Moneyball a Great way to Welcome Spring Training

Moneyball (2011)

Directed by Bennett Miller

Sony Pictures, 133 mins. PG-13

* * * *

It shouldn’t be rare but it is: a film about sports in which the activity in question actually resembles the way real athletes play it. Moneyball is one of the best baseball movies of recent memory; it adds to its cachet by being a five-tools film: good acting, solid direction, an engaging story, a crisp script, and a surprising amount of tension for a story whose ending we already know.

Five tools is what Moneyball’s principal, Billy Beane, was supposed to possess when the New York Mets threw a $125,000 bonus contract at him in 1980. As it turned out, Beane couldn’t hit for average or power, wasn’t much of a fielder, had a mediocre throwing arm, and didn’t get aboard enough for anyone to assess his base-running prowess. He was, in short, a bust. He kicked around Major League Baseball from 1984 to 1989 and compiled this line: 301 at-bats, an anemic .219 average, and .246 OBP. He struck out 80 times and had just 29 RBIs and three homeruns. (One wonders which stiffs surrendered those!)

Moneyball shows Beane’s futility in flashbacks, but the film really centers on 2002, by which time Beane–played by Brad Pitt–had been a successful general manager of the Oakland As for five years. Each year from 1999 on, Beane built a winning team and each year it was gutted by parsimonious owners claiming that as a “small-market” team the A’s simply couldn’t afford to keep players poised to make big bucks on the free agent market. We meet GM Beane after the 2001 season has just ended with Oakland’s loss in the opening round of the playoffs. More disappointment looms; the team is about to lose its biggest stars: slugger Jason Giambi, slick outfielder Jermaine Dye, and closer Jason Isringhausen. No easy help is on the way; owner Steve Schott has told Beane that payroll must be trimmed.

What transpired was one of MLB’s weirdest stories. Beane hired a sabermetrics whiz Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and the two of them built a roster based on statistical probability rather than scouting reports. It was a team of retreads and non-stars that every expert in the game said would lose 100 games; it won 103 and set an American League record by winning 20 games in a row. We see the season unfold in dramatic and convincing fashion, the action made real by the strategic use of archival footage and the fact that the actors look as if they have actually used a bat for something other than breaking and entering. When Stephen Bishop as David Justice takes rips in the batting cage, his swing actually looks like that Justice. Baseball fans know how the 2002 season ended, but it’s a lot of fun watching Beane’s misfits get there.

Brad Pitt continues to demonstrate his transformation from a pretty face into a competent actor. A Best Actor Oscar nomination would be deserved and a victory would not be upsetting. He portrays Beane as a man torn between duty, desperation, and disappointment, the latter in the form of a broken marriage and infrequent contact with a daughter whom he loves deeply. He’s fed good lines from a script cowritten by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin and delivers them with charm and just the right touch of smarm, edginess, and baseball superstition.

The film is about baseball, but it’s also about the American obsession with winning, its emphasis on work over personal satisfaction, and the cult of experts. We revel in seeing Beane defy expectations in the same way we’d root for John Henry to best the steam-powered drilling machine.

Should we trust the message? Well… the jury’s out on that one. Manager Art Howe (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was furious about the film and claims credit for the remarkable 2002 season. (And what’s he done since 2002--oh yeah, led the Mets to ruin.) The film does leave us with a bit of baseball BS, though. A different John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox, offered Billy Beane a job after the 2002 season, the Sox team owner. Beane turned it down and we’re left with a coda that says the 2004 Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in over eight decades after using roster-building methods developed by Beane and Brand. Nonsense and poppycock! The Red Sox had the second highest payroll in MLB that year--double that of Oakland and 5.5 times higher than that of the cheapest team, Milwaukee. In truth, MLB continues to debate sabermetrics and Beane’s alleged genius. From 2007 on Oakland has not finished above .500 and whether one likes it or not, cheap teams seldom win the Big Enchilada. Stats tell me a different story–that Oakland’s 2002 season was a fluke. In the long run, the law of averages smiles on the deep pocketed.

