Moneyball

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

Mine is mixed too... 2 out of 4 is mixed anywhere but in a Rotten Tomatoes world.

You did a fine job writing about this for a non-seamhead, except you don't understand the Twins thing. The A's didn't lose to the Twins because of payroll.The A's didn't even lose to the Yankees in '01 because of payroll. They lost in a short series because of what Beane calls "fucking luck," or more specifically because Jeremy Giambi didn't slide into home plate. (OF course, this movie doesn't even have Jeremy Giambi on the team in 2001, but never mind.) Short series are much less subject to probability than a regular season, by definition (ie, small sample size). Thus Billy Beane's "shit doesn't work in the playoffs."

You can learn more at the SABR convention in Minneapolis in late June.

always found it a bit absurd that a billion game season comes down to a 7 game series. it's true in every sport, but in baseball especially.

much worse w/ one and done playoffs, like pro football

yeah, but football plays once a week.
"We do this every day." - Earl Weaver

I wonder if there's someone who's done the math comparing comparing how 'accurate' american sports playoffs are (w/r/t the statistical best team winning the title.) I would imagine baseball > basketball >>> football >>>>> college football >>>>>>>>>> college basketball

wait what why do you have baseball first?

fewer teams in the playoff than the nba + longest regular season. but I guess the seeding is often less fair? I don't follow basketball very closely tho. also there's not one single measure for 'statistical best', which means someone would still have to be drawing a lot of lines in the sand. but it'd be interesting to read.

i'm sure nate silver either has done that or would do so in a heartbeat

i'd also guess that you're overestimating baseball - i wouldn't be surprised if both nba & nfl were better at this (i'd guess nba would have the best)

couple of things tho, one is with baseball especially you should just throw the world series out and focus on if the best team in each league wins the pennant. also baseball might benefit from the fact that there are only two rounds - fewer chances to get upset

well it's more like the series are so short that they're quite often dominated by luck. i see yr point re: fewer teams making it more likely that the "best" one wins but the baseball playoffs seem almost meaningless at this point.

from a non-stat perspective i've always felt that the nba playoffs are great at determining which team is "really" the best.

xpost

I think maybe a big difference is that in the NBA there's a ton of activity going on throughout a game so although one player could have a bad game you expect it to weigh out a little over the course of the forty-eight minutes depending on how much that player plays. he may get to take numerous shots over the course of just one game giving him a much better pool of probability. if a baseball player is having a bad game he only goes up to bat ~4 times and you can just have 4 bad at-bats that indicate nothing about the overall quality of the player. extrapolate to a full series. --> haven't thought carefully about this but it occurs to me this is a meaningful difference

Basketball is generally the most accurate, I believe.