By Naveen
After reaching a bit too late for the 9:50 pm show and quite a bit early for the 10:35 pm show, being a cheap Desi I decided to sneak into Screen 2 where the Bollywood movie Mausam was playing. Two minutes of cacophonic nonsense in the name of a song on Punjab’s Sarson ka khet convinced me that the silence of the Screen 3 where Moneyball would be screened was a safer place to retreat. By the way, Screen 2 was nearly full.
Ah! I digress…
Moneyball is a sports-drama based on the true story of Baseball team Oakland Athletics’ General Manager Billy Beane.
The Bennet Miller directed Moneyball stars Brad Pitt, who is also one of the producers of the film. Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman make up the rest of the major cast.
2011 summer and early fall season have been relatively sober. Most of the promising Hollywood movies fell flat.
But today, thankfully Aurora Balaji granted me my wish for an enriching experience.
Synopsis
As I mentioned earlier, Moneyball is a Sports Drama / Biopic of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the General Manager of the Baseball team Oakland Athletics.
The movie opens predictably with Oakland Athletics losing not only their knock-out game but also three of their best players to other teams.
The GM Billy Beane faces the daunting task of rebuilding the team despite a severe budget constraint which limits his ability to have high-value / expensive players in the team.
Billy meets a nerdy economist Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and gets interested in Peter’s approach of using statistical analytics and logic to evaluate players and team composition rather than popularity and other subjective attributes. This approach reduces cost while theoretically retaining the capability of the team despite the loss of major players.
Billy hires Peter and adopts the unconventional approach to rebuild the team much to the ire of the traditionalist scouts and the coach. Continue reading »
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