→ March 16, 2017
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The Underground Railroad.

Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award for that year and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the first book to win both awards. The last three Carnegie Medal for Fiction winners have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well, making Whitehead’s book the current favorite for that honor as well, and it would certainly fit both in the quality of the work itself and the kind of American themes the Pulitzer committee is charged with identifying.

Whitehead’s alternative history has an actual railroad operating underground, in secret, ferrying slaves to freedom in the north with the help of abolitionist whites, with southern plantation owners and slave-hunters trying to ferret out its locations and operators. This becomes the route for Cora, a slave on a brutal plantation in Georgia who has been abandoned by her mother (who fled the plantation without a word) and finds the farm’s ownership going from bad to worse, as she attempts to find freedom in the north despite impossible odds and the threat of torture and death if she’s caught and returned to her owner.

Cora herself is one of the great strengths of the novel, as Whitehead has created one of the most memorable and compelling female protagonists in American fiction. It’s easy for a writer to craft a fictional slave who captures the sympathy of readers; Whitehead’s success is in crafting one who captures our empathy. Cora is strength in futility, a tightly wound ball of fear, rage, and grief who makes her dash out of a desire for freedom and a quest for a connection to the family she’s lost. She’s neither broken by the dehumanizing experiences she had as a slave, nor unbroken as we might expect of a fictional heroine. There’s enough reason in Cora’s character to doubt that she’ll succeed in reaching her goal.

The other strength of The Underground Railroad is the setting, which goes beyond the mere reimagining of the titular escape route as a physical entity. Cora lands in South Carolina and then North Carolina, each of which has come up with its own “solution” to the slave question rather than continuing to employ slaves as in the true antebellum south – but, of course, South Carolina’s superficial paradise has a sinister plan beneath the surface, while North Carolina chose to end slavery in vile fashion that has some unfortunate parallels in our modern climate. She eventually ends up in Indiana, where a house of free blacks simply proves too successful to stand even in the face of whites who oppose slavery and would likely feign horror if anyone called them racists. None of these places after Georgia is based in historical reality; each is the product of an imagination that can take a metaphor and create a realistic setting that puts ideas into buildings, people, and actions. It’s fictional but not fanciful, and each location is a world unto itself that could easily have hosted an entire novel and would generate hours of discussion about the meanings beneath the details.

Cora is hunted throughout the book by the amoral, mercenary slave-hunter Ridgeway, who refers to any slave as “it” and travels with the most motley crew of associates imaginable. But Ridgeway himself is utterly two-dimensional, maybe one-dimensional, and instead seemed to me to be a clear attempt by Whitehead to make Cora’s fear of recapture and memories of oppression incarnate. She cannot escape her past until and unless she escapes Ridgeway for good. That doesn’t make him an interesting character, but in a book that seems to urge us to fight the national tendency to forget the sins of our fathers, it makes him an invaluable one.

The nature of the rest of the book makes the other characters, most of whom are white, less than two-dimensional as well, although again it seems that Whitehead is using these people as stand-ins for ideas. The well-meaning whites in South Carolina are particularly striking because they are so opaque, and because they tell themselves they’re doing the Right Things, even when what they’re doing is ultimately both wrong and springs from a sentiment that is itself thoroughly wrong. The couple who harbor Cora in North Carolina present different sides of the white person who knows slavery is wrong, but chooses to look the other way, to decline to get involved, or to just generally protect his/her own well-being rather than helping others in more desperate straits. Creating so many underdeveloped side characters is generally a major flaw in a novel, but the genius here is in creating characters from ideas without them becoming totally one-note.

I have no idea if The Underground Railroad should or will win the Pulitzer, since I haven’t read any other 2016 books yet aside from the one I’m reading now, Francine Prose’s Mister Monkey. I can say that few books of recent vintage have disturbed me the way Whitehead’s book has; the world he’s created manages to be abhorrent and magnetic at once, a world you’d never want to live in but that you can’t help but want to see. And it’s so full of ideas without ever devolving into sermon, imploring us to remember our past and accept that we will never fully escape it. The book’s final chapter is less conclusion than peroration, showing us the difficulty of becoming free of our history and depicting just one narrow path to get there.

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→ March 14, 2017
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Jackie.

Here are my abbreviated thoughts on Jackie, one of two movies released in 2016 from Chilean director Pablo Larraín:

1. Jackie isn’t that good of a film.
2. Natalie Portman deserved the Best Actress Oscar more than Emma Stone did.
3. And if Portman had won, the Best Picture screw-up would never have happened.

I might also add a 2a, that if this were a better movie she would have won, although I’m not entirely sure of the politics that go into who wins what award. But I do feel pretty strongly about her deserving the nod, even though I sort of argued against her winning when she did win (for Black Swan, beating out Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone). This movie sinks or swims with Portman’s performance, and she commits to it in every possible way, including mimicking Jackie Kennedy’s unique accent and intonation, taking us through the range of emotions that the widow of JFK faced in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s shocking death right next to her. (It’s on amazon and iTunes.)

Loosely based on an interview the former First Lady did with LIFE magazine a week after the murder, Jackie follows her in non-chronological fashion from the motorcade to the funeral, with very occasional flashbacks to prior events. It is a portrait of a woman in totally unexpected grief who also finds herself in front of the nation and yet about to be cast out of the White House with two young children in tow. JFK only appears briefly. No other character gets a fraction of the screen time Portman does. This script is trying to explore the nature of the response one of the most famous women in the world had to having her husband assassinated beside her, especially the public face she gave in the days that followed and in that interview.

That made it all the more shocking to me that the movie is so bland. Portman is superb, but the script itself feels incredibly cold toward its subject. This is a movie about a personal tragedy that was simultaneously a national one, but the script seems to treat it, and Jackie Kennedy’s response to it, as some sort of public policy question. I don’t think Jackie Kennedy comes off well or poorly in the film, but I also think we could have learned a lot more about her character than we did from this script. For example, there are hints of a divide between her and her husband’s family, but those lines are thrown in and never explored any futher. And if the goal was to present her as scheming for trying to ensure that the only major press coverage of her in her widowhood was positive, well, that’s hardly a character flaw.

Portman owns, though. Jackie Kennedy’s weird patrician Long Island accent is tough to listen to, and other than overdoing the breathiness, Portman nails it. She’s also effective at everything she needs to convey through tone, words, and gestures – the grief, the shock, the denial, the attention to trivial details, all come across as incredibly real, and the only emotion anyone shows in this film comes from Portman herself, not from her words but from how she grips and delivers them.

Some of the supporting performances are fine, although they exist in the shadow of the lead. John Hurt, in one of his last filmed performances, is typically wonderful as the Kennedy family priest Jackie consults on the day of the funeral. Peter Sarsgaard is excellent as Robert F. Kennedy, looking quite a bit like a young Kenneth Branagh, infusing some humanity into the character who is at once grieving for his own loss and providing the only measure of stability for the main character. Billy Beane … er, Crudup is playing an entirely fictional, unnamed reporter, giving some restraint and a little humor to a role that was written a bit too much like a giant blank. I also loved seeing Jack Valenti, who later headed the MPAA for three decades and fought to extend copyright law way beyond what such laws are supposed to protect and encourage, come off as an ambitious, smarmy jackass.

