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New York, 1:41 PM
Sun Dec 20
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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07/02/09
07/02/09
07/02/09
Am I the only one who hears the lumbering steps of the Beast From Buffalo moving in to snatch another quality project from turnaround hell?
07/02/09
07/02/09
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07/02/09
Brad Pitt should have no trouble playing a gay MLB player and Bean was pretty ripped back in the day.
Change the title to Fielding Ground Balls or something, make a few changes in the screenplay and, Voila! Soderbergh's got himself another hit.
07/02/09
Do you realize?
Billy Beane (the Pitt character) is gay. Some of y'all care about that.
Steven Soderberg made Traffic. Which was brilliant.
Billy Beane's logic changed baseball.
Soderberg is right on with his treatment.
This is like when Terry Gilliam watched Don Quixote explode in front of him.
Sometimes the perfect piece of art for the perfect artist just slay each other to no one's benefit.
07/02/09
07/02/09
07/02/09
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07/02/09
07/02/09
(for the record, I've read MONEYBALL, but LIAR'S POKER is a much better book, both in writing and as to how relevant it still is today)
07/01/09
07/01/09
The movie business is a tough one, folks. This is just one reason why.
Also, holla for Schizopolis. [crickets] OK, that one's just me then.
07/01/09
Moneyball is numerative, not narrative. Those changes the screenwriter made sound like solid additions to help the story move.
07/01/09
07/01/09
Michael Lewis is a genius. I am in awe of his talent, and I don't say that very often.
07/01/09
While The Blind Side simply illustrates one of the oldest ways of doing business in college-football recruiting: Getting outstanding athletes adopted by families that, in the absence of the kid's talent, would be unlikely ever to encounter him, much less have anything to do with him.
Both are great stories, I agree. But one is about changing the game, and the other is about business as usual. The former actually has much deeper conflicts to dramatize -- although whether they're actually dramatizable is a key question.
07/01/09
Blind Side does have it's game-changing point, the rise of the Refrigerator-type, but Moneyball was a more interesting book, just far less narrative. Hollywood likes personal stories, not mathematical ones. And Blind Side has far more interesting, fully-developed characters, in part because Lewis was personally acquainted with everyone in that book.
07/02/09
In The Blind Side -- and I'll say it again, it's a riveting book -- I just don't see dramatizable conflicts at work. Freakish natural talent sweeps the field and renders social barriers meaningless -- that's the best I can do with that book, unless you're really going to try to illuminate some kind of hypocrisy in the Tuohy family (tough sledding there). Who are your antagonists -- the poor undersized Christian-school kids forced to play nose tackle against this unholy behemoth? (And frankly I thought the NCAA lady who got treated so dismissively by Lewis was actually one of the good guys. I have a soft spot for bureaucrats, I guess.)
05/22/09