Moneyball
Moneyball? More like money... um, sorry, no joke is coming to mind.
I thought this was going to be a porno. Look at the title. Money-ball. Anyway, this movie was actually pretty good even though it wasn’t a porno. It is based on the idea that you don’t need to waste a lot of money getting the biggest sports stars (usually the biggest assholes, too) in order to have a winning team. You hire the guys who have consistent stats, who aren’t flashy but have good fundamentals, and eventually you win games by sheer statistics. This appeals to me, because it means you don’t need those narcissistic fuckos who think they are King Shit of the sport. I hope those guys will eventually get paid less because of this. But probably not. We’ll continue to throw ourselves at the alter of sports celebrity. “LOL BUT BRIK TEHY ARE SUPAR TALENTED THEY TOTALY NEED TO MAKE $7.5 MILLION A YEAR TO THROW A BALL LOL!” *sigh*
So, the movie told an interesting story, and definitely a unique one in the vast field of derivative sports films. Brad Pitt turned in a strong performance. The directing was good. There was humor in the right places. The only thing that didn’t work was the treacly, forced “heartwarming” relationship between Pitt and his daughter. It was like some producer was yelling: “THERE ISN’T ENOUGH HEART IN THIS MOVIE! WE NEED TO HAVE HEART! SOMEONE GET A TWEEN AND HAVE HER PLAY A GUITAR! THAT WAY PEOPLE WILL KNOW THIS MOVIE HAS HEART!” Aside from that misstep, it was a good movie, and is worth checking out.
Verdict: Good
Alias season 3
Alias season 3 cast.
While seasons 1 and 2 delivered fairly consistent entertainment, season 3 took a nosedive into a giant pool of shit. The plot was nonsensical. Sydney goes missing for 2 years and has amnesia of only those two years she was gone. Yeah, cause that’s how amnesia works (not). The initial focus is to figure out where she was and what she was doing. Of course, the CIA unquestioningly welcomes her back (yeah, right), and immediately starts sending her out on dangerous missions (yeah, right). Eventually, the writers got bored/confused by this plotline, and just ended it halfway through the season when an old guest star shows up and says, “LOL SYDNEY I KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS AND NOW LET ME EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO YOU IN THE MOST BORING WAY IMAGINABLE INSTEAD OF TREATING THE AUDIENCE TO SOMETHING INTERESTING AND THEN WE’LL ALL COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT THIS STORYLINE LOL!”
The remainder of the season makes no sense. Vaughn’s wife Lauren turns out to be a double agent who isn’t field trained, and then suddenly is a bad-ass on par with James Bond. Lauren and Sark head up the bad guys’ U.S. field office (which apparently has no other members), but then suddenly they are both answering to Lauren’s mom who is also a villain (and kills her senator husband) for no discernible reason. Things get more and more ridiculous: Jack IM-chats with Irina and tells her he loves her even though she is an internationally wanted criminal and up until this point he wanted to kill her, Jack helps Sloane fake his own death, Sloane may be Sydney’s biological father but that plot point is dropped almost immediately, the Rambaldi stuff makes no sense, the Lazare stuff makes no sense, Senator Lindsey is good one moment and then bad the next, all of the Triad stuff from season 2 is never resolved, and worst of all, the primary focus of the season is a love triange between Sydney, Vaughn, and Lauren. Lame. This is one of the worst seasons of any TV series I have ever seen. In the first episode of season 4, Vaughn said, “Last year sucked!” Yes it did, Vaughn, yes it did. Apparently, the writers were well aware of the giant shit they took.
Verdict: Shitty
Awesomely Shitty 
I don’t watch TV, so I can’t comment on Alias, but I liked your blurb on Moneyball. You certainly liked it more than I did. And yeah, I agree about the daughter, felt forced.
I think I stopped watching Alias right around season 3, when I realized like you did that it was terrible. All they could do was talk about “the prophecy,” “Rambauldi’s prophecy,” etc etc ad nauseam. What was the prophecy again? Some 15th century Italian guy draws Sydney’s face, therefore she is chosen to… something. That shit would easily get a ~~ rating by my current standards. Fuck J.J. Abrams.
Moneyball was good but would have been a lot better without the scenes with the daughter and Beane driving around in a truck aimlessly. It seemed like they were tyring to please a bit to wide of an audience for my taste. Still a good flick but passed up on a chance to really be someting special IMO.
I didn’t mind the stuff between the father and daughter in Moneyball. There wasn’t all that much of it, was there? Did I sleep through some of it? Possibly.
LOL! You must have slept through it.
Moneyball sucks for two reasons: One, Jonah Hill. Two, the reason the A’s were consistently good was only partly sabermetric arbitrage. The other was Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito.