a second to a different 1-1 matchup which may or may not lead within another second to a third 1-1 matchup, etc

I'm looking fwd to this week's BProspectus podcast based on this line in the contents rundown:

Pop Culture Moment: Is Moneyball fucking shit up again?

At a reported $47 million, it cost Sony more to make "Moneyball" than it cost the A's to field their entire 2002 roster.

That thought crossed my mind while watching... $47 M is actually low-budget for a studio film with a big star.

If it stiffs at the Oscars, the comparison will be perfect.

my shit doesn't work at the oscars

lol

haha

Aaron Sorkin's shit has worked at the Oscars.

I'll be more interested to see how this does at the b.o. on the second weekend.

caught a matinee. i didnt think this was a BAD movie, but i found it deeply unsatisfying. the director's style is pretty understated - there were times i appreciated the subdued approach, and times where it felt like it was just flat, like he didn't have a real point of view. i think klaw actually nailed that:

The lack of multi-dimensional characters is exacerbated by the languid, aimless plot and stop-and-start pacing. The film mopes through Opening Day and the beginning of the A’s season, races through their midyear turnaround, then jumps through most of the winning streak until the twentieth victory, at which point we’re handed slow motion views of the A’s blowing an 11-0 lead … and of Art Howe thinking, with no sound at all. Even the paces of conversations are strange and often forced; one of the “action” scenes, if I could call it that, involves watching Billy juggle three GMs (Shapiro, Phillips, and Sabean) to try to acquire Ricardo Rincon. All three GMs come off as stooges, but more importantly, it’s boring as hell to watch anyone, even Brad Pitt, talk on the phone.

the pacing felt to me like that of a movie that wasn't sure what it wanted to be. i think it was worst of both worlds disease - shunting aside the specifics of what made the original story interesting in favor of some human drama that nobody could possibly find compelling. the complaint about the phone scene, which i thought seemed dumb on the page (why can't a phone conversation be cinematic?)(and it also seems like a dumb complaint when you're bitching about beane being shown flying out to conduct a trade - which is it pal, c'mon) suddenly comes to life when u see the movie - it's just FLAT. i dont need quick cuts, slamming phones and screaming, but something was off about that sequence.

pitt's good though. it's nicely shot. i wasn't sure if hoffman would be convincing as art howe of all people, but he owned pretty hard. i should probably quit doubting that guy. and pena isn't depicted as sullen at all (one of klaw's characteristically weird complaints that makes sense only to himself)

The reason the first "Rincon" scene w/ Shapiro is not done on the phone is that the second one has to be. I mean, KLaw even admits to understanding this.

he does? where?

he wrote something like "it's boring to watch ppl on the phone, even Brad Pitt"

so Eric H and I are about 25% of the film critics writing in English who dislike this.

Mixed, officially.

+ 25% of the reason I hate it is manhandling the Twins