keith — Page 94

→ January 14, 2019
→ By keith

Hearts Beat Loud.

Nick Offerman is one of the few celebrities I follow on Twitter, and any movie or TV show becomes much more interesting to me if I find out he’s one of the stars. After seeing the trailer for last summer’s Hearts Beat Loud a few times, with Offerman playing one of the two leads and a father-daughter story around the hook of indie music, I couldn’t have been more jazzed to see it. I finally caught it this weekend, now that it’s streaming on Hulu, and it’s cute and kind of sweet and, to my surprise and chagrin, kind of boring.

Offerman plays Frank Fisher, a widowed father and former musician who runs an independent record store (as in vinyl) in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, and lives with his teenaged daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons), who is a few weeks away from heading across the country to UCLA to study pre-med. The store is failing, in part because the landlord (Toni Collette) has raised the rent beyond what Frank can afford, and there’s added financial pressure from Frank’s mother Marianne (Blythe Danner), who is experiencing some cognitive decline but still lives on her own. In one of Frank and Sam’s regular jam sessions (“jam sesh,” as Frank calls it to annoy his daughter), they write and record a song called “Hearts Beat Loud” that Frank likes enough to upload on to Spotify, where it has a little success and attracts interest from a local agent, which spurs a minor conflict between Frank, who wants to pursue it, and Sam, who thinks it’s a fantasy and by then is days away from heading to school.

The film has modest ambitions and modestly hits them, which works by keeping the story realistic but also means the stakes in the story are consistently low. The story is more slice-of-life than traditional narrative; the film ends when the store closes – so I suppose there was a chance they’d have the song save the store somehow – and Sam heads off to school, which does give a poignant moment when she breaks off her budding relationship with girlfriend Rose (Sasha Lane, great as always). Frank is a bit of a screw-up, which works in some ways – he’s not great with money, he drinks a little too much – but not in others – we get the Dawson’s Creek shtick where the kids are smarter than the adults.

Perhaps the most glaring flaw in the film is the lack of development or insight into Frank’s relationship with Sam, which would appear to be the heart (no pun intended) of the story. There are hints of Frank’s reluctance to let Sam leave New York for school, but no exploration of how he accepts that this is what she wants to do and that it’s right for her – the script skips right over that part, moving from a feel-good moment where the two play a mini-concert the night the store closes to a point after she’s already left. The backstory of Sam’s mother could give some insight into his hope that the band, which Frank titles We’re Not a Band after Sam gives that non-answer to his request for a suggested name, becomes a way to keep Sam both home and closer to him, but it’s scant and disappears from the narrative partway through. There’s a sideswipe at amazon, a fun cameo from a popular indie musician, a bunch of dumb weed jokes, and some nods to Brooklyn hipster culture, all in service of a goal I couldn’t identify.

Offerman is understated here, not in the Ron Swanson way but more in a way that underutilizes his comic gifts; there’s an early scene where he’s playing the cool dad trying too hard to annoy his daughter that was both very familiar (I’ve done almost the same thing and gotten the same reaction from my daughter) and a better use of his talents. He’s apparently quite a good guitar player, but that’s not a draw – there’s one scene where he uses a Boss Loop Station pedal to write and record a riff that they later work into a song, but the scene seems to go on forever, because watching someone write music is, unfortunately, not good cinema. Clemons is a breakout star, though, and has quite a singing voice. Collette and Ted Danson, Frank’s stoner bar owner friend, don’t have nearly enough to do. I wanted to like Hearts Beat Loud for so many reasons, but the total is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: disappointments, movies

→ January 13, 2019
→ By keith

Vice.

For pure entertainment value, Vice is one of the half-dozen best movies of 2018. It’s funny, fast-paced, and packed with good performances from great actors, some of whom are disguised sufficiently to make you spend a good chunk of the movie asking yourself, “where do I know them from?” It’s also a movie that I think has the potential to sway a lot of viewers who remain ambivalent about the legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration, or simply prefer not to think about it, since so much of what the movie shows did in fact happen, and the consequences of that administration’s policies have been disastrous in so many spheres of modern life around the world.

That doesn’t make it a good movie, however, and Vice is, in fact, not a good movie. Vice is a farce masquerading as a satire; it is a polemic masquerading as political commentary. It is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead. Its quick pace may be a feature rather than a bug, but it makes the movie feel unfocused and superficial, aided in the former by writer-director Adam McKay’s decision to jump back and forth in time between scenes from 9/11 and Cheney’s early years in Wyoming. (There is one truly brilliant part of this, however, around the 43 minute mark, that I won’t spoil, but it is one of the funniest bits in the movie.) There is so much for the viewer to unpack in this movie, but McKay barely gives us time to open the boxes, let alone sort through their contents, and this becomes most problematic of all if you take a moment – probably after the film ends, because you barely have any time during the movie to think – to ponder Dick Cheney’s motivations for just about anything he did in life. Vice has no answers for us.

Cheney, for the handful of you who might not know much of his history, started his political career as an intern in Congress, hitched his wagon to Donald Rumsfeld’s, and moved into the executive branch, eventually becoming Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford at age 34. When Jimmy Carter defeated Ford in 1976, Cheney changed direction, running for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat and winning in 1978, holding the seat for a decade before becoming Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. After an interlude as CEO of Halliburton during the Clinton years, Cheney returned to public office as George W. Bush’s running mate, becoming Vice President for eight years, during which he pursued unprecedented power for the executive branch as a whole and himself in particular, power that led the United States into the fiasco that was the war in Iraq, warrant-less surveillance, widespread torture of so-called “enemy combatants,” and more.

Vice focuses on how Cheney got to that point in his career, and what he did with the power he obtained. Cheney, played by Welsh actor Christian Bale, is first seen as a drunken screw-up who is lifted out of his own mess by his wife Lynne (Amy Adams, doing Amy Adams things). Lynne is ambitious but held back by the misogynistic political culture of the 1960s, so she wants her husband to succeed and ascend as her proxy, and throughout the film she is by his side at nearly every moment, and when she’s not, she’s there in spirit pushing him on. Cheney’s ambition may be organic, but it seems more like his wife’s making in this retelling.

That leads, after a lot of prologue, to the pivotal scene shown in the trailer, where he negotiates with then-candidate George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell, doing a spot-on impersonation) to take on the VP role but to redefine it to gain control over a wide swath of the executive branch, including defense and energy. Bush accedes, and Cheney, aided by his attorney David Addington (Don McManus) and aide Scooter Libby (Justin Kirk), sets out to consolidate power under a philosophy called the Unitary Executive Theory that sounds a lot like the divine right of kings – if the President does it, it must be legal. (I can think of one President who would very much like this philosophy to be valid right now.) This leads to the war in Iraq, which this film presents as both a question of settling a score from Operation Desert Storm and a way to enrich Cheney as well as his friends at Halliburton and Big Oil, at a cost of maybe 750,000 lives.

