Moneyball Fever

I really wanted to review the film Moneyball before it was too late, to the point that I got excited enough to order my tickets in advance. Had the whole day planned out, friends were invited, clothes were clean. Relatively. And then I got sick. While I should warn you I fear for your safety, as the Black Plague has apparently somehow combined with HIV, I feel somehow compelled to fight through my sudden illness and soldier on. If Muhammed cannot go to the mountain, or whatever. I don't have the energy for tropes.

What the hell do they use to flavor NyQuil? Fermented DayQuil?

Anyway. With full intention of buying a ticket at a later date, and eventually the DVD, I decided to simply torrent a copy of the film via a reputable pirating agency. On the downside, I had to wait forever for the movie to download (nearly an hour - seed, people!), and the copy I got was clearly a cam bootleg, but the upswing is that I finished nearly my entire bottle of NyQuil beforehand. I found my experience to be thoroughly enhanced.

Everyone seems to rave about the script, and I can't disagree. Written by Steve Zaillan (also known as "Schindler," most famous for his listing prowess), Aaron "West Wing Social Network" Sorkin, and some other guy, the script is tight, adult, and has just the right mix of wit, humor, heartbreak and melancholy. Never pretentious, but always unique and enthralling, the script broods on impulse, analyzes instincts, and - most importantly - makes a king of the nerd in a land of jocks. Very satisfying.,

The cinematography is subdued but interesting, allowing the journey but never forcing it. The acting is impeccable - Brad Pitt turns out another chameleon performance, and co-star Jonah Hill reminds viewers how likable he was before he lost all that weight. I should have nothing but good things to say about this film. Sadly, though, that's not the case.

How the camera was pointed is fine - great cinematography, whatever - but the actual quality of the picture was awful. Blurry, often out of focus, I found it to be terribly distracting. Similarly, I noticed an incredible usage of what seemed to be a Cloverfield-esque motion blur, with the picture constantly shaking and occasionally disappearing from view entirely. It all had the feel of 90's-era TV footage.

Worse yet, several times during the film, a person can clearly be seen standing between the viewer and the scene - totally unrelated to the context of the film, appearing only as an indistinguishable humanoid shadow, seemign to do nothing more than stand up, shuffle slowly to one side of the screen, disappear for a few minutes, and then do the same things in reverse. I can't fathom what sort of creative desision making lead the filmmakers to okay an idea like that, but I found it utterly distracting.

The audio is muffled and often intelligible, as well. At one point, you can literally overhear a young couple arguing over the dialogue of a crucial scene. I assume it was noise from the set, but even that's disquieting as the disagreement seemed to be over whether an actor in the scene was or wasn't Philip Seymour Hoffman. (It totally was.)

Even that isn't the worst of it, though. At one pont - and I know this sounds strange but I recall it perfectly, as I'd just cracked open my second bottle of cough syrup - my grandmother appeared onscreen and recounted an embarrassing story from my youth. Why the director would include that, and how he got footage of the situation, is truly baffling.

From an artistic standpoint, I can find very few flaws with the film, but I'm afraid the technical problems, and the strange scene involving my grandmother, really limited the film and my immersion therein. 3/5

Healthcare 2010: From Death Panels to National Security

What do you do when you have no foreign policy credentials, and your aim is to take down a President who's won two wars and killed our most hated national enemy? Pull out the old standard bogeyman, of course!

Goes along quite well with a story in Politico about the complete lack of foreign policy in the debates -- due to the complete lack of experience among the current nominees. If they don't do something to neutralize this advantage for Obama, it could prove damaging down the line. Will they all stoop to such inane and pathetic tactics? Only time will tell.

But yeah, I mean, they probably will.

Prognostication

There are a few things I've been sort of mentioning in conversation with my friends, little predictions about what I foresaw the 2012 battle coming down to. They haven't all been right, but there are some big ones, some that were scoffed at, that I think look more and more plausible as things unfold.

Right now, Herman Cain still seems to be clinging to his role as the current GOP frontrunner, even now eliciting far more excitement than his chief rival, Mitt "I'm Running For President for Gosh Sakes" Romney. But sexual harrassment claims put a politician in a tough spot, and Herman the Hammer sees all problems as nails. 


