Film Review: Moneyball (2011)

I feel I need to begin this review by admitting two things: that I don't understand baseball and I hate maths. So Moneyball, a film about highly complicated mathematical formulae and the impact they had on professional baseball that runs over two hours, should be my idea of Hell. If you break down the basic conmponents of the film, it should be the driest, dullest story in existence, and one that should have no audience, because there's nothing that hardcore math fans hate more than sports stepping all over their spreadsheets. Oh, and I guess the reverse is probably true for baseball fans.

Hope Lies on Television #7 - Walk With Me: The Work of Aaron Sorkin

Continuining the slightly new direction of the column away from broad concepts about television to the work of specific auteurs within the medium, this week I tackled the work of one of my very favourite writers, Aaron Sorkin.

I'm very, very pleased with the way that this column turned out, especially because the first draft of it was a mammoth 3,000 words. The current version isn't exactly short, but it's much more concise and has a stronger central argument behind it than the first, in which I tried to cover every aspect of Sorkin's career, including lengthy digressions about the way in which his film work fits into the work he did on television. Some of that stuff was good, but I felt that it distracted from the actual point I was trying to make. The punchier, more focused version is far preferable.

Oscar Predictions: The Major Awards

Welcome back to our annual Oscar Predictions special, a yearly exercise in beautiful futility. Having dealt with the Technical awards we will now talk about the ones that actually matter. (I'd just like to point out that, whilst I have been a bit disparaging towards the other awards, I do think that they are very important, but also realise that the Oscars that get peoples attention on posters and DVD covers are the ones I am about to discuss.)

Let's get to it.