McKay seems so excited to tell this story that he can barely get the words out of the characters’ mouths fast enough before each scene change, never letting the material breathe or, as a result, letting the audience consider what Cheney’s motives might be. Instead, the film dazzles us with quick cuts, loud bangs, and some incredible impersonations and likenesses. Steve Carell does some very fine work as Donald Rumsfeld, and Eddie Marsan (Mr. Norrell!) does that same as his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Lisa Gay Hamilton gets Condoleeza Rice just right.

The film is also stuffed with gimmicks, with the 43-minute one the funniest, but leans way too heavily on this kind of bombast to work as a coherent film. The Alfred Molina and Jesse Plemons gambits are both interesting on their own, but do not work in the context of the movie. In fact, the Molina scene might be the movie’s best sequence, but does not fit in the broader narrative; it feels more like a brilliant sketch from a comedy show that understands the power of brevity. The scene where Dick and Lynne Cheney begin speaking to each other in Shakespearean dialogue – I thought it might be from one of the two Richard tragedies, given Cheney’s name, but it’s not – doesn’t work in the least. McKay is trying to tell a story, but fantasy sequences in a movie that otherwise strives for realism, such as with costume and makeup, only work against the broader purpose.

There’s also material in here that is pretty questionable. The script very strongly implies that Lynne Cheney’s father murdered her mother, which doesn’t seem to be confirmed or even seriously suspected. The first Iraq War is barely mentioned at all, even though explaining the second one almost certainly requires it – especially the neoconservative faction who supported the second invasion without Cheney’s financial ties to companies that would benefit. The script frequently implies that losing a Cabinet-level position is a massive career setback, even though such people could waltz into six-figure speaking fees or lucrative jobs on television or as lobbyists or at think tanks. But no inaccuracy is as glaring as the film’s stark implication that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq in 2003 because the American public wanted them to do so. Yes, tensions were still high after 9/11, and people did indeed want someone to bomb – which we did, with results that are complicated, in Afghanistan. The idea that Cheney and his focus groups (including the feckless Frank Luntz, who gets lampooned appropriately as a soulless pollster) helped market the war to maximize support, which then justified the war itself, is not just inaccurate, but distasteful. The on-screen text at the end of the movie says that over 600,000 Iraqis died as a result of our invasion. Don’t put that on the American people, even if they did want the invasion. That’s on Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and even Colin Powell – who weirdly gets a pass here – and everyone other cheerleader in Washington who signed off on the effort.

Bale won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for his portrayal of Cheney, a hard to believe transformation if you saw his appearance and heard his voice at the awards, and he’s worthy of at least a nomination for the Oscar for the same. Adams should get a nod for Best Supporting Actress, and I could see Rockwell or Carell getting a node for Best Supporting Actor, although I could probably rattle off five more deserving names (Ali, Driver, Chalamet, Grant, Elliott, Kaluuya, Jordan … that’s seven). I thought Allison Pill was excellent in a smaller role as Mary Cheney, Dick and Lynne’s daughter who comes out as a teenager and serves as a plot point throughout the movie. And Vice seems at least even money to get a Best Picture nod, even though it’s not in my top ten or, in my opinion, worthy of the nomination.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t see it; Vice is a complicated movie to discuss, as the length of this review probably shows. There’s a lot to recommend about it, from the many jokes and gags that do land, to the serious and important point it makes about the dangers of concentrating power in too few hands. The script mentions climate change in passing maybe twice, in part to say that Cheney backburnered any talk of doing something about it at the federal level, and then shows a scene of people golfing in front of a massive forest fire at the end. That’s a big deal, and worthy of exploration, but that barely gets two minutes out of the film. You’ll leave angry, but if you leave understanding anything more about the man at the heart of the story, you’ve gotten more out of Vice than I did.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 best actor nominees, 2018 best picture nominees, 2018 movies, movies

→ January 12, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/12/19.