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer Make the Ukulele Sizzle

CATHY FINK & MARCY MARXER

Rockin’ the Uke

Community Music 205

* * *

Who says Americans don’t like to recycle? There have been periodic outbreaks of ukulele madness ever since the first haole hit the Hawaiian beaches in the 19^th century. It seems like every twenty years or so we rediscover the ukulele. It was a staple of Tin Pan Alley composers in the openings of the 20^th century and beloved of string bands before going out of fashion. Then it resurfaced after World War II for a few years and made its way onto early TV. Tiny Tim used one to find his way through the tulips.

One again the humble uke is hotter than a Phoenix sidewalk on July Fourth. Everyone (including me!) is messing around with them, but mastery is a different matter. Enter folk vets (and past Grammy winners) Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who really know how to make those four strings sing. Rockin’ the Uke is a delightful mix of swing standards, country, surf music, public domain chestnuts, and originals that are, in turn, bubbly, bluesy, whimsical, and torchy. Django Reinhardt inspired their arrangement of “Dark Eyes,” and when you print such a claim and proceed to do justice, you know you’ve got serious chops. Call this one Django jams with the Delmore Brothers, Ernest Ka’ai, and Arthur Godfrey.

Check them out on the old banjo tune “Snowdrop.”

Rob Weir

It Behooves the NBA to Listen to Iceman's Critique

Kwame Brown--the sort of NBA 'body' that teams like Charlotte don't need.

The National Basketball Association was in trouble even before the strike sliced a quarter of the games from the schedule. The league puts on its game face and pretends that everything is kiss-kiss make-up, but it can’t do much to disguise the fact that the product on the court simply isn’t very good. (How about the defense in that 152-149 All-Star game?) But don’t take my word for it; listen to Hall-of-Famer George “Iceman” Gervin, who graced the courts from 1972-1986 and dumped in 25,595 points. (That’s an astounding 25.1 ppg.)

Hurray for the Iceman; he has the court cred to make a point I’ve been making for years: that today’s NBA players have athleticism, but very little basketball IQ. He faults NBA management and marketers for being enamored of highlight reels. Says Gervin, “The game went away from the fundamentals and skills aspect and more (players who are) just athletes dominate the game. Dunking doesn’t necessarily show a skill. If you are athletic enough and strong enough, you can dunk. But can you make a left-hand layup or a right-hand layup or shoot an in-between jumper?” His assessment of most of today’s players is a resounding “no.” TV, he notes, reinforces the emphasis on alley-oops and dunks, and this has watered down the game.

Amen to that. The Iceman also shot over 84% from the free-throw line–another lost art. Yes, I know that some Hall of Fame players were bad at the stripe–Wilt Chamberlain comes to mind–but last year’s league average was a gentleman’s C: just 73%. Or, to put into different perspective, it’s just a tad higher than what one sees in the WNBA. The WNBA’s average height is 5’11”; in the NBA it’s 6’7’’ so why aren’t the men pouring it in at a much higher percentage than the women? Could it be exactly what Gervin said? Too much flash and not enough fundamentals? Yep. What does it tell you when only four current players rank among the league’s top 50 in assists per game?

The emphasis on drafting players with an “NBA body” over those with game savvy gives one pause. Would Larry Bird have been a top pick in today’s NBA? John Havlicek? Nate Archibald? Lenny Wilkins? Bob Cousy? Hal Greer? They are among the players in the Hall of Fame who didn’t have NBA bodies, but knew enough about the game to blow guys with better physiques out of their high-tech sneakers. I wonder what would happen if a NBA bottom-feeder such as Charlotte decided to revamp its lineup with smart players instead of athletic ones. Think it could do better than 4-28? So do I.

Oscar Watch and Predictions

The Oscar for Self-Serving goes to... Hollywood!

It’s almost Oscar time again, time for the yearly reminder that the Academy Award seldom honors the best performances within a given year. The Oscars are akin to the claims of efficacy trumpeted by drug manufacturers based on reports they commissioned. The Oscars are really about the thing Hollywood reveres above all other things: Hollywood!

Here are my predictions for the major awards, broken down according to who will win (WW) and who should win (SW), the latter based on the actual quality of the film.