I’m looking forward to seeing Larraín’s other film from 2016, the Spanish-language Neruda, which was Chile’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar but didn’t even make the nine-title shortlist. It will be released in digital format later this month.

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→ March 11, 2017
→ By

Stick to baseball, 3/11/17.

I had one piece for Insiders this week, covering four players who look different in the early going this spring – Jason Heyward, Tyler Glasnow, Taijuan Walker, and Tim Anderson – although it’s not all positive news. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. The book now has two positive reviews out, one from Kirkus Reviews and one from Publishers Weekly.

Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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→ March 10, 2017
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My Life as a Zucchini.

My Life as a Zucchini (original title: Ma Vie de Courgette) was one of the five nominees for this year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and the shortest of the nominated movies at just 66 minutes. It’s a stop-motion animation film with exaggerated, absurd-looking characters, boasting a wonderful story that strikes a perfect balance between sweetness and the sad reality beneath. (I saw the film in French, with English subtitles, but there is now an English version in theaters too, with Ron Swanson providing the voice of Raymond.)

Zucchini is the nickname of the main character, the orphan Icare, whom we meet at the beginning of the film in awful circumstances: He’s the neglected child of an alcoholic mother, apparently friendless, with only a kite and his collection of his mother’s discarded beer cans to keep him company. She sits in her living room all day, drinking and yelling at the television, but dies a few minutes into the film in an accident that Zucchini caused, which sends him to the orphanage by way of the cop Raymond’s office. At the orphanage, he meets the other kids who’ll soon become his friends, including Simon, the bully with a good heart beneath his exterior, and eventually Camille, the new girl with whom Zucchini falls in love.

Every one of these kids is there for some awful reason. Alice is there because her father molested her and is in jail. Bea is there because her mother was deported to Africa while Bea was in school. (Sound familiar?) Simon’s parents are drug addicts. There’s so much sadness underneath this story that it’s remarkable the film feels so light, but the script gives us everything through the eyes of the children, and it’s a world in which I wanted to spend so much more time. And how could you not care about these kids? The characters are all realistic – not in appearance, with their gigantic heads and arms that nearly reach the floor, but in conception and in their reactions to their circumstances. Even the rough stuff is played for laughs without diminishing the harsh reality beneath; for example, Simon is the only one who knows anything about sex (referred to just as “the thing”), but it’s because he saw pornographic films his parents would watch. It’s awful on its face, but his child’s understanding of what happened on screen is written so perfectly.

Squad goals
Zucchini’s motley crew.

While My Life as a Zucchini is an animated film, it’s not for kids. My daughter is ten, and I’m glad she passed on going with me, because I think the reasons the kids are in the orphanage would have upset her. (The sex talk would have just embarrassed her.) And while I smiled and laughed through most of the film, I was always aware of the sadness beneath the surface. Even the ending, which I won’t spoil except to say that it’s a happy one, still reminds you of the bleak situation these kids – who are in what I can only assume is the greatest orphan home in the world – face. They will always feel, as Simon said, that there was no one left to love them. Mining heart and humor from such fearsome material, based on a French-language book by Gilles Paris, is an impressive reminder of the power of a great work of fiction, whether book or movie, live-action or animated. My Life as a Zucchini can’t match the technical mastery of Oscar winner Zootopia, but its story is far more powerful.

Quick endnotes: If you see the movie, look for an homage to Spirited Away in the graffiti on the wall around the Les Fontaines orphanage very early in the film. Also, be sure to stay through the end credits (at least in the French version) for an absolutely precious vignette from the audition of the child who voiced Zucchini.

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→ March 10, 2017
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Lanterns: The Harvest Festival.

Harper Collins is running a sweepstakes to win an early copy of Smart Baseball and a 30-minute phone call with me before the season starts – click here to enter with your email address. You can also preorder the book here. It comes out April 25th.

The light, colorful boardgame Lanterns: The Harvest Festival came out in 2015 but somehow never hit my radar until the app version came out at the end of 2016, which sold me on the game quickly with great graphics and a strong tutorial. The game itself has simple mechanics, but a clever twist has you giving your opponent something of value every time you do something to help yourself, a quirk that helps keep scores close till the very end.

Lanterns is a set-collection game at heart. There are seven colors of Lanterns, and players try to collect Lantern cards of each color so they can turn them back in for points – either a set of one of each color (so seven total), three pairs, or four of a kind. To gain these cards, on your turn you place one square lantern tile from your hand of three, with a color on each side. You get a card for the color of the side facing you – and then each of your opponents gets a card for the side facing him/her. If you managed to match any of the four sides with the color of the piece it’s now touching, you get a card of that color too. Usually, you’ll place a tile and get two colors, although a three-card move comes along every now and then.

There are also wildcard “favor” tokens available, which you get with special lantern tiles that have platform symbols in the middle of the four colors. When you get the chance at the start of a turn to exchange Lantern cards for points, you can spend two favor tokens to swap one Lantern card for a card of a different color. The supply of Lantern cards in any color is limited, however, so it’s possible you won’t be able to complete such a swap, or even that you won’t get a card you’ve earned via tile placement – and sometimes you’ll want to avoid trading back a card into the supply if that color is currently exhausted.

The point values of those sets declines over the course of the game as players turn in more sets of each type. The first seven-color set turned in is worth 10 points, the first three-pair set is worth 9 points, and the first four-of-a-kind set is worth 8 points. When a player turns in a set of any type, s/he takes a “dedication token” showing the point value of that set from that type’s stack, and the token underneath might have a value of one point less than the one just taken. (In a two-player game, this is always true, but with more players set values might go down every other token instead.)

Once the supply of square tiles is finished, each player gets one more turn in which to exchange a set of Lantern cards for points; after this, the cards and leftover favor tokens have no value at all. Players just add up the points from their dedication tokens to determine the final scores. Games take maybe 30 minutes, and the only downtime for anyone comes as each player scans the open spaces for possible moves to find the most advantageous one. Cacao is a similar tile-laying game, but those decisions take longer.

The app is stunning – the game’s beautiful artwork looks even better on the iPad screen, with fun animations of the lanterns, and the AI is good, maybe not quite tough enough on the hardest setting, but fine for casual play. I usually beat AI opponents but I’m never routing them, which is a testament to the game’s built-in damper on runaway scoring. The publisher has an Android version as well but I haven’t tried it. I highly recommend the iOS version, though, for solo or pass-and-play use.