Prediction: Herman Cain resorts to boosting plausible deniability, with he and his right-wing-talk supporters (ie, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) vilifying his accuser. Either she'll be an economic opportunist taking advantage of a powerful man, or she'll be a tawdry slut looking for attention.

Now, let's assume the Republican electorate at some point comes to its senses and decides Herman Cain being both an unelectable idiot and a philanderer is just a little too much for them. They still hate Romney, the only plausible candidate. And these Tea Party types have shown they care more for ideology and personality than substance or logic. I don't think I've ever seen an election begging so hard for third-party candidates.

Prediction: A viable Tea Party candidate, and possibly (though likely to negligible effect on the election) a far-left challenger to Obama.

On that note - WTF, Sarah Palin? I was completely convinced she was running for office, and I'm still not entirely sure she wasn't. The bus tour, the media frenzy, and the knowledge of reality without Palin injecting herself into the news cycle, makes me wonder if she just didn't declare her candidacy. It would make sense to view her actions as the beginnings of a campaign that ran out of oxygen after both Bachmann and Perry were officially in the running.

Prediction: She's too unpredictable, too assured in her nonexistent skills, for me to even guess what she does next, but you can rest assured it will only benefit her. And you can bet she won't fade quietly from the national stage - I'm sure, at the very least, she has kingmaker ambitions.

Finally, another thing that's been on my mind: Healthcare. I predicted nigh two years ago, when my fellow Democrats were convinced the victory was total and we needed to move on, that this would remain a major issue all the way until the election, and very probably beyond. Now the Supreme Court is readying to take the case. My bet is that the law will remain largely unchanged, but either way the impending decision will probably work in President Obama's favor. If they rule against, he can use that to boost his base, framing the election, and its impact on the Judiciary and the Court, as a needed turning-point. If it's decided that the provision in in fact constitutional, then Obama has a clear and solid victory going into the election.

Prediction: Nothing will change except Obama's poll numbers, which should see a bump. Nowhere to go but up, at least, right?

It'll be fun looking back at this after the election. Unless these are all wrong, in which event I'll be rewriting this entirely and still claiming victory. Mutable media!

Cain Pain II: First Blood

Seems Herman Cain's continued frontrunner status has earned him the ire of Rick Perry, and garnered the first sex scandal of the campaign! Normally sex scandals are bad, but this one's far worse than it should be, thanks to Cain's inept handling of the controversy. Things are so bad, some are actively predicting the fall of the Cain campaign entirely -- though those people tend to be the selfsame ones who called him the flavor of the week a couple weeks ago. 

(Full disclosure: I'm one of those people.)

That isn't a hope, by the way. I don't hope Cain fails to get his party's nomination -- quite the opposite. From his complete lack of foreign policy gravitas, his government inexperience, his claim to fame being as Boss of a pizza family (that's mobster talk), and now this values-voter-shunning sex scandal, I could foresee another '08 happening if he were the Republican opponent. But I can't believe Obama could possibly be that lucky.

I mean, at the same time, his "leading from behind" strategy wins the war in Libya (I'd rather lead from behind and win than shock-and-awe and lose), he can claim victory in Iraq, and we've seen a few positive indicators for the economy; his numbers seem to be flirting with the idea of creeping upward. Could we possibly see the return of the political wunderkind who defeated both the Clinton and Republican political machines those many long years ago?

Chris Matthews feels differently about my hesitance to chalk this up to luck, and has even said so on his show a few times. Is Obama one of the luckiest politicians in recent history? It's certainly thought-provoking.

Not to be all about MSNBC or anything, but their token Republican has been spreading rumors of right-wing voters who say they'd rather run an imperfect but ideologically pure candidate (ie Cain or Paul) and lose than run Romney, who's already being cast as the consumate flip-flopper. I have no idea how the average GOP primary voter thinks, but I do know Kerry was beaten in 2004 on the flip-flop charge and some swiftboating. Could the same work against Romney? Could healthcare be his swiftboat?

And the scandal says something very interesting about Perry, the candidate suspected of leaking the story to Politico in the first place. I've hoped from the start that Michelle Bachmann would be the attack dog of the campaign -- and in some ways she has been -- but Perry seems to be landing the only resounding blows against the current frontrunners. Could his ambitions sufficiently soften his opponents before the general election?

So many questions! But that's why we love politics, right?