First, I predict one small surprise. It’s close to a given that whatever film is chosen as best picture will also produce the best director winner. I think that this year we’ll see a departure from this.

Second, there is no doubt of what should win (SW) most of the awards; The Artist and its cast are light years better than anything else that’s up for awards. My guess, though, is that it won’t win as many Oscars as it should.

Best Supporting Actor:

SW: Jonah Hill for Moneyball as his portrayal as the portly computer geek that convinced Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane to defy–and ultimately redefine–baseball logic.

WW: Christopher Plummer for his role as a late-in-life-come out-of-the-closet gay man in The Beginners. An okay performance, but one Plummer could have done in his sleep. Hollywood loves to show its liberal chops, though, so score one for Plummer.

Best Supporting Actress:

SW: Bérénice Bejo for The Artist. The only thing wrong with her nomination is that it should have for Best Actress. When she’s on screen, you can’t not look at her. It’s one of the most charming performances I’ve seen in years.

WW: Octavia Spencer for The Help. This wouldn’t be a travesty, as Spencer is good in her role, though it is a sort of Gone with the Wind Mammy role updated for the 1960s.

Best Actor:

SW: Jean Dujardin for his role as a film icon in the dying days of silent movies in The Artist. But he’s French, he (literally) doesn’t speak in the film, and he’s not a Hollywood commodity.

WW: George Clooney for The Descendants. This one’s almost a lock—Clooney is everything Hollywood loves: a big star, liberal, handsome, dashing…. I like Clooney, but this was little more than a walk through in one of the most overrated films of the year. I would label this one a travesty.

Best Actress: (The strongest category by far.)

SW: Michelle Williams for My Week with Marilyn. It may be the best portrayal of Marilyn Monroe ever done. Williams makes you think she’s a person she only vaguely resembles. Williams’ work was far better than that of distinguished peers such as Meryl Streep and Glenn Close.

WW: Williams’ fabulous acting will not overcome Hollywood’s burning desire to show how “relevant” and “progressive” it is. The Oscar will go to Viola Davis for The Help. Davis is good in the role, but it’s no tour de force and, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that this role wouldn’t be nominated if the character and actress were white. Call this the fuzzy-headed liberal prize.

Best Picture:

WW/SW: The Artist is simply too good not to win. It’s unlike everything else out there, plus it pays homage to Hollywood’s past. Any other choice is just wrong. Even Hollywood will get that!

Best Director:

SW: Michael Hazanavicius for The Artist. His direction is inventive, stylish, and clever. Fabulous use of light, whimsy, and intellect are present in every shot.

WW: Here’s the upset. Hugo is not the Best Picture of 2011, but Hollywood is jonesing to honor Martin Scorsese one more time before he dies, and Hugo is good enough to do the trick. Plus, this award would allow Hollywood to honor several categories it is yet to fathom: animated movies and 3-D technology. Scorcese’s 2007 Oscar for The Departed was payback for not honoring Raging Bull, and this one is compensation for not giving the nod to Taxi Driver, one of the best films of all time. Why can’t Hollywood just say “Ooops!” instead?

Water for Elephants is an Empty Bucket

As flat as the poster!

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (2011)

Directed by Francis Lawrence

Fox 2000, PG-13, 121 minutes

* * ½

Detail is what turns an outline into a story. Detail is what turns a collection of people and animals into a circus. Alas, the film treatment of Sara Gruen’s beloved novel Water for Elephants is an empty bucket that will leave those who’ve read the book parched, and those who’ve not wondering what all the fuss was about.

The year is 1931. Jacob Jankowski, the son of Polish immigrants, is about to achieve the American Dream: a degree in veterinary science from Cornell. That is, until his parents are killed on the day of his final exam. Jacob is left homeless, penniless, and adrift in the Great Depression. Possible salvation comes when he hops a train that belongs to the Benzini Brothers Circus, which just happens to need a guy like Jacob to take care of the animals. Gruen’s novel develops the cast of characters that populate the circus: the midget Kinko and his dog Queenie, hootchie kootchie dancer Barbara, the avuncular Camel, strongman Earl, and many others. Alas, the film pushes the minor characters to the background and, by so doing, drains away the color and leaves us with the sepia chrome of the three principals: Jacob (Robert Pattinson), brutal circus manager August Rosenbluth (Christoph Waltz), and his star attraction wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon).