No ESPN+ content this week, as I’m working on the prospect rankings and saving those extra bullets in the hope that someone like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado will eventually sign. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest review for Paste covers the deduction board game Cryptid, one of my top ten games of 2018, in which each player gets one clue, and you need to deduce all other players’ clues to identify the one hex on the variable board where the Creature is hiding for that specific board and set of clues. It’s quite fun, like a board game with a puzzle at its heart.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Many of you have already seen Malcolm Gladwell’s story asking if marijuana is really as safe as its supporters claim. His general answer, that we don’t know, is the correct one, and the reason is important: Puritanical federal policy has prohibited not just the use of marijuana but nearly all research into its benefits or side effects for decades. I’m ardently pro-decriminalization, including purging records of people arrested for personal possession, but there is a lot we don’t know about the effects of THC or CBD, and the burgeoning market for marijuana itself and extracts of it would benefit from evidence-based regulation.
Marie Claire has an excerpt from Abby Ellin’s new book about how she nearly married a con man.
Gizmodo profiles a family in South Africa whose house is mistakenly identified as the location of over a million IP addresses, a colossal error created, at the start, by the U.S. government.
ESPN’s Baxter Holmes wrote a delightful piece on the Portland Trail Blazer’s daily coffee routine, which warmed the heart of this coffee snob (I prefer V60 to French press, but let’s not quibble).
My Twitter friend Jane Coaston has a great piece on Vox about how Tucker Carlson has sparked a big debate on populism within conservative social media circles, arguing – as you would also hear on the progressive side of the debate – that economic inequality is a massive problem for developed countries. She spoke to Carlson, who, when not race-baiting on his Fox News program, always seems thoughtful and intelligent when speaking about serious issues. It’s a shame that person disappears when the red light goes on.
Nature looks at a father’s efforts against bureaucracy to get access to a novel drug for his two sons, who have a rare genetic disorder called alkaptonuria. The drug in question is nitisinone, which was originally developed as a potent herbicide but disused because of its harmful effects on fish – yet the same pathway it disrupts in plants contains the metabolic error in people with alkaptonuria.
Craig Calcaterra wrote about the bad news beneath MLB’s record revenues in 2018, signs the revenue may not be sustainable, which could also lead to further labor strife in the sport.
James Middleton, brother of the Duchess of Cambridge, went public with a first-person account of his battle with depression.
A 50-year-old French novelist said recently that a 50-year-old woman’s body is “unlovable,” while the body of a 25-year-old woman is “extraordinary.” The Guardian‘s Zoe Williams calls him out on this self-serving, pretentious nonsense, but the real kicker is the caption under the novelist’s photo.
The central African state of Gabon experienced a failed coup attempt this past week. South Africa’s Mail & Guardian examines why the coup failed, calling the country a “pseudo-state that is still run from Paris.” The family of current President Ali Bongo has ruled the oil- and timber-rich country for 50 years; Bongo’s father, who preceded him as de facto dictator, had 53 recognized children, many of whom run the state and its client companies while drawing off its resources for personal gain.
There are protests in British Columbia over the building a private pipeline across a First Nations enclave, with RCMP officers clashing with the protestors as the latter try to block access to the building site.
A Saudi teenager who was granted refugee status by the UN after fleeing her abusive family and holing up in a Thailand hotel room has been granted asylum in Canada. Rahaf al-Qunun says her family abused her and had threatened to kill her for renouncing Islam, sparking her flight from the repressive kingdom.
This was a big week for anti-vaccine bullshit. There’s a chicken pox outbreak at a Waldorf school in Asheville, NC, a school with a high “vaccine exemption rate,” which would be easily addressed by eliminating non-medical exemptions.
An Israeli father who didn’t feel well insisted on visiting his prematurely born son in the NICU. It turned out the father had measles, so the hospital chose to vaccinate more than 80 babies even though the MMR vaccine is typically given on a child’s first birthday. (Tangent: I had to get the MMR shot twice, because I’d originally gotten it the day before my first birthday, and the college I attended wouldn’t accept that, so at age 17 I got it again.)
A longer read on a new anti-vaxxer crank story: Sharyl Attkisson, with whom I was sparring on Twitter this week until she blocked me, styles herself as an “investigative journalist,” but is anything but, as she hosted a program syndicated on Sinclair stations last week (including Seattle’s KOMO) that dredged up the long-discredited hypothesis that vaccines cause autism. Her main “source,” with whom she may not have actually spoken, is Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, who made an extraordinary claim in 2008 about a solitary case of developmental delay in a child with mitochondrial disorder, but again, that hypothesis has also been debunked. There’s a lot of bullshit to unpack in here, but if you read it and have a Sinclair-owned station near you, call or email its news director to voice your objection to them running this fraudulent report.
Researchers at Dartmouth say they’ve found evidence that hysteresis, where a force’s impact remains even after the force is gone, occurs in the sphere of public opinion, such as the persistent, false belief that vaccines cause autism. Deniers get stuck in a so-called “hysteresis loop,” one that traps them in confirmation bias and makes it extremely difficult to shake them of their delusions.
A woman whose parents refused to get her vaccinated has gone very public as she’s gotten all her vaccines as an adult. She says that she got the flu “every year” as a kid and has extensive allergies even though one vaccine-denier delusion is that vaccines lead to allergies (they don’t).
Great news, there’s a new filovirus, like Ebola and Marberg, present in bats in China.
A bunch of North Dakota legislators (guess) want to require Bible study in public schools. I want them to pass this law just so they can lose spectacularly in court.
A federal border agent confessed to killing four Latino women he deemed “disposable” back in September, and was only discovered because a potential fifth victim escaped.
A new study found that people over the age of 65 were much more likely to share fake news online, regardless of party affiliation. That’s unsurprising; as we age, our lateral prefrontal cortices become weaker, reducing our cognitive inhibitions and making us more prone to believe things we’d find obviously false or absurd in our 30s or 40s.
The Trump Administration’s proposal to allow coal plants and other manufacturers to dump more mercury into the environment is “an affront to economics and the environment” according to Rutgers Professor of Public Policy Stuart Shapiro.
Jezebel spoke to Wende Curtis, owner of a major comedy club in Denver, about why she turned down Louis CK when his camp approached her about a gig on his would-be comeback tour.
New York‘s Intelligencer argues that raising the top marginal rate to 70% is actually a moderate, evidence-based idea, citing research that such a rate on extremely high incomes discourages rent-seeking among top executives who are likely to earn seven- or eight-figure salaries.
I enjoyed the unintentional comedy of this Politico piece on how mainstream Democrats want to “rein in” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, in large part because they’re afraid she’ll boost primary challenges to Democrats led by more progressive candidates. To which I say: good. And I’d rather have her in front of the cameras proposing new ideas, even ones with which I disagree, than Chuck Schumer delivering more of the same, or, in the highest comedy of the week, the irrelevant Joe Lieberman.
Tweet of the week:
[blind date]

JEFF BEZOS: I brought you flowers

HER: Oh thanks. That’s very sweet

JEFF BEZOS: I see you’ve liked flowers. Perhaps you’d like these other flowers

— Todd ‘Papi’ Carlos (@TheToddWilliams) January 9, 2019

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, baseball, coffee, Economics, environment, longreads, north dakota, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ January 11, 2019
→ By keith

All the Birds in the Sky.

Charlie Jane Anders was a founding editor of io9, the Gawker subsite dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, so it’s no surprise that her debut novel All The Birds in the Sky combines those genres and works in many tropes common in those areas, especially coming-of-age novels from the fantasy realm. Despite a slow ramp-up that doesn’t hint at the novel’s greater ambitions, the story builds to a bold climax that recalls many pioneering novels in these fields without ever coming off as derivative or unoriginal.

Anders’ gambit in All the Birds in the Sky is to create two synchronous, intertwined stories, one of which draws from straight fantasy and one from realistic, hard science fiction, with one character at the head of each, and contrast the complicated personal relationship between the two of them with the growing and apparently inevitable conflict that will occur between their two forces. Set in the near future where climate change and runaway capitalism have led to catastrophic weather patterns and rapid societal breakdown, the novel keeps raising the stakes between its two protagonists and pushes them into difficult, sometimes dangerous choices that only might help save the world.

Patricia and Lawrence are those two central characters, both misfits in their junior high school, albeit for different reasons. Patricia lives with her overbearing, judgmental parents, and a too-perfect older sister whose bullying of Patricia borders on the sociopathic. Lawrence lives on the other side of town, with warmer parents who don’t quite understand him, both of whom gave up ambitions of bigger careers to settle into working-class malaise. Patricia discovers one day that she can talk to animals, if only briefly, and ends up following a chatty bird to a giant tree in the middle of their forest where the birds are holding their Parliament (which is not restricted to owls). Lawrence is a gifted hacker who scavenges parts and builds a supercomputer in his closet, giving it a machine-learning algorithm that allows it to grow by talking to real people online, one of whom is Patricia. Of course, both kids are badly bullied – to such a cruel extent that reading the first few chapters was painful – which pushes them together but later pulls them apart, something exacerbated by a guidance counselor who isn’t what he seems to be, and is acting on a vision of the future where the two lead opposite sides of a global conflict between science and magic that threatens to end the planet as we know it.

The prologue was tough sledding, but once Anders gets her characters out of school, thanks to a dramatic flourish where Patricia rescues Lawrence from misery and possible death at a military academy of dubious merit, the pace picks up and the nonrealistic elements, both magic and fictional science, contribute more to the development of both the story and the two characters. Both Patricia and Lawrence are flawed, due to immaturity and the challenges of each of their upbringings, and then are pushed into situations, Patricia by her classmates at magic school and Lawrence by colleagues at a Boring Company-like startup, for which they aren’t well-prepared. Anders’ greatest achievement in the novel is showing those characters’ growth even through failures, one of which would be particularly traumatic, so that they are better prepared when the climax of the story arrives and the decisions they must make have the largest consequences yet.

All the Birds in the Sky will remind you of many great novels in these genres without ever drawing too heavily on any one source. The entire tenor of the book brought the great Magicians trilogy to mind, including the emphasis on the flaws in the two characters and how events in our youth can have long-lasting effects on our personalities and life choices well into adulthood. The influence of the major YA fantasy series like Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia is evident in the background, but never overt, and any similarities are muted by the presence of the parallel sci-fi strand around Lawrence. He’s something out of a Heinlein novel, but better, more well-rounded and a lot more aware of the existence of women as actual people than anything Heinlein ever dreamed up.

