Episodes
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Ep. 54 - Moneyball
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Scoring At The Movies #54 gets deep into the weeds of the real-life story about the little franchise that could, the 2002 Oakland Athletics, in Moneyball. We also lay plenty of advance stats and insider terminology on you, so get ready numbers nerds, this is the episode for you!
The actors certainly help make this film as good as it is, particularly Chris Pratt, in one of his breakout roles as well as Brad Pitt as A's intense GM Billy Beane. This is a movie about tradition v adaptation, luck & chance v computer analysis. Also, does team chemistry mean anything? How about a baseball player's mental outlook? We discuss.
There's even a lot of comparisons between Michael Lewis' excellent book and Bennet Miller's movie. At the end, we also jaw about the real-life turmoil in the MLB/MLBPA money dispute. Ugly scene there. So get on base and sample our podcast about one of the best pictures of the past decade, Moneyball.
Pedantry Alert: "Moneyball 2" actually started in 2012 when the A's made it back to the Division Series. In fact, they've been in the playoffs 5 times in the past 8 seasons. Also, Johnny Damon is a respectable 224th on the career WAR list, which is higher than Hall Of Famers Kirby Puckett and Jim Rice. Also also, Barry Bonds had MORE than a .600 on-base percentage in 2004 and got close to .600 in 2002.
Twitterpalooza: @moviefiend51 and @scoringatmovies
Thursday Jun 11, 2020
Ep. 53 - Warrior
Thursday Jun 11, 2020
Thursday Jun 11, 2020
We sink our MMA-ignorant teeth into Warrior for the 53rd edition of Scoring At The Movies.
Even though we're out of our element talking about this sport, we found Gavin O'Connor's movie to be effective and even quite touching. It's also yet another Rocky story. Sly's brainchild comes up yet again on this channel. Anyway, Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy---not to mention papa Nick Nolte---are all terrific. Too bad their father/sons relationships were given short shrift to make room for Tommy's unnecessary military backstory.
Also, is there too much time spent on the sports in this sports movie? That'll come up. Regardless, this one impressed us a lot more than we expected. So have more courage than we ever could and get in the octagon. Wait! Stupid idea. Just listen to our podcast instead. Also, do what the brothers (eventually) do in this movie and take care of each other. It's a rough time right now and we can use all the bonding we can get.
Tweets, huh? Yeah, tweets. We're @moviefiend51 and @scoringatmovies