August is bipolar, capable of great tenderness, but prone to demons that make him into Hitler in a high hat. When the budget needs to be cut­—as it always must be for a third-rate ragtag outfit such as the Benzini Brothers—he orders his henchman Blackie to toss roustabouts and superfluous performers from moving trains rather than pay them off. Some will die from this, but August cares only for himself and for his prized possession, Marlena, and he’s abusive to her as well. August even exacts his wrath on Rosie, a 53-year-old elephant who might be the only thing that can save the circus. Naturally, his brutality appalls the animal-loving Jacob, whose position is all the more precarious because of the obvious frisson between him and Marlena. Need I tell you that this is not a formula for rational resolving of disagreement?

The first problem is that this isn’t enough to carry a two-hour movie. We know there will be a crisis and we’re just riding the train until it occurs. It could, I suppose, have made a decent character study, though one must ask who the hell goes to a circus to study psychology. To carry this off, however, would require three topnotch actors and only Waltz rises to the challenge. He is very good as August. As he should, he makes us not trust him, but we can also see how others could be taken in by his outward charms. Pattinson isn’t bad as Jacob, but he’s not very good either. Like most of the film and all of Lawrence’s direction, Pattinson is flat—he looks fine on the screen, but when real fire is needed he does little more than strike a match. Still, he’s miles better than Reece Witherspoon, who is all wrong for the part. She is, first of all, too modern in appearance and demeanor to convince us that she’s a 1930s gal. Second, as an actress she falls into the category of “minimally competent.” She has little range or rage, two essential characteristics of Marlena, if her actions are to make any sense at all. Witherspoon’s presence in this film can only be explained as a box office ploy to pair a pop icon (Witherspoon) with a hot commodity (Twilight lead Pattinson). It didn’t work; the film got tepid reviews (like this one) and endured a decent-but-not-spectacular box office. This is a metaphor for what’s wrong with the film: a circus should be spectacular, not just something to pass the time if you’re bored. This film is as toothless as the circus lion and not even the presence of Uggie, the Jack Russell Terrier from The Artist, can rescue it.

Homespun Melodies from Pat and Tex LaMountain

PAT AND TEX LaMOUNTAIN

Sweet Chabango

Garden Gate Recordings 1007

* * *

I haven’t the foggiest idea of what “chabango” means, but if local heroes Pat and Tex LaMountain want to use it to describe their homespun mix of cowboy jazz, swing, Americana, country, and pop that’s fine by me. The LaMountains invite comparisons to Robin and Linda Williams, though they don’t quite have their flair, and the miles are starting to show on Tex’s voice. But in an age in which pop music is processed like American cheese, the LaMountains offer a good-time antidote, complete with hummable melodies and their own ironic twist on things. It begins with two Tex confessionals; the first influenced by Roy Orbison, and the second an admission that he’s always been a “Record Shop Cowboy.” It ends with three tunes inspired by their travels. There’s good stuff in between. What’s not to like?

Rob Weir

Henrietta Lacks Lives!

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

By Rebecca Skloot

Crown, 2011, ISBN: 978-1400052172

The next time your doctor hands you a HIPAA form, think of Henrietta Lacks. It that name rings no bells, you’re not alone, though she’s indirectly responsible for some of the most important medical breakthroughs of our time, including a vaccine for polio. Even most medical researchers know her only as HeLa, the name of the world’s most important cell culture. So who was Henrietta Lacks? That is the question medical journalist Rebecca Skloot sets out to answer. This is a non-fiction book that reads like a novel colliding with a gripping episode of CSI. What’s the crime, you ask? The ongoing tragedy of racial and class injustice in America.

