movies

[thrill]

Nerds. Watch a documentary if you want realistic behind the scenes action of how a franchise works.

It's a movie meant to entertain the masses, not give sabermetric nerds another thing to distract themselves from finishing while they have sex with their wives.

You don't think a movie based on a very recent true story deserves criticism for being unrealistic?

[vinsanity]

I'm trying hard to take off my baseball nerd hat and gauge it on its merits as a movie. Doing that, it seemed mostly mediocre, with some surprising humor.

Reminded me of Major League.

[TGantz]

Nerds. Watch a documentary if you want realistic behind the scenes action of how a franchise works.

It's a movie meant to entertain the masses, not give sabermetric nerds another thing to distract themselves from finishing while they have sex with their wives.

You don't think a movie based on a very recent true story deserves criticism for being unrealistic?

If it was a movie about 9/11, then yeah, you want it to be accurate. But in this situation, it's less about reporting facts and more about entertaining Nard Dogs who pretend like they know baseball.

You don't pay $10 to see 2 hours of Brad Pitt talk to someone over the phone all day at his desk. You want to see him leaning back on his chair like he's hot [expletive], talking smack right to someone's face.

[MrSaigon]

I understand they can't show a bunch of Ivy League dudes sitting around a room beating off over WAR.

You haven't seen the previews for Richard Everhard's "Money Balls" have you?

[JL21]

Nerds. Watch a documentary if you want realistic behind the scenes action of how a franchise works.

It's a movie meant to entertain the masses, not give sabermetric nerds another thing to distract themselves from finishing while they have sex with their wives.

Making Scott Hattieberg a total [expletive] does not make it a better movie. Casting Jonah Hill- as ANYTHING, much less as Paul DePodesta- does not make it a better movie. Turning Grady Fuson into a cartoon villain does not make it a better movie.

In fact, not one of the things that I pointed out has jack [expletive] [expletive] to do with "sabermetric" anything other than maybe the fixation on Rincon. In every case, it was an instance of changing the reality in ways that didn't have a damned thing to do with numbers, and didn't help the narrative in the least.

[The Third Man]

You don't think a movie based on a very recent true story deserves criticism for being unrealistic?

Actually, no, insofar as "realistic" is meant in the sense of being faithful to the source.

[ghostrunner]

Yeah, I'm kind of in the camp that they've got no obligation to be faithful. Social Network is a great flick IMO, and is probably about as inaccurate. Sean Parker was a bona fide programmer, and actually looked more like Jesse Eisenberg than Justin Timberlake.

Of course if you think the resulting fiction is lame, that's a valid critique.

[jim]

Nearly every single fear I had of why Moneyball might suck was confirmed last night. Jonah Hill is [expletive] horrible (as usual) and the fact that he's supposed to be Paul DePodesta is absurd. The baseball stuff is riddled with inaccuracies and the non-baseball stuff is sloppily put together, sort of spackled in as an afterthought.

Pitt was very good in it. I've been around baseball people and he looked and acted the part really well. Did I mention that Jonah Hill was [expletive] awful?

Same fears as you, different take on the movie though. Jonah Hill criticism I understand.. but I didn't think it was that bad. But I felt that they were in general true to the book, didn't make Beane out to be some super-hero. I was pleasantly surprised - thumbs up from me. Little things I pleased me - the scout with the hearing aid kind of being cool about saying how Beane only had to answer to the owner and that they were there to give suggestions and he didn't have to take them. That was an olive branch I thought between the old dinosaur scouts and the new approach. Also very happy with how they talked about Beane's own career - reading the book his own failings as a can't miss prospect were very important in why he thought out of the box.

I really thought it was good, reasonably close to the book, and didn't try to make Beane/Pitt out to be some super-hero.

[jim]

Yeah, but it's a lot more than that. I understand they can't show a bunch of Ivy League dudes sitting around a room beating off over WAR. There's just a lot of dumb stuff that would never happen.

-Billy Beane flies to Cleveland to meet with the Indians' GM for trade talks. Who [expletive] does that?

-Said GM- Mark Shapiro- turns him down for one player after another because the A's can't afford them. Again, how is that even remotely realistic? If I'm a rival GM and you want to give me stuff that I want for a player that I don't, why do I give a [expletive] what your payroll is?

-Beane fixates heavily on Ricardo Rincon. Ricardo. [expletive]. Rincon. A LOOGY.

-The characterization of DePo- aka "Peter Brand"- is reduced to a complete caricature of the standard fat baseball nerd living in his mom's basement. At any moment, I expected Hill to say "Gee willigers, Mister Beane. I sure do hope our calculations work!"

-Carlos Peña is shown as "an all-star" (in 2002) but Beane's angry because Scott Hattieberg isn't being used at 1B. So Beane gets angry one day and during a temper tantrum, calls the Tigers and trades Peña to them in a matter of seconds, all because of Beane's outburst over Hattieberg.

-The movie portrays Hattieberg as a weakling, a total [expletive] who's afraid to play 1B. No, I'm not making this up- he's [expletive] afraid to play 1B. And the evil ol' Art Howe, gosh darnit Mister Beane, won't use Hattie at 1B. Curse those old evil scouty scout types!

-The portrayal of Grady Fuson is just as goofy and wrong as the portrayal of DePo. Fuson is presented as, basically, Snidely Whiplash with a stack of OFP scores.

And on and on and on.

They needed a villian (Fuson)- I was just happy it wasn't the entire scouting department of every team. The one line of the guy that took charge of the scouting dept. was "Hey - you ever play baseball?" "Just t-ball" "You are the new scouting director". That was the extent of it, they could have really rubbed our noses in it but they didn't. A passing glance.

Brandt/DePo - I knew going in this was going to happen and I guess I expected much worse and therefore wasn't upset with it. In fact I was pleasently surprised that the guy was portrayed as someone relatively normal.

The whole trade thing going to Cleveland/Rincon et. al ... yeah I see your point. But to me I thought they got the story reasonably accurate without making all baseball scouts out to be villians and Billy Beane to be the greatest thing ever. The last thing of the movie was "Billy Beane is still waiting to win the last game of the series".

[MrSaigon]

You don't think a movie based on a very recent true story deserves criticism for being unrealistic?

Actually, no, insofar as "realistic" is meant in the sense of being faithful to the source.

I'm not disagreeing (though I might in certain cases), but that made me think of this:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/unconv ... in-t,2214/