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→ March 9, 2017
→ By

Long Way North.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t release a shortlist of nominees for Best Animated Feature, instead simply listing all eligible films for a given year, with the 2016 list comprising 22 titles, five of which were eventually nominated. That’s how I stumbled on Long Way North, which is free to stream via Amazon Prime; directed by one of the assistants from the amazing 2009 film The Secret of Kells, Long Way North is a very old-fashioned sort of animated film, made in 2D Flash with a traditional feel and a strong, simple story for all ages. (You can also buy/rent it on iTunes).

Sasha is our heroine, the headstrong daughter of an ambitious Russian diplomat in the late 19th century, but after making a rather poor impression at her debutante ball, she chooses to run away from home to find out what happened to her adventurer grandfather, whose supposedly unsinkable ship never returned from an attempt to sail the Northeast Passage by way of the North Pole. She ends up on a merchant ship of tough guys who agree to search for her grandfather’s ship in hopes of collecting the enormous reward out for it, and, of course, she has to save the day through her courage and cleverness in figuring out where to look.

The movie succeeds on two core levels – the look and the story. The 2D rendering gives the movie a real old-school, almost comic-book feel, enhanced by the lack of contour lines in the film, giving the images a layered look, like paper or fabric pasted on backgrounds. In an era where we expect to be dazzled by animation – look at this year’s Oscar winner Zootopia, with its absurdly realistic rendering of animal fur, or Best Animated Short winner Piper‘s rendering of water – Long Way North delights with its minimalism. It’s a throwback in a good way, with an animation ethos like that of The Triplets of Belleville, where simplicity is given to us as an alternative to the near-perfection of Pixar. Once Sasha gets out of her parents’ dank mansion and into the world, the pictures explode with vibrant colors and sweeping fills that look painted on canvas.

The story is the real selling point in Long Way North, as it takes the coming-of-age framework and gives it a few more adult twists, even darker ones as Sasha and the crew face real life-or-death struggles as they approach the North Pole. Sasha is the center of the entire story and the only fully-realized character in the film, but her arc is more than just “spoiled kid meets adversity” or “child never gives up on dreams.” You know she’s not going to die in the Arctic, but the writers succeed in making her path from home to the Pole and back again matter in a way that gives us drama and tension without feeling forced, while also striking the right balance between rewarding Sasha’s blind faith in her grandfather and making her feel the consequences of the risks she’s taken.

The script itself has some really silly, avoidable mistakes in it. After an accident aboard the ship, one of the sailors rues the loss of all of their penicillin … which wasn’t discovered until about forty years after the time of this film. One scene has a character giving Sasha CPR, even though that technique was also decades away from invention. The Northeast Passage itself had already been sailed before the time of the story as well, by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, after several partial expeditions by Russian sailors. There’s even a glitch where the title of a book that’s part of the plot changes (by one word). It’s all rather sloppy, which is jarring in a film that looks so clean.

My daughter is a fan of any film that has a female protagonist, especially one who saves the day through cleverness or perseverance, and she loved Long Way North even though the opening exposition is a little confusing. I was more drawn in by the lush feel of the film at first, and didn’t find myself as caught up in the story as she was until the first third or so was over, and Sasha was in the small port town where she boards the mercenary ship. I would probably still recommend this over The Red Turtle, which was nominated for the Oscar over Long Way North, because it’s so much more accessible, with a better literal story (instead of TRT‘s more metaphorical one), and a brighter feast for the eyes as well. And in a related story, I’m hoping to catch My Life as a Zucchini, the only one of the five nominees for Best Animated Feature this year I haven’t seen yet, when it plays here in Wilmington this weekend.

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→ March 9, 2017
→ By

Klawchat 3/9/17.

Starting at 2 pm ET. Questions go in the frame below, not the comments!

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

Klaw: You’re telling me it’s in disguise, just use your eyes. It’s Klawchat.

Darren: Have you seen Billy Hamilton. Any thoughts on the progress of his swing and the ceiling of how well he can hit and get on base?
Klaw: It’s probably a good idea for me to start out by saying I haven’t been out to spring training yet. Also, Billy Hamilton’s swing has never been the problem. He has so little hand and wrist strength that I don’t think he can ever hit enough to be even a moderate OBP threat.

Brian: I’d like to let you know that I appreciate the cold water you (aka reality) you throw on prospects. Blue Jays touting Tellez big time…but he is having significant issues this spring catching up to the fastball. I appreciate your takes as a fan, because it helps my untrained eye focus on things I’d miss.
Klaw: You’re welcome. I know the Jays value Tellez more highly than I do. The required offensive threshold for a DH is just so high, however, and Tellez can’t hit good velocity, so I don’t see much probability for him to be more than an up and down guy.

Don: It’s only been three starts, but Tanner Houck hasn’t gotten the results I would have expected out of a potential first round pick. Do you think he has first round talent and at what point do the lack of results start to eat away at his draft prospects?
Klaw: Three starts at the beginning of the year mean very little, especially for a pitcher. It’s much more about how you finish. I think he’s going in the first round barring injury, but I have real concerns about the delivery and lack of a third pitch.

Mark: Why are people so adamant about others speaking their second language when they never attempted to learn a second one? The “Sammy Sosa forgot how to speak English” narrative, brought up by Howard Bryant in his Selig column, is lazy, racist and ignorant. Why wouldn’t he testify under oath in Spanish? Calcaterra made a good point about it 6 years ago, but it’s still used as a default narrative. Just because people claim to have “a friend who spent a semester in Spain and came back fluent” (note: the only people who spend 6 months abroad and return fluent are people who were already fluent to begin with), doesn’t mean someone should testify in their second language. People confuse being able to converse with the media with mastering a language. I’ve spent a decade in Chile working for a bilingual news service and as a translator for an engineering company. If I had to testify in front of Congress – with my freedom at stake – I sure as shit wouldn’t do it in Spanish if I could avoid it.
Klaw: I agree that the comment about Sosa is all of those things, and that “you’re in America, speak English” people should go jump off a tall building. You speak your native language. I’ll do what I need to do to make myself able to understand you.

Francisco: Is Pavin Smith a first rounder ?
Klaw: I don’t think so. Second rounder for me.

J: I know it’s early, but…. any sense of Giolito in spring? Steps forward, steps back, treading water?
Klaw: Building on my earlier answer, I can only offer that his comments about discarding everything the Nats did with his delivery last year are the most positive thing he could have said.

JB: I do not understand all of the fury over a gay character in Beauty and the Beast…anyone who has watched the original animated version should be able to tell that LeFou is in love with Gaston. Last week you mentioned that orientation should not matter in these instances if it is not an established part of canon. On that note, I did not understand why the Broadway version of Harry Potter decided to make Hermione an African American woman for that very reason… I am all for diversity in every aspect of life, but this did seem a little too forced. Thoughts?
Klaw: On the first point, the Australian site the Chaser summed it up best with their post titled “Outrage at inclusion of gay character in film about woman-buffalo romance.” On the second, did they choose to make the character a woman of color, or did they simply cast the best actress regardless of skin color? All we ever learned about Hermione’s appearance from the books was that she had brown, bushy hair (which went out the window once they decided to play up Emma Watson’s looks).

Ned: Keith I’m not able to handle anyone’s differing opinion of things, could you please pull yourself up by your bootstraps and only give me answers that I like?
Klaw: Maybe on april 1st?

Ryan: Are you going to come back to your hometown (or LI in general) when your book is released?
Klaw: I haven’t been back to Long Island in three years, and am not sure when I’ll ever be back there. My family all moved away in 2012 or before.

guren: I recall that you put together a list of your top pizza restaurants back in 2015. Have you ever made pizza at home that compares to some of the better ones on the list, or is it impossible due to the lack of a proper oven?
Klaw: I’d need an oven that could at least get to 800 degrees, so unless I hack the self-cleaning cycle – note well: i’m not going to do that – I won’t be able to do a real Neapolitan-style pizza at home. My daughter and I do make pizza often, but it’s our own style, somewhere between that and NY slice style. Mostly it’s great because it’s from scratch and it’s ours.

addoeh: Let’s talk about a former NFL quarterback that is in his late 20’s. How much interest would teams have in Jake Locker if he announced a comeback today? IIRC, he was considered a good baseball prospect.
Klaw: He was a legit prospect both ways, and in an alternate universe where he’s not good enough to be an NFL prospect – like Kyler Murray – Locker chooses to specialize as a hitter or as a pitcher and comes out of UW as a top ten pick.

Bo: I am probably your biggest fan in the Netherlands. Could you please tell me if you think Profar is going to be a star after all?
Klaw: Still a believer. This is a big year, though. He needs to play every day, and any rationalizing his performance from last year as rust or fatigue from the two-year layoff is over.

Ben: Any chance you have read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall?
Klaw: I read Fludd and didn’t like it, so, no, I haven’t read anything else she’s written. I just started Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad last night; it seems like it’s the favorite to win this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, to the extent that such odds exist.

Jon/Tampa: Keith, curious on your take on a couple of NYY minor leaguers and if you feel they are over hyped. Frecier Perez and Estevan Florial. Thank you in advance. Actually, more of your thoughts on them rather than if they are over hyped. I trust your judgement more.
Klaw: Florial was 18 and Perez 20 on my Yankees org ranking. They’re both intruiging, but incomplete as prospects, and a long way off. If they’re getting hyped now, it’s premature. I am kind of rooting for Florial because he was born in Haiti, and, I mean, when am I ever going to get back to Haiti?

Jon: More likely to make it as a starter Justin Dunn or Fernando Romero?
Klaw: Both are starters for me long term. Probably Dunn has higher probability because he’s never had an arm injury.

Casey: Does Paul DeJong have a chance to be an average regular or will his most likely outcome be as utility infielder?
Klaw: Has a chance, most likely a good UT who could end up with 500 AB some years playing 3-4 positions.

WarEagle: Hi Keith, I’m trying to watch some SEC baseball games at Auburn, the college I attend. Is there any guy in South Carolina or Auburn I should keep an eye on?
Klaw: Keegan Thompson at Auburn is something, back from TJ, stuff hasn’t been great yet. SC has Schmidt, probably a reliever for me, and Crowe, first-round stuff but bad medicals.

Glen L: If Gleybar Torres moves off SS – does he have the arm for 3B? footwork for 2B? which position would you want him at if not SS?
Klaw: He’s not moving off shortstop.

Herman Melville: I’m sure Harper-Collins knows how to market books better than I do, but it really seems like a missed opportunity to not have it released closer to Opening Day.
Klaw: Not my decision, of course, but I will say it’ll be easier for me to do stuff around the book with it coming out April 25th and not April 4th.

Marc: Seeing several writers tab Taylor Trammell as a breakout candidate this year, what is your take on him? Potential 5-tool?
Klaw: Oh, you mean several writers like me?

Chris Burns: What’s the word on the health of Mike Matuella? Is he someone Rangers fans can hope on getting healthy and having SP potential?
Klaw: I have zero faith in him staying healthy enough to be a starter. He’s thrown about 150 innings total over the last four calendar years.

Dan: Does Madrigal hit for enough power to be a top 50 draft prospect? He seems to have star qualities but wondering if he isn’t closer to Tony Kemp than Dustin Pedroia
Klaw: I don’t think he’s a top 50 guy, but he’s a lot better than Kemp.

College fan: Nick Quintana has made some impressive contact for a freshman. What was the knock on him as a HSer that depressed his draft stock? Is he doing better than expected?
Klaw: Little guy, not expected to have any power, can hit though.

Tim B.: I know you ranked him in your top 100, but what more can you share about the kind of player you expect Jahmai Jones to develop into? Can he be a 20/20 guy or even more?
Klaw: The SB last year surprised me a little, but I imagine you’re asking more about the power, so, yes, I think he’s a 20 HR guy. Just think he has to fill out physically. He was a young draftee.

EC: I wanted to thank you for doing the lords work – especially on twitter – dealing with the crazies who always seem to be sniffing around. It is funny, because they seem to think that you wouldn’t change your mind on anything, when the truth is that if there was a change in scientific evidence and understanding (on vaccines or climate change or whatever) you probably would have an open mind and if it proved to be correct, change your world view. Not really a question I guess, just an observation.
Klaw: You’re welcome, and you’re correct. I tell these wackadoodles that I just follow the science, at which point I’m usually called a pharma shill, or that I’m gullible and believe what the media tells me, and that I should line my hats with tin foil.

TC: What is the ceiling on Bobby Dalbec? What is the chance of him reaching that ceiling?
Klaw: There’s 30 HR power in there, but the kid had a different swing and stance seemingly every game last year, and I didn’t have him on my predraft top 100 for that reason. The Red Sox did calm him down and get him to stick with one set of mechanics all summer, and now there’s real reason for optimism. He doesn’t have to hit a ton to be a big leaguer, just maybe a K rate under 30% so that he’s hitting enough to get to some of that power.

Hinkie: Anything new on “The Adventures of Shohei Otani Coming To America” ? Will there be a CBA exemption allowing him to be a true FA or will he be limited to a J2 signing bonus ? And … If teams believe he is destined for J2, are there numerous clubs holding back on early deals with LA teens in the hopes of a shot at Otani ?
Klaw: I have heard nothing new and expect to hear nothing new until at least the fall. I’ve been told there will be no exemption, but I said in a recent chat I can come up with several loopholes to get him paid.

Michael: Does anyone do more with less than Tebow? Five outs in only three at bats! And he found the right place to stand on deck.
Klaw: The attention we and MLBN gave that game is completely unwarranted. I hope he’s long gone by the time I get to St. Lucie.

