Jack, Charlotte, and I enjoyed this baseball drama the day after my team tanked in the playoffs. Based on the true story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, it features Brad Pitt as Beane and Jonah Hill as wunderkind Peter Brand, who together turned the A's from losers to winners with statistics. Directed by Bennett Miller (Oscar-nominated for Capote (2005) which was his feature fiction debut and second of three movies so far) with a script adapted by Steve Zaillian (Oscar winner for Schindler's List (1993), nominated for Awakenings (1990) and for co-writing Gangs of New York (2002), among his 15 writing credits) and Aaron Sorkin (I wrote about him in The Social Network, which won him his Oscar) from Michael Lewis's book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (with a story credit to an unknown named Stan Chervin) (Lewis also wrote the book on which The Blind Side was based), the movie has a quick pace with many flashbacks to Beane's younger years as a player, as well as archival footage of real baseball games and players. Pitt (after I wrote about him in Inglourious Basterds he was in The Tree of Life) is totally believable as the obsessive Beane, Hill (see Cyrus) complements him as young Brand, Philip Seymour Hoffman (after I listed my favorites in Pirate Radio he directed and starred in Jack Goes Boating) has a good supporting role as the head coach with the shaved head Art Howe and 13-year-old Kerris Dorsey (Rachel Griffiths' daughter in Brothers & Sisters) is adorable as Beane's daughter Casey, who also has a lovely singing voice, though apparently the song The Show by Lenka was released in 2008, even though the movie takes place in 2002, one of several anachronisms noted by imdb. An important trivia point is that the filmmakers changed the name of Beane's assistant to Peter Brand after the real guy, Paul DePodesta, asked them to. And speaking of the character, it's ironic how the chubby Hill has lost a lot of weight since the movie was shot yet Pitt is the one constantly eating onscreen. The cast is huge, and also includes Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation) as Scott Hatteberg and baseball players/actors Stephen Bishop as David Justice, Royce Clayton as Miguel Tejada, Darrin Ebert as Mike Magnante, and Casey Bond as pitcher Chad Bradford with the crazy throw.
The score by Mychael Danna (see Chloe) is great and you can hear it by going to this link and progressing numerically, although for some reason youtube does not suggest that you do so.
There is much to recommend here but one of our favorite scenes was the awkward one where Beane waits with his ex-wife, played by Robin Wright (faves in State of Play, then I saw her in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee) and her husband Alan (an uncredited cameo by director Spike Jonze, profiled in Where the Wild Things Are) for Casey to come home to their idyllic beachside home.
Even if baseball season is not over for you yet, do see this before it leaves the big screen, or watch the DVD later.
Moneyball is way more entertaining than it has any right to be. It follows the story of the low-budget Oakland A's and their unorthodox general manager Billy Beane as they use statistics and the scientific method to succeed against teams with much larger payrolls. Lewis is a very entertaining writer, at times laugh out loud funny, who has turned what could have been a very dry subject into a real page turner. I read this in one day, which is unusual for me with non-fiction. Highly recommended, especially in the dead of winter when the beginning of baseball season seems so far away.
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