The basic story is simple enough. Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman who came of age in a backwater Virginia town. She eventually relocated to Baltimore, where her husband (and cousin) David “Day” Lacks followed the Great Migration north during World War II, to the Sparrows Point steel mill that hired black laborers. Henrietta bore five children and shortly after her last, Joe (now Zakaryya Bari Abdul Rahmann), she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital, which took in black charity cases. At first, gynecologist Howard Jones found no cause for the pain about which Harriet complained, but before 1951 ended, Lacks was dead from uterine cancer. An autopsy revealed a body filled with pearl-sized tumors, the source of her excruciating demise. As was standard practice during the day, doctors took several tissue and tumor samples from the body before Lacks was laid to rest.

What happened next was—depending on one’s beliefs—either a fortuitous fluke or a miracle. Dr. George Gey had been trying for a decade to grow cells in his lab, to no avail. His entire research model was suspect, courtesy of a 1912 hoax in which Dr. Alexis Carrel claimed to have cloned chicken cells. (Carrel faked the results, the medical equivalent of Piltdown Man.) Much to the astonishment of Gey and lab assistant Mary Kubiak, however, Henrietta’s cells began to divide and replicate the moment they were suspended in culture. Since 1951, HeLa cells have been shipped all over the world and have been the subject of thousands of medical experiments. Henrietta’s cells continue to replicate to this day. They are also the only ones that have ever behaved this way, and no one really knows why.

Skloot tells the cellular story with a clarity that made me wish she had been my high school biology teacher. After her lucid account, you will come to see HeLa as a literal lifesaver for millions. But the question remains: Who was Henrietta Lacks? And that story is often as painful as Henrietta’s final days. Skloot begins with the obvious: In 1951, nobody gave a damn who she was—she was just another black charity case in a Jim Crow city. The researchers thrilled to work on her cells never asked about the donor; stories circulated that her name was Helen Lane. Even worse, none of Henrietta’s family knew of the existence of her cells until 1973, nor thought much about the times they were asked for blood samples that they thought were cancer-screening tests. It took a 1975 Rolling Stone article to reveal that the HeLa line was contaminated in the 1960s and that the blood samples were used to identify Harriet’s DNA from the intruders. It was then that the Lacks family also learned that HeLa was sold around the globe, though the family never realized a dime in these transactions.

Skloot puts a face to the cell line. After a hard fought battle to win the family’s trust—no easy feat for a 27-year-old white gal—she forensically reconstructs Harriet’s life, from her childhood and adolescence in Clover, Virginia, to her final days. Like all lives, it was filled with joys and sorrows; being a poor black woman, there were more of the latter than the former. Skloot does a superb job of unearthing the details of not just Harriet’s life, but also those of her extended family. It is a story of race, poverty, and class, one in which the principals of the medical field inhabit a different world governed by different ideologies than that of underclass (and undereducated) black folks. One of the book’s many delights is observing the intellectual development of Deborah, Harriet’s fourth child, who wants to discover the truth about her mother. But there are some gulfs that can’t be overcome, like the ones that lie between the dispassion of the lab and the everyday racism that drove Zakaryya to cold fury, or between the empirical world of science and the faith-based world of evangelical Christianity. To some in the Lacks family, Henrietta’s cells are a literal form of immortality, imbued with her consciousness and will.

Skloot is a participant observer of the most-noble sort, a writer who helps heal a lot of mistrust and hurt. (She’s even set up a Henrietta Lacks memorial foundation.) Although she’s clearly sympathetic to the Lacks family, she’s also an empiricist. Skloot even-handedly tells the story of Henrietta’s cells, and leaves open all questions of whether the ends justify the means in medical research. As I warn students, it is a mistake to impose the values of the present upon past actors. Informed consent laws did not come into being until 1957, and the National Institute of Health had no research review boards until 1966. Gey and his research team may have been insensitive, but they were well within the ethical operating parameters of their day. And, as Skloot also shows, morality is even muddier when it comes to bodily materials removed in the operating room. Do individuals own discarded tissues and cells? Lawsuits are pending, but to date the courts have ruled that these things are akin to garbage tossed in the local landfill and scavenged by others. That’s hardly a satisfactory answer for patients or physicians, as it leaves ambiguous the question of privacy versus research/public good. That HIPAA form you’ve signed a hundred times is one of the many ways doctors seek to protect themselves. Call it a small measure of posthumous respect for Harriet Lacks.