I expected the ultimate battle between science and magic in this novel to play out differently, perhaps as some sort of faith/reason allegory, but it doesn’t, and that’s just how Anders rolls – so much of this novel sets you up in a comfortable, familiar way, and then resolves matters in a way that defies expectations without cheap surprises. All the Birds in the Sky won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2017, beating The Obelisk Gate (a result that was flipped for the Hugo), and I certainly agree with that result. It’s a fun, smart, compelling read, appropriate for young and full-grown adults alike.

Next up: Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: american literature, contemporary novels, highly recommended, nebula award, science fiction

→ January 10, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 1/10/19.

My latest game review for Paste looks at the deduction game Cryptid, where three to five players try to identify the location of the Creature by deducing the other players’ clues while trying to hide their own. It’s excellent.

Keith Law: It’s half past four and I’m shifting gears. Klawchat.

Bmosc: Keith, love the chats and content on the site. I always enjoy your levelheaded and logical takes on baseball and other issues. As a Yankee fan, who do you think would present more value, Harper or Machado, and how disappointed should I be that it seems Hal is more intent on pocketing the ridiculous revenue than he is on closing the gap b/w the Yanks and other contenders?
Keith Law: Either would be a big help – and yes, you should be frustrated. All owners have the money to improve, but the consensus among owners is that they should pocket more of the profits rather than passing it along to labor. Personally, I think Machado is a better fit for the Yanks, but if they signed Harper they’d make it work.

TE: With all the talk of Kyler Murray and the NFL draft, what does this mean for the A’s? Does he have to break his contract? Would the A’s get compensation? It seems like a pretty raw deal for them, given that Boras likely assured the team he would sign and play baseball exclusively (otherwise they wouldn’t have drafted him).
Keith Law: Right now it means nothing at all. He’s only declared for the NFL draft, which has no impact on the A’s or his baseball contract. It only starts to matter if he doesn’t show up for spring training/the season, or leaves the team at some point. He could owe the A’s the entire bonus, and no, they’d get no compensation. I suppose he’d make a lot more money in the short term, but there is no amount of money you could offer me that would make me consider risking traumatic brain injuries by playing football.

Ron: Astudillo have a roster spot this spring? Maybe should have one for being able to help out at a couple positions? Is the bat real? Thanks!
Keith Law: He can do enough with the bat that he should be on the roster. I don’t think he’s a regular, if that’s what you’re asking.

PA Prospects: You going to see Chris Newell play at any point this season? Any other SE PA prospects to look at?
Keith Law: Yep, I’ll see him and the younger Siani brother. Both are about 40-45 minutes from me.

dave from boston: Do you see the Redsox using Chris Sale once every five or six of his starts as an opener, pitching an inning or two only, in order to save wear and tear on him? Would you ever recommend something like this?
Keith Law: Not really sure that would do anything to help.

Chip: Does Houston’s recent draft history (hitting big w/Correa and Bregman and lots of hope for Tucker, missing on Appel and Aiken for various reasons) inform us at all as to what Elias likely does at 1/1? How does Rutschman compare to Wieters?
Keith Law: I don’t think it informs anything. There’s no consensus #1 (not Rutschman, not Witt Jr.) and they may simply try to cut the best deal among the pool of candidates and then try to go over slot multiple times with later picks, as the Astros did in the Correa year, and the Phillies and Twins did in ’16 and ’17.

Marvin: Instead of stalking that girl on Twitrter, do you think Trevor Bauer would have been better off tracking down where she went to school and/or worked, then tattling to her principal/dean and or boss while demanding that she be expelled or fired?
Keith Law: That would be seriously fucked up. What an entirely normal question.

Jo-Nathan: Hey Keith, is there any way to access to your work in Canada now that everything is behind ESPN+? I emailed and called ESPN weeks ago but I haven’t received a response. Very odd that they don’t want to take my money anymore (I get that its to block me from streaming content but I would gladly pay the same price to access writing content alone).
Keith Law: Unfortunately I don’t know of an answer yet. I’m sorry.

Susie: Do you see Ian Anderson as a top of the rotation type in the near future? Any concerns with the spin rate of his arsenal?
Keith Law: I do not have concerns about anyone’s spin rate unless the hitters start hitting it. The goal here is not maximizing spin rate, but maximizing results. If improving one’s spin rate gets better results, great, but when the results are good (as Anderson’s have been), why would we concern ourselves with his spin rate either way? (By the way, I have never heard anyone say his spin rates are poor.)

Dana: I think every MLB team should be forced to disclose their revenue and spend a certain percentage of it on player salaries. Agree?
Keith Law: Yes. You should go run the MLBPA.

Dusty: Any update on The Leftovers? I’ve been anxious to see what you thought of the 2nd and 3rd seasons.
Keith Law: I have no immediate plans to continue watching. I let my HBO subscription lapse a while ago.

Chris: What are your thoughts on all the Mets moves last weekend?
Keith Law: They keep trading dollars for 80 cents. Lockett is a waiver claim; Plawecki is at least a solid backup. The Houston deal was worse – Santana is a real prospect, Adolph has tools, while the return was an up and down type and an NP. I had multiple texts from scouts that day asking what the Mets were thinking.

Zarathustra: Do you have any book recommendations for someone who has read (and enjoyed) just about everything Richard Russo has written?
Keith Law: I would say Ann Patchett’s work – she lacks his wry humor, but her novels are also intensely humanist, with well-developed characters and real storylines built around the most universal emotions and themes.

Klentack: Which player fits better – Harper (due to LH power) or Machado (3B more position of need) for Phillies??
Keith Law: Again, either. I’m not sure there’s a club that couldn’t use both. Maybe the Rockies?

Lance: I just read an interesting article about Will Smith. I had no idea how effective he was last year. With his salary and control years, is it possible the Giants could get more for trading him than they would for Bumgarner?
Keith Law: I think the glut of relievers on the market would make that hard.

John: Hey Keith, did you ever write a review for D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow? Was curious to see your thoughts.
Keith Law: Never read it. Didn’t enjoy Women in Love.

Phil: Is Adames good enough at SS to stay there until Franco arrives, or does he move earlier?
Keith Law: I’m not sure either is a long-term shortstop; the best SS in the system is probably Fox.

Chris: Would the Yankees have been better off signing Dozier to play 2B and move Torres to SS instead of signing Tulo?
Keith Law: In the abstract, sure, but it’s an $8.5 million difference.

Jim: Hey, Keith. So reports are Dozier has signed with the Nats for 1/$9M. Good deal (2018 was an aberration) or bad (2018 was the first step off the cliff)?
Keith Law: Overpay, but the Nats probably have the greatest benefit from each marginal win, so it may not be an overpay for them specifically. Hell, I’m glad at least one GM is out there to win some games.

HugoZ: Now that the Braves definitely have the #9 pick this year, should it be a position player?
Keith Law: It should be the best player.

Jim: What is your take on the Braves firing Bridges and Clark?
Keith Law: Change in direction for the department. I know both guys, respect them quite a bit, and expect they’ll be out of work for about 20 minutes.

Joe Random: why do you think Kingery struggled last year? were there signs he will bounce back this year?
Keith Law: I don’t think it helped that he had to play so much on the left side of the infield, for which he is ill-suited.

Mark: Do you think it’s fair to judge past player performance on metrics that are valued more today for hall of fame consideration or does context of the era matter?
Keith Law: Other than maybe framing, what has really changed? People who claim OBP wasn’t valued are talking out of their asses – everyone knew making outs was bad. It was undervalued on the market, or as a tool for projection, but we have stuff back to Branch Rickey’s time about the value of getting on base.

BMonster: Do you have a target date for releasing your top 100? Thanks!
Keith Law: I believe I announced this last chat – it starts January 28th.

Mark: Do you think Andujar is a good fit for the Padres? Obviously 3B is a need, and they can be patient on his defense. What kind of package would it take to get him?
Keith Law: No, I do not.

Joe Random: how do you think Pache’s bat will develop? can he develop average power?
Keith Law: He already has average power.

Justin: Are you anticipating a labor strike with the way free agency has gone the past 2 years?
Keith Law: I’m anticipating a difficult negotiation, but that doesn’t have to be a strike/lockout.

Jay from southern IL: The local media is really talking up Cardinals prospects Malcom Nunez, Jhon Torres, and Joerlin de lo Santos. All are very young and far away, but I was wondering if you had opinions on these three? (Looking to eliminate the home team bias)
Keith Law: Torres is on my Cardinals rankings, which again you’ll see later this month.

Alex: Hi Keith.My girlfriend and i are expecting our first kid.any book recommandations to help with whats ahead?thank you
Keith Law: The Happiest Baby on the Block.

Chris: Would you rather give Bryce Harper a 10-year, $320M deal with a couple of opts out or a six-year, $240M deal with one opt out?
Keith Law: The six-year deal.

Nate: Keith, I find it almost incomprehensible that the reporting of only a few teams being in legitimate conversations with Harper and Machado. 26 year old generational talents hitting free agency just doesn’t happen. Do you think there is a lot more going on behind the scenes or is the new CBA really having that large effect on the way teams are looking to spend money?
Keith Law: The luxury tax cum salary cap is obviously having an effect, but it feels … collusive.

Andy: How disappointed were you in the golden globes, and do you think the Oscars will follow suit?
Keith Law: Disappointed is the wrong word – it hardly affects me at all. I do like seeing good work rewarded, whether it’s films, books, TV, music, because that can drive more of an audience to that work, and thus give the artists in question more money and opportunities to create more.

Rick C: Is there anything to the Bridges and Clark firing, or is it really just one of those proverbial changes in direction?
Keith Law: That’s all it is.

Dustin: I’ve finally begun work on Smart Baseball and am about 2/3 of the way through it. Will the final section include a best practices manual for making my father- and brother-in-law read it so we can have some intelligent conversations about MLB for a change?
Keith Law: Um …. yyyyyyyes.

Nils: Sorry, with the link: https://gizmodo.com/how-cartographers-for-the-u-s-military-inadvertent…
Keith Law: Thanks!

Justin: will there be a write up on the Brewers signing of Grandal?
Keith Law: Probably not. Prospect writing time.

Dagoberto Campaneris: $2 million for Shelby Miller — is there upside for the Rangers there? Or is Miller just irretrievably broken after all the injuries the past few years?
Keith Law: Coming back from TJ, very reasonable risk.

Justin: Assuming the Pirates have the ability to add, say, $15 million on payroll, what FA seems like an obvious fit for them? I’m specifically thinking they should take a shot on Lowrie for SS for a year (until Cole Tucker can move him to 2b), but you’ve always liked Newman.
Keith Law: I also don’t think Lowrie can handle short.

Brent: Hi, Keith, hope you’re well. Do you have a sense yet if Corey Ray is likely to reappear in your top 100?
Keith Law: Definitely not.

LukeM: You are going to get a million questions about them so Just get it out of the way and tell us who you predict Harper and Machado end up with?
Keith Law: Nah. I’ve never liked those predictions – it would be based on so little. When I talk to GMs or other top execs I don’t waste time asking them about that stuff. Their time is valuable and my access to it is finite, so I’d rather ask them about stuff they might really want to discuss candidly.

Jason: Whats the deal with grandal signing a one year deal? I love it as a brewers fan but couldn’t he have gotten a better multi-year deal?
Keith Law: On talent, sure. The market is bad this winter, and I think his poor October and reputation for not working well with pitchers hurt his market further.
Keith Law: That reputation goes back to San Diego, FWIW. I don’t think this is just “Kershaw hates him” or something.

Jimmy: Would it be a stretch to see Madrigal in the majors this year?
Keith Law: No, but I think his ceiling is really low.

Jack : Are you rooting for a Harper/Robles/Soto outfield for the next 6 years? I honestly think it has all timer potential if Bryce returns.
Keith Law: That would be tremendous, but it feels unlikely?

Tom: I think that Trevor Bauer question might have been in reference to something Darren Rovell did.
Keith Law: Ah. I missed that. I have contacted employers when I’ve thought I was threatened, though. I think that’s justified. Calling for someone to be expelled, though … jeez.

Canadian Jesus: Why isn’t the ability to have a high walk rate considered a tool? It doesn’t really seem like something that should be lumped into the hit tool with bat-speed etc…?
Keith Law: It’s a skill, but in Toronto we made it a separate grade on the scouting report, and I think now pretty much all teams do that in some fashion.
Keith Law: The tools are physical, though. Your plate discipline is a skill.

Kyle: Given all the recent issues with Facebook, do you have any misgivings about using it? Do you utilitize it for personal use or only work? I try to use it less and less (deleted the app) but so many friends and family use it for planning events or keeping in touch that it’s hard to step away. Curious how you feel about it.
Keith Law: I definitely have those misgivings. I do still use it for my public page (@keithlawwriter) and to communicate with a small number of friends who use Messenger all the time.

Stephen: In your opinion: Top 3 front offices in MLB? Bottom 3 front offices? Would love to see that list expanded in longer form too.
Keith Law: Nope. Never doing that.

Bradley: Thoughts on the Stewart grievance? Seems weird that his camp would claim he didn’t receive the 40% offer when something like that would easily be proved/disproved. Which apparently the Braves did as Stewart has already reported lost the grievance. Was this just spite? or was there something more to this? Any connections to the recent firings?
Keith Law: Was that his camp’s claim? I hadn’t heard that aspect. I thought the claim was that the injury didn’t merit the 60% cut.

Paul: How can mlb discuss pace of play when the off season has been a total snooze fest? Do you think these slow winters hurt the sport?
Keith Law: Yes. The winter meetings used to be a great time for the sport to grab headlines in the dead of the offseason.

Derek: Isaac Paredes – do you think he has a good chance to hit his way up to AAA this summer and debut sometime in 2020? Thanks for chatting!
Keith Law: Yep, that all sounds right.

Ed: Who is someone in the White Sox minors besides Eloy to be excited about thia season?
Keith Law: Cease finished in AA; he could debut this year. Basabe or even Luis Gonzalez could surface too.

