Moneyball reviews

Uri
Adjunct
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 11:37 pm
Location: Israel

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Uri »

Greg wrote:I have some ideas as to why baseball movies tend to be more popular than movies dealing with football, basketball, soccer, etc. The act of playing baseball has more of a dramatic arc than those sports, which are closer to a large jumble of athletes moving around a physical space in a state of near-continuous-semi chaos. In baseball, you start with someone pitching a ball; the ball accelerates; someone swings; if the swinger hits, the ball accelerates more and the swinger runs; the ball declerates; the swinger slows and is either safe or out. Just the scene that starts with the thowing of a baseball is its on mini-three-act structure.
And this very methodically structured, very linearly staged procedure can be also read as a metaphor for the very inherently American need for rearranging reality into well defined, familiar patterns.

Sorry. Couldn't help myself.
Greg
Tenured
Posts: 3285
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 1:12 pm
Location: Greg
Contact:

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Greg »

I have some ideas as to why baseball movies tend to be more popular than movies dealing with football, basketball, soccer, etc. The act of playing baseball has more of a dramatic arc than those sports, which are closer to a large jumble of athletes moving around a physical space in a state of near-continuous-semi chaos. In baseball, you start with someone pitching a ball; the ball accelerates; someone swings; if the swinger hits, the ball accelerates more and the swinger runs; the ball declerates; the swinger slows and is either safe or out. Just the scene that starts with the thowing of a baseball is its on mini-three-act structure.
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

Uri wrote:So, saying that people worth what they are paid is the opposite of saying that people should be paid for what their worth for the system is, as Moneyball claims.

And especially today, I'd have never thought I'd get such words from a movie. Interesting that some on this board didn't even notice that.

As for the negotiating scenes, I really think that they were the highlights of the movie - brilliantly written and acted. One scene especially - the one with Pitt and Hill in the office at the phone - makes me smile even now when I think of it.
Uri
Adjunct
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 11:37 pm
Location: Israel

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Uri »

Sabin wrote:
Italiano wrote
It IS, of course, a masterpiece compared to The Help - but then which movie isn't? It's not less American though, in its obsession with money, for example. At one point a character says to another - seriously, and this is the message of the movie - something like: "If you get paid lots of money, it's because you are worth it". Do Americans still believe this? Well...
Well, I checked it. And yes, one can certainly say that Moneyball is about money. It's about it in the opposite way that you're saying, but you got me there.
So, saying that people worth what they are paid is the opposite of saying that people should be paid for what their worth for the system is, as Moneyball claims. Then again, there are those who might think that these two arguments are practically slight variations of the notion that all people have price tags attached to them and that Moneyball, good as it is in what it does, only promote applying a more sensible set of market rules, but still, the commodities in this market are human beings.
Mister Tee
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8637
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

Sabin wrote:
Big Magilla wrote
I was fine with the baseball scenes, with the flashback scenes, with the scenes of Brad Pitt and his daughter. What I didn't like, and what I haven't seen addressed either here or anywhere for that matter, are the boring negotiating scenes. As someone who worked with numbers all his adult life, mu eyes generally roll to the back of my head whenver people start talking numbers. I frankly didn't get half of what Pitt and Jonah Hill were talking about.
That's because it's possibly (at least in my opinion) the most interesting stuff in the film.
Second. As I said when I originally wrote about the film, those scenes played like classic vaudeville -- the con artist/salesman out on a limb, making the sale on sheer chutzpah. Pitt and Hill are both perfect in these scenes; I believe they're alot of the reason Hill got his nomination.
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Sabin »

Italiano wrote
Sabin wrote
It's about it in the opposite way that you're saying, but you got me there.
At least it has a message...
And so do you.
Big Magilla wrote
I was fine with the baseball scenes, with the flashback scenes, with the scenes of Brad Pitt and his daughter. What I didn't like, and what I haven't seen addressed either here or anywhere for that matter, are the boring negotiating scenes. As someone who worked with numbers all his adult life, mu eyes generally roll to the back of my head whenver people start talking numbers. I frankly didn't get half of what Pitt and Jonah Hill were talking about.
That's because it's possibly (at least in my opinion) the most interesting stuff in the film.
"How's the despair?"
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19318
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Big Magilla »

I was fine with the baseball scenes, with the flashback scenes, with the scenes of Brad Pitt and his daughter. What I didn't like, and what I haven't seen addressed either here or anywhere for that matter, are the boring negotiating scenes. As someone who worked with numbers all his adult life, mu eyes generally roll to the back of my head whenver people start talking numbers. I frankly didn't get half of what Pitt and Jonah Hill were talking about.
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

Sabin wrote: It's about it in the opposite way that you're saying, but you got me there.

At least it has a message...
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Sabin »

Italiano wrote
Sabin wrote
No, Marco. Bad Marco.
You should appreciate that now I use the word "message" so often in my posts - after you complained that, though you had desperately looked for one, you hadn't find it in The Artist (of all movies). So it's my personal homage to you.