Gordon (PA): Hi Keith. Have you ever considered doing a top 100 non-fiction list to supplement your top 100 novel list? I’ve shared your enthusiasm for modern classics like the Omnivore’s Dilemna, The Third Plate, The Sixth Extinction, etc. and would love to see what all would fill your list and use it to fill up my wish list. Care to drop a top ten?
Klaw: With the novels list, I’ve read enough of the accepted classics, including others’ top 100s, Pulitzer winners, etc., that I felt like I had the base that allowed me to do a reasonable list. I couldn’t do that with nonfiction books or with movies. I will mention some other favorite nonfiction books: Barbarians at the Gate, Liar’s Poker, The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, Thinking Fast & Slow, The Invisible Gorilla, Manhunt, Charlie Wilson’s War, Undeniable, Charlatan, Einstein’s Cosmos.

Tracy: Keith, there is a terrific blog piece in Scientific American this week that you may find interesting, written by Peter Dykstra. It’s a slap-down on climate change deniers and their reasoning for rejecting science and sound judgment. Dykstra basically links their flawed mentality to Sigmund and Anna Freud’s theory on simple denial. It’s definitely worth a read for anybody who has trouble tolerating this kind of thinking.
Klaw: I’ll check it out. Maybe we can get together and mail copies to every EPA employee we can identify?

Mike: Any concern over Greinke topping out at 89 yesterday when he was topping out at 93 at this time last year? AZ newspaper quoted a rival scout who thought Greinke’s stuff had dipped.
Klaw: Not really; I’d be concerned if Greinke, who knows how to manipulate his velocity like few others, said afterwards he was throwing at 100%.

ck: Keith, thanks for all of your work. Are the Cubs better off trying to trade Candelario, or keep him as Rizzo/Bryant insurance (aware of his defensive limits at 3B)?
Klaw: I think he’s good trade bait. He’d play in the majors for someone right now.

Gentry: Who’s better, Luis Castillo or Gohara?
Klaw: I could go either way. I rated Gohara higher, so that’s my answer, but I don’t feel strongly about it. Might be 55/45 in Gohara’s favor.

Brad: Keith, I know you were high on Aaron Blair at this time a year ago. Have you heard any specifics about what has happened to him? I can’t figure out why he hasn’t become at least a backend rotation guy.
Klaw: Velocity fell last year. So did Archie Bradley’s and Braden Shipley’s. I feel like those guys all had something in common in 2015.

A Submitter Has No Name: Hard question but I figured you’d be the best to answer: Which arm in the minors has the ceiling of a #1 and is the most likely to reach that ceiling? You do a good job of assessing risk and probability when determining ceilings (as see with the Moncada ranking). Love your work!
Klaw: That’s Kopech. You gave the reason why I ranked him highest of all pitching prospects: ceiling of a 1, best chance of such players to get to that ceiling.

Donald: Aren’t you glad that President Trumps secret plan to get rid of ISIS in 30 days was such a bigly success?
Klaw: I also enjoyed the Last Week Tonight episode from two Sundays ago, where they included Trump’s campaign promise to ensure every American has health insurance. I assume that means he’s going to veto the Trumpcare bill if it reaches his desk?

TEM: So Jason Heyward has spent the offseason developing a new swing. Based upon what I’ve read from you and elsewhere, the results to date aren’t particularly encouraging. For a guy like Heyward who has shown success with the bat in the past, why would he try to build a new swing from scratch? Why not go with what has previously worked?
Klaw: I think the idea was to restore what worked for him several years ago, as opposed to last year, when nothing worked.

Sandy Cheeks: I believe you said Sandy Alcantara has a really good chance of rising into the top 50 by the end of this season. Which outside the top 100 prospects besides Sandy could have the most movement by the end of the year?
Klaw: If you look at my sleeper for every team, those are 30+ such players. That’s the purpose of the sleepers – guys who aren’t top 100, but who could make a significant leap into the 100 next year.

Scott: Thoughts on Michael Gettys progress and development within the Padres organization and how do you see him moving forward?
Klaw: Borderline non-prospect for me. Can’t hit.

Scott: Is Quantrill going to start in the year in Lake Elsinore this year? Who else of the Padres top prospects are going to be at LE in your estimation? I am looking forward to attending some games next season.
Klaw: I assume so, but i haven’t asked any team about assignments yet, and Q may be on some sort of innings limit.

Anonymous: Hello, I’m going to be in San Francisco next month for a couple days. Could you offer your top recs for 1. coffee 2. pizza 3. one other exceptional dining experience? Thanks!
Klaw: Four Barrel for coffee, Del Popolo for pizza (tell Jon D, the owner, I sent you), and Cotogna for an exceptional dining experience. Also, bring a jacket. And a sweater.

Craig: Klaw, for pete’s sake, give The Godfather a try! It is a freaking masterpiece.
Klaw: I understand that it’s great, or widely considered to be so. The subject matter itself repels me.

JD: Have you seen/heard much of Seth Beer? Is his bat a guy, a Guy, or a G!U!Y?
Klaw: Saw him a few times in HS. Could always hit, but was older than his competition (he was on track to be a 20-yo senior). He’ll be 21.5 next spring as a college junior, and while he’s a corner OF without much defensive value, I can’t really argue against a guy who hits for power and doesn’t strike out much. I will throw this question out there – yes, the walk rate is bonkers, but is he actually that patient, or are teams just pitching around him?

Mike, (Toronto, ON): I’m filming a few days on the final episode of Orphan Black here in Toronto. Any messages from KLaw to the cast/crew? Also, I feel like the Jays are going to be alright this year, despite the fact that everyone in the US media seems to feel they’ll slip. Morales/Pearce replace EE and Smoak, Liriano replaces Dickey, no innings limits for Sanchez, healthier Bautista + JD (maybe Travis, too). Other four starters remain from best starting staff in AL last year. What am I missing?
Klaw: Well, there are few things you could say that would make me more jealous. I had given up hope that Maslany would win the Emmy, only to have her get it last year. I’m a little more bearish than you on the Jays – Morales/Pearce aren’t replacing EE, and while Bautista should be healthier he’s also nearer 40 than 30. There’s also little to no depth – if they need help during the season, it’s not coming from within. I haven’t done any of my standings predictions yet, but I think I’ll probably have them treading water or a touch below last year.

RBI, WIns, and Saves: We would like to announce we are writing a book, too! it’s called “Why We Matter and How Newfangled Stats are Ruining Baseball!” (Subtitle iw “Why Keith Law is Such a Big Poopyhead.) We think we can get Murray Chass to write the forward for us. By the way, what chance does Christin Stewart have to become a GUY?
Klaw: I thought I banned you three from the chat. I think Stewart’s going to be a 50 (average) or a 55 (above average) big leaguer, with little variance around that. His defensive limitations mean he lacks ceiling beyond that, but I feel good enough in the hit/power tools to say he’s going to be an average everyday guy.

JD: I know you generally don’t compare your reports to other writers’, but the difference on David Paulino is unusually large. Any sense what accounts for that? Seeing him at different points in the season?
Klaw: Can’t answer that, nor do I ever answer that kind of question. Paulino throws super hard with a bad delivery, below-average command, and below-average secondary stuff. I said in my Astros writeup, where he wasn’t in the top 10, that I think he’s 90% likely to end up in relief.