Luke: Thoughts on Keon Broxton? Seems like the only deal that the mets didnt get fleeced
Keith Law: His defensive numbers last year were extremely fluky in a tiny sample and he’s probably a .280-290 OBP guy. Whee.

Raphael: Hey Keith, there’s an uncomfortable situation in the UFC at the moment as Rachael Ostovich, who admiringly decided to still compete next weekend despite recent injuries she sustained at the hands of her husband, is on the same card as known domestic abuser Greg Hardy (UFC’s first event with ESPN). I’m not going to ask for your opinion on the sport or of Dana White and his decision, but rather, for your thoughts on Ostovich taking the “everyone deserves a second chance” stance in regards to Hardy and her husband. Should we let victims decide how we should view abusers, or is this attitude, even if it belongs to the victims, simply part of why domestic violence is such a big issue, in that the victims are unable to accept their abusers for the monsters that they truly are?
Keith Law: I know nothing of this situation, but will say 1) we should always listen to victims but 2) it’s very common for domestic violence victims to ‘stand up’ for their abusers, such as declining to press charges. It’s complicated. Supporting victims is the one thing we could probably all agree on.

Mac: How did all 30 teams come to the same conclusion at the same time that they prefer profits over winning? Somethings not right.
Keith Law: It’s kind of weird, right?

PD: Thoughts on triple restaurant week?
Keith Law: should I know this? I think Philly’s restaurant week is coming up, actually.

Tom: What are your expectations for Shane Bieber? Think last year’s peripherals largely carry over and we see the ERA come down a fair amount?
Keith Law: Always going to be a big HR guy.

LukeM: Which board game, that you played for the first time in 2018, was your favorite?
Keith Law: Everdell. I wrote up my top ten for the year. That covers new games, but there were pre-2018 games I played for the first time and loved, including Sagrada. I also finally got and played Clank! in the last week and it’s pretty fun, if a bit luck-driven.

Gary: Is Ramos at 2/18m a better deal for the Mets than the 4/60m Grandal supposedly turned down?
Keith Law: Definitely. My favorite Mets move of the winter.

Clete: You a Tres Barrera guy? On any of the Nat’s catcher prospects?
Keith Law: He’s an org guy for me.

Marcus: I hate the “back in my day” person, but I’m lost on this one. My wife is doing a long-term sub position, and despite students refusing to turn work in on time–or even do it–she has been instructed not to fail anyone for anything. I can understand passing a student who may not do great work but is trying, but just shoving the problem on to the next grade…does that make any sense?
Keith Law: Sounds like a systemic issue – probably they don’t want the hassle of forcing a student to repeat a level. I don’t think that helps the child at all.

Matt: Did you see the movie Eighth Grade?
Keith Law: Not yet.

Andres: I know this is a sports/books/games/music type of chat, but in a simple answer — who’s most to blame for the government shutdown?
Keith Law: The guy who loves Wall and can’t stop talking about Wall.

Sloan: If you were Machado, and money was equal, would you join the Phillies, Yankees or White Sox?
Keith Law: The money is never equal. It’s just not – there are different tax considerations for each market, costs of living, etc.

Brandon: Do you think the recent signings of Grandal and Dozier to 1 year deals means that A.J. Pollock could be heading for a similar deal?
Keith Law: I’d be floored.

Sloan: Thoughts on the Herrera signing?
Keith Law: Surprised a guy who missed half of last year with an injury got that deal.

Alan: Do you think that Peter Alonso will be able to overcome his inability to field to be successful at the MLB level.
Keith Law: I think he’s a 40 defender right now. Either that gets a lot better, or he goes to the AL to DH.

Chris: Best case scenario for Tulo is to somehow stay healthy til Didi returns and give them a dead cat bounce half season, right?
Keith Law: Yep. Aubrey Huff had one of those for about four months. Then he cratered.

Thomas: What of peak offense year would you expect from Willy Adames given his hit and power tool? Is he a .300/.375/.475 type or is that overselling his power?
Keith Law: I think that oversells his power, not his hit tool, although with the silly ball maybe not.

Ben : I am so down with your take on Life and Times of Michael K. Couldn’t get engaged with it. Especially in comparison to the Road, which my eyes were like magnetically attached to.
Keith Law: Yeah, I enjoy fabulist novels but didn’t connect with that one.

Anthony: Grandal an overpay at 1/$18.25M?
Keith Law: No.

Mitch: Do you feel it’s likely that Edgar makes the leap into the HOF this time around?
Keith Law: No doubt.

Patrick: Waiting to board a flight to Chicago. Any restaurant recommendations?
Keith Law: Monteverde! Publican, Little Goat, any of Rick Bayliss’ places.

HugoZ: Well yes, but is the best player at nine likely to be a position player?
Keith Law: I honestly don’t know that at this point. It’s probably 55/45 that the best player available is a pitcher, because teams up top tend to avoid HS pitchers, so they get pushed down a bit. It’s also just a bad college crop.

Jeff: Are you a believer in the revamped swing of Kevin Smith (Blue Jays)? Is he a possible regular in the bigs
Keith Law: No. Utility guy.

John: Will Ross Stripling be back in the rotation and pitching like a No.2/3 guy this year?
Keith Law: I think he’s a 5.

Phil: Will smith or Keibert Ruiz?
Keith Law: That’s not close – Ruiz is an elite prospect.

Jordan: Do you think Conforto can return to an all star type of hitter this season? Had a really promising second half. Feels like the Mets rushed him back from shoulder surgery.
Keith Law: Yes and I think that’s probably the reason.

seanj8: MLB wants to expand, so what two cities make the most sense to be awarded teams? Mine are Nashville and Montreal. Portland gets some consideration too.
Keith Law: Nashville is growing like mad, but even so, it would be the second smallest market in MLB. Indianapolis actually has more people (not that I’d put an MLB team there either). Only Milwaukee is smaller. Austin and San Antonio’s MSAs are both over 2 million, and they’re 80 miles apart from each other. That’s a lost opportunity there.

Jeff D.: If you’re Andrew Friedman and offer Harper a short term/high value deal which he rejects, what’s your next move to improve the team?
Keith Law: Offer him a longer deal.

Jerry: Who do you see being the Astros 4th and 5th starters by June? Assuming no injuries of course….
Keith Law: Josh James and Forrest Whitley.

Granfalloon: How much responsibility do you think you and other saber-oriented writers, who spent the last 20 years arguing online that free agent contracts were bloated and that teams were overpaying for veterans, bear for the current state of things where franchises are being cheap and not fairly compensating players? In retrospect, do you think y’all shouldn’t have been making those arguments?
Keith Law: That’s dumb for a few reasons, not least among which is that more analytical writers have talked up players like Harper and Machado, hitting free agency at 26, and their markets are thin too.

Green Book : I am a piece of shit movie that is racially bananas. What is happening and how am I winning things when movies like Beale Street, Favourite, Blackkklansman, and Roma are out there. (Granted this was still a poor year IMO on the film front).
Keith Law: I think it was a tremendous year for movies. I have 40 films ranked over Green Book.