Yes, I know that the movie isn't just about money - and it deals, not stupidly, with other issues, I'll admit. It's ALSO about money though, and that line is there, you can check.
Can do.
Italiano wrote
It IS, of course, a masterpiece compared to The Help - but then which movie isn't? It's not less American though, in its obsession with money, for example. At one point a character says to another - seriously, and this is the message of the movie - something like: "If you get paid lots of money, it's because you are worth it". Do Americans still believe this? Well...
Well, I checked it. And yes, one can certainly say that Moneyball is about money. It's about it in the opposite way that you're saying, but you got me there.
"How's the despair?"
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

Johnny Guitar wrote: If one pushed a little further, perhaps we could say that since in most baseball plays only a small portion of either team is ever "actively" involved, the form of the sport allows for an interesting vehicle for the glorification of the talent or the accomplishment of the individual. (This may also explain something about the difficulty of combining soccer & conventional narrative ...)

This is definitely a very convincing reason.

Of course, I missed all the nuances you refer to - but as I said the movie kept me interested, which, believe me, wasn't easy. I recognize a good script when I see it, and Moneyball is at least professionally written, and maybe well-written too. But yes, I can't deny that while I liked the narrative and several individual scenes, there was something disturbing, too - which is, I guess, what you call "subtly conservative" about it. But it's interesting - capitalistic to the bone, but interesting. If it's true, and it is true, the movies about sports can be seen as metaphors (I like the Chomsky quote, by the way) of the society they take place in, Moneyball is even more interesting.
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

Sabin wrote: No, Marco. Bad Marco.


:D

You should appreciate that now I use the word "message" so often in my posts - after you complained that, though you had desperately looked for one, you hadn't find it in The Artist (of all movies). So it's my personal homage to you.

Yes, I know that the movie isn't just about money - and it deals, not stupidly, with other issues, I'll admit. It's ALSO about money though, and that line is there, you can check.
User avatar
Johnny Guitar
Assistant
Posts: 509
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:14 pm
Location: Chicago

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Johnny Guitar »

ITALIANO wrote:Like The Help, Moneyball is a move made by Americans for Americans (it's a big flop here in Italy - I don't know about the rest of Europe). Even more than The Help, it's about something that not only I'm not interested in - something that I don't know ANYTHING about, even. What is this baseball? What are its rules? What is a base, what is a home run? Ok, someone launches a ball, someone tries to hit it with a bat, someone runs... but why? What's the logic behind it? And why are Americans so obsessed - not with the sport itself, but with MOVIES about it? Frankly, it's such an ugly game. Soccer is much more beautiful, still there have been only very few movies about soccer in Italy or in Europe - and they all made no money. But in America movies about baseball are generally commercially successful. Why? I'll never understand it.
Any sport has its own kind of beauty & appeal - otherwise it would be impossible to survive as a big spectator sport. (And baseball's popularity has crossed far more borders than has, say, American football - so something about it appeals to more than Americans. Also, I say this as someone who loves soccer most of all sports, and doesn't like baseball much at all.) But why do movies about baseball endure, and what endears them to the US populace? A lot of it is only marginally connected to the mechanics of the game itself - it's about nostalgia & iconography (popcorn at the baseball park, the worn-in glove, dandelions in little league outfields, et cetera). If one pushed a little further, perhaps we could say that since in most baseball plays only a small portion of either team is ever "actively" involved, the form of the sport allows for an interesting vehicle for the glorification of the talent or the accomplishment of the individual. (This may also explain something about the difficulty of combining soccer & conventional narrative ...)
All this, of course, makes Moneyball a good movie, not a great one. And for example, I might be wrong of course but... are Americans really THAT intelligent? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the Americans on this board, or even about Americans in general - but Americans into sports, for example, those who work in baseball - can they really understand the meaning of words like "metaphor"? I honestly doubt.
For what it's worth, Noam Chomsky at some pointed noted how Americans routinely display thoughtfulness & awareness when it came to analyzing sports, but were encouraged to show no erudition or critical thinking when it came to politics or economics. (That said, sports punditry seems to be a realm of media experience populated almost entirely by idiots who think that analytical thought is a "competition" where the loudest and most obstinate person "wins" - and this much seems to be at least as true in the UK and the US, and wouldn't surprise me if it were generally true in most places now.)

Though yes, there are a number of Americans who make decent salaries and also know the meaning of "metaphor."
It IS, of course, a masterpiece compared to The Help - but then which movie isn't? It's not less American though, in its obsession with money, for example. At one point a character says to another - seriously, and this is the message of the movie - something like: "If you get paid lots of money, it's because you are worth it". Do Americans still believe this? Well...
Probably the movie is tapping - in a relatively low-key way - into the fantasy of meritocracy, which is why baseball (such an iconically, nostalgically "American" phenomenon) is a decent fit for a movie of this kind. And the spread of actual "moneyball" policies in sports is itself a kind of underdog story, as the film itself narrates - which involves the circumvention of certain salaries because market hype is not as efficient as good-old can-do stastical spiritedness, embodied here as Jonah Hill who is not so far removed from Jesse Eisenberg's "type" in The Social Network. (Though nuances of this story may be less clear to people who don't have at least a passing familiarity with Major League Baseball.) I think in the end this makes for a very comforting message that all these quantitative restructurings of how our businesses & markets are run might not be so bad after all - a subtly conservative, or at least quietist, moral.
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Sabin »

Italiano wrote
All this, of course, makes Moneyball a good movie, not a great one. And for example, I might be wrong of course but... are Americans really THAT intelligent? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the Americans on this board, or even about Americans in general - but Americans into sports, for example, those who work in baseball - can they really understand the meaning of words like "metaphor"? I honestly doubt.
You ass.
Italiano wrote
Italiano wrote
"Clear" is the word. I don't think that a truly profound movie should necessarily have a "message" (I agree with John Ford on this - a meaning, maybe, but not a message), and if it has one, it definitely shouldn't be "clear". And a "clear message" combined with an intentionally complicated narrative structure is, for me, the ultimate contradiction - and a deeply irritating one.
It IS, of course, a masterpiece compared to The Help - but then which movie isn't? It's not less American though, in its obsession with money, for example. At one point a character says to another - seriously, and this is the message of the movie - something like: "If you get paid lots of money, it's because you are worth it". Do Americans still believe this? Well...
No, Marco. Bad Marco.

I am not a sports person myself, and my knowledge of the game is probably slightly stronger than yours. But that is absolutely not the message of Moneyball. It is not a film that ultimately says "If you get paid lots of money, it's because you are worth it." I'm going to hold you to your word above about films having a meaning but not a message.

Like I said below, I enjoyed my first viewing of Moneyball but I got caught up in the details of some unnecessary minutiae that bugged me. After two viewings, it's become this strong rumination on how people define winning and losing in their lives. An injured catcher gets the chance to score a crucial hit and secure a winning streak for the ages. Is this specific story profound? No, but amassed together in a film where every scene is devoted to someone winning or losing in a specific way and it becomes a pretty beautiful - if minor - piece of work. It's way more than money! What this film is saying is that you can make a winning team out of players who are worth nothing! If anything, the players are a series of stats to Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. I wish the film had adopted a somewhat more personalized opinion on what we're supposed to think of this mentality.
"How's the despair?"
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

Like The Help, Moneyball is a move made by Americans for Americans (it's a big flop here in Italy - I don't know about the rest of Europe). Even more than The Help, it's about something that not only I'm not interested in - something that I don't know ANYTHING about, even. What is this baseball? What are its rules? What is a base, what is a home run? Ok, someone launches a ball, someone tries to hit it with a bat, someone runs... but why? What's the logic behind it? And why are Americans so obsessed - not with the sport itself, but with MOVIES about it? Frankly, it's such an ugly game. Soccer is much more beautiful, still there have been only very few movies about soccer in Italy or in Europe - and they all made no money. But in America movies about baseball are generally commercially successful. Why? I'll never understand it.

So I went to Moneyball expecting the worst. And that's why I was so pleasantly surprised - oh, I didn't get many details, of course, but I was never bored, and I actually found the story, if not absorbing, certainly entertaining and even interesting. Some scenes are really well-written, the movie is well-structured and makes you care for its main character. The human interest is there, of course, but not over-done, not forced - and for example you don't get to know anything about the private life of the second lead - the filmmakers obviously trust their material, and they are right. And the actors are all solid and well-directed; Brad Pitt is slightly less good in it than in Tree of Life - which means that he's still very good (and in a few years he could even be great); he doesn't deserve to win an Oscar over Dujardin, and I still have to see Clooney, but he's certainly very good. And Jonah Hill, an actor I had never heard of, is perfect for the role he's given, and makes a perfect "odd couple" with Pitt.

All this, of course, makes Moneyball a good movie, not a great one. And for example, I might be wrong of course but... are Americans really THAT intelligent? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the Americans on this board, or even about Americans in general - but Americans into sports, for example, those who work in baseball - can they really understand the meaning of words like "metaphor"? I honestly doubt.

It IS, of course, a masterpiece compared to The Help - but then which movie isn't? It's not less American though, in its obsession with money, for example. At one point a character says to another - seriously, and this is the message of the movie - something like: "If you get paid lots of money, it's because you are worth it". Do Americans still believe this? Well...
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: Moneyball reviews

Post by Sabin »

I just watched Moneyball again. For the most part, I have all the same problems with it except for one: for whatever reason, the flashback scenes with Billy seemed rather moving. They shouldn't work at all, When I first saw Moneyball, I thought that it was half-formed between sports canvas and vanity project, but on a second viewing it seems more like a rumination on winning and losing. And Billy's flashbacks are intricately if somewhat inelegantly a part of that. I'm inclined to say that the main failing of Moneyball may be to understand itself as it ultimately loses its footing the final stretch and shifts from the unexpectedly mythic to the wiki-dramatized matter-of-fact, but it still remains thoroughly compelling. I think Moneyball may be the best edited film I saw last year. I swear there is a tempo to this film!

I dig it. I watched it with a few friends who weren't especially film or baseball enthusiasts and they really enjoyed it.
"How's the despair?"
Post Reply

Return to “2011”