Gary: It looks like Derek Hill’s ceiling may be 4th or 5th OFer, due to his issues swinging the bat. Are there any adjustments you would recommend he make, or is he simply not gifted as a hitter?
Klaw: His issue has been injuries. He has to get stronger, but mostly he’s just never had the reps he needed to get any better at the plate. His swing is fine. He has to stay on the field for more than half a season.

JJ: John Farrell said this morning that he’s toying with the idea of batting Benintendi third in the order. Is that too much, too soon, for a rookie, even one with Benintendi’s upside?
Klaw: I don’t believe a hitter’s place in the batting order is going to affect his performance negatively. If anything, he may have more at bats with men on base, meaning he’ll see more pitchers working from the stretch.

Tom: Planning on attending a Wilmington Blue Rocks game this summer. Any good dining options nearby?
Klaw: Cocina Lolo in downtown Wilmington is 5 minutes away, and I think it’s the best overall restaurant in the area.

Bill: Keith – did the Yankees end up better off getting Torres rather than Schwarber (whether or not that was actually on the table is another story).
Klaw: I think so. I’d take the risk of the prospect to get the shortstop rather than the huge bat without a clear position.

Rick: “Do you believe that sick people that cannot afford medical treatment deserve medical treatment”? I feel like if we simply asked people this question before arguing the freaking minutia of all this health care debate for weeks on end, we could save ourselves a lot of time. Because I think that’s a simplified version of what this all comes down to. I give credit to the conservatives who come out and say, “No – health care is not a fundamental right”. At least I know where they stand.
Klaw: I agree, and I want more politicians to have to go on the record like that. Do you think someone should die due to lack of funds for health care that exists, but is expensive? Would you give up some of your own income to ensure that poor people you don’t know get to live longer, or be less sick? (I would.) If not, well, it’s not good, but it’s a reason.

ForteKay: Saw a couple writers mention an increased risk for Thor this season due to added muscle and not throwing in the off season – I’m a bit concerned by his desire to throw HARDER but he also has tremendous size and an easy motion. Should I be any more worried than I would be for a pitcher in general?
Klaw: That was based on comments from a former coach who’s never seen Thor and knows no specifics about him. I thought the media running with that was irresponsible.

Alex: Any recommendations on things to see in Europe?
Klaw: You may have to narrow that one down a bit.

Karl: I know you are not a fantasy sports guy, but perhaps you can help me out…in a long term dynasty league I can keep two of the following: Aaron Judge, Bradley Zimmer, or Alex Verdugo. I know you rank Verdugo the highest on your rankings but on a purely offensive stats output would that still be the case? Thanks for taking my question and I won’t ask another fantasy question ever again.
Klaw: Verdugo. Also Verdugo. In case that wasn’t clear, take Verdugo.

Mike (DC): Joe Martarano to give up football to play baseball full time. At 22 y/o, is there any shot he can develop quickly enough to make the majors some day?
Klaw: Problem was he sucked in HS. Long way to go at the plate.

dave: If the panda loses his footing will Devers have a chance for a midseason call up
Klaw: I think they’d prefer not to do that. Devers hasn’t even played a game in AA yet.

ForteKay: Re: Godfather – Is it the semi-racist connotations of Italian-Americans and crime? Or just violence in general? As a fellow Italian-American that association definitely bugs me – but hard to deny it makes for really entertaining fiction.
Klaw: It’s the former. I do not like ultraviolent films, but I avoid gore (I said on twitter I’ve never seen a slasher film, let alone this disgusting trend of ‘torture porn’ films) and accept that much great fiction includes violence. Blood Meridian is a great novel, but if someone films that it’s going to get an NC-17 for all the killings.

Steve: Thanks for spreading the word about Ten Fe. Killer album.
Klaw: Still among my favorites this year. Temples’ new record was good too. I got an early stream of the Afghan Whigs’ album, due out in May, and liked it a lot – more than I did their last record.

HugoZ: Do you find the subject matter of Richard III repellant as well? Isn’t there value to examining the nature of evil?
Klaw: Richard III is certainly a repellent character. He’s not an Italian-American, for one thing. For another, that’s Shakespeare. He had the best words. Mario Puzo is not Shakespeare.

JR: Not sure if you can say anything on this, but there have been reports in recent days that ESPN is going to be making another round of cuts. Is there anyone we can email/tweet at/send snail mail too to encourage the decision makers to keep you? You are the only reason I buy insider, so they would lose my annual sub fee if you end up elsewhere.
Klaw: Several of you have reached out on the topic, so thank you all for the concern. I just signed a new contract a few weeks ago. I’m more worried about friends of mine who work behind the scenes at ESPN, although I know nothing more than you saw in reports like Richard Deitsch’s.

Jeff: No question, just a comment. Saw Hunter Greene in person last Saturday against the local HS team. I came to the conclusion (in my amateur opinion) that he is really $#@#% good. Any chance a team drafts as a SS instead of a pitcher?
Klaw: There’s enough real doubt about the hit tool that I think he’s 80/20 or better to go as a pitcher. Up to 101, athletic as hell, now has a real slider too.

JD: re pitching around Seth Beer: the Gamecocks coach said he’d walk him 4 or 5 times if he had to, throw it to the backstop if he had to… and then the winning run scored on a passed ball during an intentional walk to Beer. So maybe people are pitching him a little too carefully?
Klaw: Is that the incident someone tweeted at me about? By the way, remember when the Gamecocks coach talked some smack about me when I said Brandon McIlwain was foolish to enroll early at SC and skip the MLB draft? How’s that working out?

Dan: I have read all of Gladwell, any other books like his you would recommend?
Klaw: I think there’s much better stuff out there in the same vein that leans more on the research and less on anecdote. Thinking Fast & Slow, Invisible Gorilla, Predictably Irrational, Superforecasting, even Freakonomics all mine that territory more effectively.

Tim (KC): Keith, now that the Diamondbacks have made changes, which teams are most behind the times analytically speaking? Which are better than the rest?
Klaw: As far as I know, all 30 teams have or are building dedicated analytics departments. Arizona, Minnesota, Philadelphia are all behind on the timeline, but it’s not due to lack of effort, budget, or willpower. They just got late starts.

Dan: Where will Lazaro Armenteros start the year? How long before he will sniff a top 100 list?
Klaw: Probably extended spring, and I’d bet on never.

Jerry: What I don’t get is how “pro-life” goes along with poor people don’t deserve shit. Also I don’t get how we haven’t overhauled medical and pharmacy billing.
Klaw: “Pro-life” people are generally “pro-birth.” You have to have that baby, and now you’re entirely responsible for it, even though kids who are malnourished, maltreated, or often sick are more likely to end up costing society as a whole when they get older. (Also, you know, compassion for those less fortunate is a good thing.)

Jerry: Bochy said he really doesn’t want to platoon LF, so does Parker hit lefties well enough to win the everyday job (because there are a ton of LH SPs in the NL West)?
Klaw: Such a long swing. I can’t see it.