Chris D: What do you think about Nathaniel Lowe? Will he carve out an above average MLB career?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Frank Thomas (not that one): What would your solution be to fix what has become a major problem in MLB as far as owners spending on MLB talent? Salary cap? Higher floor? Less service time before a player hits FA? Limiting lengths and values of max contracts a la the NBA?
Keith Law: Speed up free agency, raise the minimum salary for 0-2 guys.

Mat: Who’s your #1 Prospect for the June 2019 MLB Draft?
Keith Law: TBD. There isn’t a clear one yet.

Ricky: Favorite meal to make during the week when you are tight on time?
Keith Law: You can spatchcock and roast an entire chicken in about 45 minutes. I also like to do simple chicken cutlets – sometimes just panko breading, sometimes adding sesame seeds and maybe some chopped sunflower seeds – as a main dish because they scale well and reheat nicely in the oven.

Mark: Would you ever consider writing a book about your experience as a GM? I think it would be very fun to read about trades, player development, constructing a team, etc…
Keith Law: I’d love to, but I’d need to be a GM first.

Sean: I’m thinking now is the time to go all in if I’m running the brewers. So close last year, why not trade for Bumgarner and sign Keuchel?
Keith Law: Don’t think they need two starters – they have Burnes and Woodruff, both good, both ready for the rotation.

Sean: Hi, Keith. Thank you for doing these and I hope all is well. I wanted to get your opinion on what the Padres should do this offseason. Stand pat? Focus on 2020? Go after an Ace? I still think we’re a year away and would hate to see us make another move like the Hosmer signing of a year ago.
Keith Law: Focus on 2020, try to dump one of Myers or Hosmer for a bad contract at another position.

Econ: Is there a space somewhere in between where “players deserve more” and “overpaying marginal players is a bad idea” that can exist?
Keith Law: The idea of overpaying free agents also oversimplifies the part about how the value of a marginal win varies by team. An extra win for the Nationals, who are in a decent-sized market and really should be a playoff team, is worth more than the same extra win is to the Padres, who are not contenders, or even the Reds, who need to pick up maybe ten or more wins to become contenders.

Everett L: Did Nico Hoerner change how you rate him based on his play in the AFL?
Keith Law: No. I like to watch and think about players there, but try not to make dramatic changes to evaluations off that look because it’s not normal minor league play.

AGirlHasNoName: Ok, I have a crystal ball, if the Cubs cut Russell they win 91 games and miss the playoffs, if they keep him they win 94 and make the playoffs. As a fan, do you still want them to cut him? Is there a point where the cost isn’t worth the benefit?
Keith Law: Then he’s more than worth his salary – the playoff berth is worth a lot more than the marginal $6.5 million or so to keep him. It becomes a moral decision. I personally would not employ a player who did what he did, such as choking his wife (which, I’ve mentioned many times before, is a major precursor to homicide).

Sean: Giants looking at signing potentially trading Panik and signing LeMahieu, that would be a net positive IMO. Thoughts?
Keith Law: Depends on what you get for Panik.

TomBruno23: If Bumgarner is available, I think the Cardinals should be all over that. Fits in well with their older player/short term contract roster and wouldn’t/shouldn’t cost too much in terms of a trade. Dakota Hudson for a year of Bumgarner?
Keith Law: Hudson’s probably a reliever so I’d do it.

Roma : I think I *might* be the easiest choice for Best Picture in the last 10 years. This is like Mike Trout competing against Mike Moustakas, Jean Segura, and a replacement level player who is also racist.
Keith Law: Yes, but I still think A Star is Born wins.
Keith Law: I’d vote for Roma among the likely nominees.

Canadian Jesus: I get your answer, but if plate discipline is a skill shouldn’t fielding be classed as a skill as well? There is obviously way more to fielding than just range or loose hips.
Keith Law: You’re being a little pedantic here, but also, much of fielding is determined by physical skill.

LukeM: Who is a comparable player to Nolan Gorman? Tons of power but strikeouts are a concern. Is a Joey Gallo or Khris Davis comparison fair?
Keith Law: I like him more than I ever liked Davis as a prospect. I think Gorman will hit a bit more than Gallo. Gallo has the most raw power I’ve ever seen on a prospect.

Adam: Is there any logic to the Padres signing Hosmer to that big deal last year and now going back to penny pinching mode? I get that Hosmer contract was a mistake but cant deter you from making any other big financial decisions.
Keith Law: Are they pinching pennies or just avoiding a second mistake?

Spiny Norman: Dinsdale?
Keith Law: He’s nailed to the coffee table.

Andrew Friedman: Who would you rather trade…Verdugo or Ruiz/Smith
Keith Law: Verdugo. I think he’s good but easier to replace than Ruiz.

Ridley Kemp: Thank you for your tireless…well, it’s probably pretty tiring…rebuttal of the antivaxxers. The real danger they represent needs answering, but it can’t be fun.

Have you had a chance to read Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind? I picked it up when my therapist told me she was reading it for the third time. As a non-user of controlled substances, I still found it fascinating and I learned more about the the brain and depression treatments than I have anywhere else.
Keith Law: I haven’t. I did just finish Leonard Mlodinow’s Elastic (as an audiobook), about the power of ‘flexible thinking,’ which also gets into a lot of how we come to conclusions and refuse to change them, often because our brains don’t even accept other possible interpretations or evidence.

Noah Syndergaard: We’re going to get Biden vs. Warren as a sequel to Clinton vs. Bernie, aren’t we? Team Trump would love that.
Keith Law: Biden needs to step aside, now. Next generation, please.

Daniel: Considering the recent reports of MLB’s revenues, are there any competitive teams that can reasonably justify not being willing to spend above the tax? I’m a Braves fan, and considering those revenue reports, and the whole Cobb County/SunTrust Park thing, I really don’t understand why they’re not in on Harper. (Maybe they are, and AA is just really good at keeping it out of the media?)
Keith Law: I think that’s corporate ownership telling them not to spend.

Cjc: Thoughts on Chance Adams having a bounce-back year as a starter? Or is he just an up and down reliever?
Keith Law: Reliever only.

Dan: Hi Keith – thanks for all your work. With Kopech out this year and some important pieces that will at least begin the year in the minors, is 2020 a realistic expectation for the White Sox to start contending for their division? I’ll be honest, I have concerns with the development of Giolitto/Moncada/Rodon and others, and am afraid of the rebuild not panning out.
Keith Law: That division is weak enough that they should be doing what they’re doing – trying to go get a big star now, figuring he’ll be there for the next 4-5 years as the kids arrive and the team gets really good.

Matt W: So wait, do the Mets really not scout below full season ball?
Keith Law: That is correct.

Ben: Keith, you’ve been high on Willi Castro for a little while. But, others in the industry label him as a likely utilityman/fringe regular. Do you think he can be the Tiger’s answer at SS?
Keith Law: I do. High IQ guy, feel to hit, absolutely has to get stronger.

Biff: Do you have any insight into the slow development/ lack of improvement of Moniak ?
Keith Law: Swing issues, possible the team overrated the makeup.
Keith Law: Also, when I’ve seen him, he’s been unable to recognize spin.

