Short version: they took source material that I thought would be completely unwatchable as a movie, and turned it into a movie.

Seriously. A movie about how the Oakland A’s general manager used unconventional thinking and statistics to build a winning baseball team for the 2002 season. ‘Statistics’ and ‘Baseball’ are not words that you build a dramatic movie around. I enjoyed the movie, but I wasn’t captivated by it. I feel like I enjoyed it because I am nerd enough to have enjoyed the book, and I feel like it probably has some appeal to more casual baseball/sports fans.

I do also generally enjoy Brad Pitt.

The performances were fine. Pitt was good, Philip Seymour Hoffman actually looked quite a bit like Art Howe (although he just sounded like himself), and Jonah Hill was also good. And that’s pretty much it. It was well written, and it told the story of a baseball season.

wadE and I agreed on the word ‘underwhelmed’. It’s a nice, watchable movie. Great for Netflix/Redbox prices, and a good movie for baseball/sports fans and/or people who just want to watch Brad Pitt look good for 2 hours. I’m not sure how it got an Oscar nomination for anything, let alone Best Supporting Actor In a Role about a Nerd with barely 20 lines in the whole movie. (What? It was just Best Supporting Actor? Huh.)

So, yeah. Moneyball. I suspect you already have an idea about whether or not you’re interested in seeing it, and I’m here to tell you that whatever you’ve already decided, you’re right. Stick to your guns.

Catching up on some sports-related web browsing, and I see the following link headline from yesterday’s “football” game:

Marshall catches 4 TDs; AFC wins Pro Bowl

Upon reading this, my brain had the following discussion with itself:

Wilber Marshall? . . . No, that makes no sense. Hm . . .

Leonard Marshall! . . . No, same problem there.

Defeated, I had to click on the link to find out that it was Brandon Marshall who did the thing with the ball in the game I didn’t watch or care about. But at least I was slightly amused by that point.

The short version: numerous good points don’t overcome a bad ending.

(But backing up, a quick intro. We’re gonna try this thing. I posted this on The Facebook this morning, that I want to make Thursday night “Movie Night”. Hopefully I’m either gonna see something in theater, or start working through my backlog of Netflixes. Even more hopefully, I’m gonna write up reviews. We’ll see how this goes…)

Layer Cake (2004), starring Daniel Craig, and featuring quite a good ensemble cast, including two members of The Order of the Phoenix (Dumbledore and Shacklebolt, if you must know). Jokes aside, Michael Gambon was good in his role, and Tom Hardy is the other ‘known’ name, although his role was smaller. And Sienna Miller was, of course, gorgeous (but that was pretty much all she had to do in this one, was look gorgeous).

Pretty straight forward Brit Crime/Gangster/Suspense movie. Well written for the most part, well paced, plenty of twists and turns in the plot, but not confusingly so. Fairly easy to keep everyone straight, which is good in an ensemble cast while characters are dying and you’re trying to keep factions and loyalties straight, etc, so on and so forth.

I enjoyed it, right up until the last 30 seconds, which were absolutely pointless. I didn’t see any of the original marketing for this film, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they teased it with the SHOCKING twist at the end. I thought it was uninspired, and honestly unnecessary.

I guess overall I do recommend seeing this if you’re in the mood for something in the Snatch/Lock Stock vein. Just keep your expectations low.

My favorite local newspaper has always been the Minneapolis Star & Tribune. While I have never subscribed to the “Strib”, I have read its website nearly every single day over the past 10+ years.

Apparently the days of “free loading” are over.
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In case you weren’t aware, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts starting giving out the “Mark Twain Prize for American Humor” in 1998. The intent of the prize is honor an individual who has made a significant contribution to American humor.
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Squirrel attacks Padres’ Bullpen.

Kahn defends ‘jokes’.

Charles Barkley: I had gay teammates.

A Harmon Killebrew Story.

Assorted commentary after the jump.
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That’s the pseudonym of the man behind @BPGlobalPR, which if you have not read it yet, is pretty brilliant. Here he’s speaking out against the inanity of BP trying to ‘protect their brand’.

“You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand. Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions. Lead the pack! Evolve! Don’t send hundreds of temp workers to the gulf to put on a show for the President. Hire those workers to actually work! Don’t dump toxic dispersant into the ocean just so the surface looks better. Collect the oil and get it out of the water! Don’t tell your employees that they can’t wear respirators while they work because it makes for a bad picture. Take a picture of those employees working safely to fix the problem.”

Preach on, sir. Preach on.

I’m not usually a big fan of these advice type articles. I’m of the opinion that diet advice boils down to the following phrase: Eat less. Work out more. That said, I think this is worth a look, both because of the startling badness of some of these concoctions, and the clever imagery with which they’re presented. So go ahead, have a look:

The 20 Worst Drinks in America.

This would have been a feel-good story. A random group of folks decides to pull together content and publish a magazine, an actual thing, in 48 hours, with the theme of ‘Hustle’. It works, and finds some pretty decent critical review.

And then CBS sues them for infringing on the brand of their 48 Hours news magazine programming.

I realize that we’ve turned into a vulture society, where people can make a lot of money for doing absolutely nothing (c.f. Wall Street geniuses making millions by buying and selling abstract concepts) . . . but this kind of lawyering drives me batty. Since when does CBS get to own the idea of a time span of two days?

I’ve been considering an iPad post ever since it was announced, but one thing kept stopping me – I couldn’t answer the question of why it exists. “What’s it for?” “What does it do?”

I get the feeling that this blog post is going to come as close as anything to summing up the answers to these questions. Note in particular:

I don’t think I’ll be buying any more desktops going forward. I don’t think I’ll even be buying any more laptops going forward.

They’ve all been largely obsoleted (at least at my home) by a sleek $499 device that doesn’t really have any right to be called a “computer” in the traditional sense.

Sure, there’s a handful of tasks that I still would prefer a real computer, but — amazingly — that list has now shrunk dramatically. In less than a week.

What does it do? Almost everything you’d want it to, in a package that goes everywhere pretty easily. It’s a consumer device that does most of what a computer does, at a reasonable price, and with a streamlined user interface that won’t confuse your parents or grandparents. It’s not gonna be your primary computer if you can’t get past the notion of what you can’t do with it, and if you’re a computer programmer, or a graphic designer, or for some reason your computer is the only thing you use for DVD playback, it shouldn’t be. For the rest of us, however . . .