Bruce: Jameson Taillon and Tyler Glasnow – what is the ceiling for both and what do you expect from them this year?
Klaw: Maybe both #2s? Taillon is much further ahead. During his long layoff he became more of a complete pitcher, not just a thrower. Glasnow’s new delivery perplexes me and I wrote about it this week.

Harold: Every economic problem in our country boils down to the fact that pols in both parties craft legislation to benefit the ultra rich and the ultra poor. They love the rich because they all fall into that category, along with those who fund their campaigns. They love the poor, because it is a large voting bloc that is easy to influence with promises of subsidies and other benefits. The problem, obviously, is that the segment in the middle is burdened with financing everything and eventually will be too small to handle it.
Klaw: Is that really true? I thought the “ultra poor,” however you define them, don’t vote at the same rates as higher socioeconomic strata. The rich do tend to get what they want, though. Everything counts in large amounts.

Bobbo: Just letting you know that someone got the “Bad Idea Jeans” joke.
Klaw: That commercial will never, ever, ever get old.

Jeff: Bomani Jones said on Twitter (paraphrasing) that Thomas Sowell is a brilliant man who lost his damn mind…was wondering how you feel about Sowell, since you are both econ buffs.
Klaw: This seems like a really interesting topic that I totally missed.

Lee: Why the heck would any somewhat intelligent human choose a football career over baseball? Football gives you lifelong debilitating diseases on a non-guaranteed salary structure. How is this even a choice for people?
Klaw: No idea. If any of our friends with kids let their sons play football – they’re all reaching the ages where that’s an option – I will try to convince them otherwise the way I would convince a vaccine resister.

Dan: This the year Daniel Norris puts it all together? What are you expecting from him this year
Klaw: I’m a believer.

Jerry: I know “best shape of life” means nothing, but was it true for Panda and does it mean anything?
Klaw: Sounds like he’s in great shape but I have no idea what if anything it means.

Stewart: As with any society, ours is in the stage where those who are the least productive are the ones reproducing the most. Studies consistently show that people are much more likely to maintain the economic status of their parents, rather than taking a huge leap forward. If politicians want to lessen the impact entitlement programs on the economy, they need to provide real incentives to middle and upper class people to have more children.
Klaw: Or to provide incentives and methods for the lowest stratum to have fewer children. You know, like easy access to affordable birth control.

Anonymous: Great news! EPA chief Scott Pruitt says CO2 is not a primary contributor to global warming. I was really starting to worry that global warming was a real long term threat to life and property. Apparently I can relax now.
Klaw: It would be great if the media would simply call him out on that bullshit every. single. day.

Nathan: Assuming both reach their potential, who ends up with more value, Meadows or Dahl?
Klaw: Meadows. My worry with Dahl is that I don’t think he has a great plan at the plate. I think he’s blessed with tremendous ability, but Meadows has a much better idea when he gets in the box.

Valdez: Did you have the same attitude toward MJordan’s foray into baseball, or did he get a pass?
Klaw: I was 20 when he did that. I had no standing to even have an opinion, and if I did have one, I have no idea what it was. I know that several years later I found out that Jordan’s little sojourn wrecked the career of a prospect behind him – I think that was Charlie Poe – so I would say now, with that knowledge and the benefit of my age and experience, that it was just as ridiculous, maybe even more so because they shoved him right to AA. (He also showed that he was way more skilled than the washed-up QB, though.)

Nick: Ever made beef jerky at home? If so, which cut of beef do you prefer (I don’t think flank is ideal).
Klaw: I haven’t, partly because I can’t get over my fear that I’d do it wrong, mostly because we eat very little beef at home.

Ethan: Is there a difference between a sinker and a two-seam fastball, as far as grip and movement? I feel like I hear the two interchanged sometimes. I could be wrong.
Klaw: Yes, two different pitches, typically different movements, but a two-seamer can sink – it usually will at least have some sink, although that type of movement, where it moves both down and to the pitcher’s arm side, is usually called ‘tail.’

Paul: Isn’t the issue with healthcare how to reduce costs? Haven’t heard any goods ideas from either party.
Klaw: Yes. That’s a bigger issue than mere price elasticity, which is what the GOP keeps pointing to with HSAs – saying that if you’re not spending your own money, you stop caring whether you’re overpaying. That is true for most goods, but doesn’t appear to be true for health care, at least not in any way that can inform policy. If you or a loved one needs lifesaving care, you will pay everything you have. That is an open invitation for providers to charge as much as possible.

TJ: Klaw, do you have any “guilty pleasure” players? Guys you know aren’t great but just enjoy watching them play? Mine would be Rajah Davis- gotta love a short, pudgy dude who looks like he’s having great fun playing and wears a giant oven mitt when on base, even if he takes the craziest routes imaginable to chase fly balls…
Klaw: I love watching athletes do athletic things. Billy Hamilton is not very good at all at the plate, but I could watch him run all day. I don’t care if he goes full Piersall and runs the bases backwards. I’d watch him run from the dugout to his position. I am just floored to see a human being move that fast.

J: Watched Lobster last night. I feel like I need to watch it again and pay more attention to all the animals who have walk on parts
Klaw: The dog should have gotten a best supporting actor nomination.

ForteKay: Any book signings planned in the New York/Westchester area? Would love to get a signed copy and talk a bit of baseball
Klaw: Nothing yet, but I think we’ll do something in NYC around the launch date. As it gets closer, more requests are coming into Harper Collins and we’re trying to work those into my scouting schedule, because I think I’m doing all my draft travel after April 1st this year (it just worked out that way).

Klaw: That’s all for this week – thank you as always for all of your questions. With travel coming up, I may move chat days/times or skip a week, so please watch here, Facebook, and Twitter for announcements on that front. Hup hup!

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→ March 7, 2017
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I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.

So I’m told that the new movie I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore isn’t technically a movie, because Netflix bought the film at January’s Sundance Festival and released it directly to its streaming service, bypassing a theatrical release entirely. That means it’s ineligible for annual movie awards and (most) critics’ lists. I don’t think the movie was going to end up earning Oscar nods, but it might have been on some top ten lists given its indie cred and noir-farcical feel, along with a pretty great performance by Elijah Wood.

Melanie Lynskey plays the protagonist, Ruth, a frumpy, meek post-op nurse who lives alone, is constantly put-upon or merely stepped-on, and comes home from the Worst Day Ever to find that someone broke into her house and stole her laptop and her grandmother’s silver. The police are indifferent and even blame her* a bit for the break-in, giving zero reason for her to expect to ever see her stuff again. She had location-tracking software on her laptop, however, and when her phone tells her the laptop has been turned on and is located about a ten-minute drive away, she recruits her martial arts-obsessed neighbor, Tony, to go get it back … which leads them into one semi-incompetent escapade after another until people start getting shot.

* Unrelated: last year, we had a false alarm at our house for unknown reasons, but the police ended up getting to the house before we could return and call them off. The officer who went through the house was really unpleasant to us after, saying we’d left “every door unlocked,” and all but calling us idiots. While we have certainly made the mistake of leaving one door unlocked, there’s one door that we never open and that is always locked, one he claimed was left unlocked … which it wasn’t. So I probably related to Ruth a little more than usual when the cop was talking down to her.

I keep seeing references to this film as “neo-noir,” but it’s noirish, at best, and is too comical, with protagonists and antagonists too inept, to really qualify as noir. Ruth and Tony are just amateurs, and they get drunk on the success of the laptop retrieval mission. When they get closer to the bumbling, violent idiots behind the burglary, things get more serious, except that the gang literally can’t shoot straight, and we get a Fargo-esque screwup that leaves a few people dead and Ruth running for her life from the big baddie, played by David Yow (lead singer of the Jesus Lizard). The tone definitely gets darker as the film goes on, but less in a Touch of Evil sort of way, more in a Pulp Fiction holy-shit-people-are-dying-horrible-deaths way.

There is a broader theme underlying I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore that takes it beyond mere indie black-comedy territory – that people today are losing their empathy. Ruth views the burglary as the greatest violation in a day of minor violations, and thinks the problem is just that people are assholes (her word for it, not that I disagree). And when she confronts some of the people who were assholes to her, only one, Tony, actually sets about proving her wrong. There’s no answer to the questions of where our empathy went, or how to get it back, but as the foundational observation for an inept crime caper film, it works quite well.

By the way, Lynskey’s first major role in anything was in 1994’s Heavenly Creatures, where she played Pauline Parker, who murdered her mother with the help of her friend Juliet Hulme. The director of that film was Peter Jackson, who later directed the Lord of the Rings films, starring … Elijah Wood. Hulme was played by another then-unknown actress, Kate Winslet. And you probably know who Juliet Hulme is, but not by that name: She was released from prison after serving her five-year term, changed her name to Anne Perry, and became a best-selling author of historical detective fiction.

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→ March 6, 2017
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Sing Street.

Sing Street is a coming-of-age story, set in the 1980s, that also serves as an homage to the distinctive pop and new-wave sounds of the first half of that decade along with the new medium of the music video. Written and directed by John Carney, who wrote and directed the wonderful 2007 film Once (now a Tony Award-winning musical), Sing Street uses largely unknown actors and original music that manages to evoke classic ’80s pop tunes without directly ripping them off, and includes all kinds of little visual cues to remind those of us who grew up in that era of the atmosphere of the time. The film earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical or Comedy (it’s both), but didn’t earn a Best Song nomination, and was totally overlooked by the Oscars. I named it my #10 movie of 2016 on my post last weekend. It’s currently streaming on Netflix and available to rent on amazon and iTunes.

The film follows Conor, the youngest of three children of squabbling Robert (Aidan Gillen, a.k.a. Mayor Carcetti from The Wire) and Penny (Maria Doyle Kennedy, a.k.a. Mrs. S from Orphan Black), as he’s moved from a posh private school to a free school run by the Christian Brothers called Synge Street, named for the Dublin street on which it’s located. (The street and school are both real.) Conor’s bullied right away by the tough kids in the new school, but spots an attractive girl standing across the street – complete with ’80s big hair – and lies about being in a band to try to impress her, asking her to be in their first video. Then he has to make a band, which becomes Sing Street, and launches the remainder of the story, along with the film’s wonderful soundtrack.

Each Sing Street song is a thematic copy of something that’s popular at the moment, like Duran Duran’s “Rio” or Hall & Oates’ “Maneater.” If you remember the ’80s act Danny Wilson, who had a minor hit in the U.S. in 1988 called “Mary’s Prayer,” their lead singer Gary Clark wrote most of the music for Sing Street, and has a clear knack for this sort of knockoff – the song that sounds like some other song, but has enough of a hook to work on its own, with new and often quite clever lyrics. I’m far from the only person who thought “Drive It Like You Stole It” was robbed of an Oscar nomination – neither Sting’s version of the same song he’s been rewriting since “They Dance Alone” or that awful Timberlake song where he trolls the entire world deserved a spot over this one – but you could make a case for “Up” or closer “Brown Shoes” too.

The story itself is a little light, and we’re mostly just following the two main characters, Conor and Raphina, as they start to grow up a little, make some mistakes, and develop a sort of teenage crush. Everyone else is comic relief, including Conor’s manic, frustrated musician brother Brendan (played by American actor Jack Reynor, who’s great except for his bad Irish accent); Mark McKenna as rabbit-obsessed multi-instrumentalist wizard Eamon; and even class bully Barry, who has a predictably awful home life but gets his little moment in the sun. And Carney works in several ’80s music-video tropes, including shots of the main couple running out of a concert hall or the two of them running down the alley in the half-light, as well as clips of the band filming amateur music videos that imitate the stuff they’ve seen on TV.

Carney himself has said he regrets the ending, joking that he wishes he’d killed the two protagonists off, but I found his comments puzzling because, before I saw his comments, I didn’t think the ending was so unambiguously happy. Other than the clear reference to “Rio,” except for Conor getting poured on as opposed to Simon LeBon basking in sunshine, the ending seemed open-ended and doubtful to me. There’s no real reason to believe good things are going to happen to either character in what would hypothetically follow the final sequence. It’s an escape, because the film itself (and the music videos that inspired it) is an escape, but the characters are only escaping from, not escaping to. To compare it to the other great musical of 2016, La La Land, there’s probably no chance Conor and Raphina are staying together for long. They’re two kids in something like love, doing something rash and impetuous that probably won’t work out, but so what?

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo has a star-making turn as Conor, playing him with little flashes of the charisma of a lead singer, but primarily as a shy, slightly nerdy kid who’s barely coming into his own over the course of the film. He was 16 when it was filmed and won’t turn 18 until this October, if you want to wonder what you’ve done with your life. Lucy Boynton has less to do as Raphina, but she manages to pull off a solid combination of insecurity and superficial haughtiness, while also proving to be quite the chameleon as the costume and makeup folks run her through a series of looks that are unquestionably ’80s and best left there. (She’s also going to appear in the upcoming film version of Murder on the Orient Express.) Walsh-Peelo is the one I’d like to see some more, though, since he sang his own vocals and has a certain presence even behind his character’s meekness.

For more on how Carney & company created the convincing sounds of a band of teenagers who’ve just started playing together, I recommend this piece from MIX magazine.

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→ March 4, 2017
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Stick to baseball, 3/4/17.

No new Insider content this week, although I believe I’ll have a new piece up on Tuesday, assuming all goes to plan. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Mole Rats in Space, a cooperative game for kids from the designer of Pandemic and Forbidden Desert. It’s pretty fantastic, and I think if you play this you’ll never have to see Chutes and Ladders again.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. The book now has two positive reviews out, one from Kirkus Reviews and one from Publishers Weekly.

Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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