Pat D: Since we expect the various veterans committees to make bad choices, which would be “worse”: McGriff getting in via committee (I think we all expect him to) or Vizquel getting in via BBWAA?
Keith Law: The committee’s picks nearly always suck. Vizquel getting in would be a real indictment of the BBWAA even as the electorate has been getting smarter.

Mark: Should cardinals offer Keuchel 1 year at 23M?
Keith Law: Shouldn’t every contender offer him that?

Archie: Any chance the Brewers give up Burnes or Hiura in a deal for Bumgarner?
Keith Law: No. That would be really stupid, and they’re not stupid.

BK: Does Brandon Marsh have any “star” upside?
Keith Law: yes.

JJ: what kind of pro does Kyler Murray project to be?
Keith Law: Enormous range of outcomes. Could make some All-Star teams. Could stall in AA. The guy is 1000 or so at bats behind where he should be at this age.
Keith Law: Maybe 800. You get the point.

Chris : Wouldn’t you rather have Plawecki as a back-up at a$1.5M than d’Arnaud at $4M?
Keith Law: Yes, because d’Arnaud is made of glass.

john: why do minor leaguers get paid so little??
Keith Law: Because MLB slipped a clause into the GOP Tax Bill from 2017 that protected them.

Concerned Teacher: You mentioned in a previous chat not having heard of the vaping company named Juul. I am a high school teacher and a parent I think you should familiarize yourself with them. Kids are entering high school already hopelessly hooked on nicotine because of these Juuls, which look very similar to a USB drive. They were the fastest start up company ever to reach $10B in.
Keith Law: I have now, of course. The Ringer called them a scam for Big Tobacco in a post today. Vile.

EG: Bryce harper will finish the year ranked top _____ in fWAR.
Keith Law: Ten.

Tony B: Is it better to vote for someone you view as a leader and can lead to unity in the nation or someone who you agree with their political views?
Keith Law: why not both girl dot gif

Aaron: Just curious, considering the options at most minor league ballparks, Do you ever eat at a stadium and if so what?
Keith Law: Almost never.

Joe: In general, I’m not a fan of relievers in the Hall of Fame. But if you go by the standards set by the guys already in, Wagner is a Hall of Famer, right? There are 7 pitchers who were primarily relievers in the HOF right now (including Smith), and I think it’s pretty easy to argue Wagner was more dominant than at least 3-4 of them. He just didn’t stick around a few more years and compile saves at the end of his career.
Keith Law: Wagner is better than Smith and probably better than Hoffman. I think he’ll sneak in.

Greg: Keith- Re: Kyler Murray. There’s been some argument that since he plays QB, and since the rules these days protect QBs to a nearly ridiculous degree, the risk to him is much less than if he played a different position. Jeff Samardzija playing baseball over being a tight end made sense, but QB is protected so much more than even two years ago. At this point if he were a catcher I think he’d take more foul balls of the head than he’d take hits to the head as a QB. I originally thought it was a bo-brainer to pick baseball for the reasons you mentioned, but the more I watch football and every roughing the passer penalty, it’s tough to imagine he’d rather ride buses for 4-5 years that be a starting QB in the NFL in 8 months.
Keith Law: It takes just one hit, even an illegal one, to wreck a guy’s life. And he’s small.

Sean: Did you happen to see Sean Doolittle’s thread on twitter regarding ways to improve the game? I think it’s great to see him interacting with fans directly, a lot of good points were made. Unlike Bauer, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders.
Keith Law: He’s one of the best humans in the sport and we are very fortunate to have him and Eireann as ambassadors for the game in general and for just being good, kind people.

Bob: Do you think Faedo can get back to a mid-rotation projection or is he more of a 4/5 type?
Keith Law: Probably reliever.

Andy: What do you think about the movie vice?
Keith Law: I’ll see it this weekend. Tried to see it Tuesday night but the showing was nearly sold out and I will not sit in the front row.

Michael: What did you think of Isle of Dogs?
Keith Law: My review.

Dan: What does the future hold for Sean Reid-Foley? He seemed likely to be in the opening day rotation but that was before they added Shoemaker and Richard to the mix.
Keith Law: Needs a better pitch for LHB or he’s not a starter.

Mark: Future value of Keston Hiura? Can he turn into a Daniel Murphy type player (high avg which helps the power play up, mediocre D)?
Keith Law: RHB so he won’t have the platoon issues.

Dell: Any chance Caleb Ferguson gets another shot to start? And are you out on Urias?
Keith Law: I’m not out on any Uriases that I can think of. If you mean Julio, we are in uncharted waters for someone with that injury.

Dan: Could you see Ronny Mauricio as a guy who could see a catastrophic rise in the rankings over the next 2-3 years?
Keith Law: That’s an interesting choice of adjectives there. He’s got enormous potential, though.

Bob: Any good books to help with anxiety?
Keith Law: Fully Present is my go-to recommendation.

Dr. Bob: What would happen if an MLB team bucked the trend and doubled the salaries of their minor league players?
Keith Law: A very angry phone call from Park Avenue.

Jake Lawson: Just FYI, if you ever check out the Round Rock Express, there’s a Salt Like BBQ in the parking lot. It’s not Franklin’s or Mickelthwait, but it’s miles ahead of most ballpark food.
Keith Law: I’ve actually been to that one. It was solid. Probably a 50.

Lou: Aside from Ruiz and Verdugo, have the Dodgers drained most of their elite talent from the farm?
Keith Law: No.

Rahn: I ask you this every offseason so here goes: Who is one Pirates prospect who most intrigues you and whose development you’ll be tracking closely?
Keith Law: Org reports run the week of February 4th.

Kacey: If a hs player was unknown and then hit their growth spurt and had an incredible year with their HS team, would they likely slip through the cracks because they aren’t known via their travel team?
Keith Law: No, unless he were in some really remote place that is generally undercovered – North Dakota, Alaska, something like that.

Archie: Is Billy Wagner the best small college player you have ever seen?
Keith Law: Dunno, Alex Bregman was a great small college player. He’s only about 5’8″.

Jim: How do you “speed up free agency”? Front offices would sign off on a deadline to signing players? How does that work?
Keith Law: A deadline would help, yes.

Bob: One report I’ve read on Kelenic warns he has some “tweener warning signs” in his profile. Is something you’d agree with?
Keith Law: No. Sounds like a bad source.

Danny: Do you think Deivi Garcia will be a starter and if not, can he be a set up or closer type?
Keith Law: Starter.

Dave: Did you do a review of into the Spider-Verse? Seemed to hate it during the Globes.
Keith Law: I didn’t review that or the two Disney entries. I found Spider-Verse cliched and unbelievably violent for a movie aimed at kids. It had a few laughs (Spider-Ham was legitimately funny). The resolution really didn’t do enough for the Miles character, either.

LukeM: Any thoughts on Malcolm Nunez for the Cardinals. Saw an article showing his ridiculous wRC+ this past year and he looks really promising. I know he’s super young and a long ways off but it’s fun to look for potential future superstars.
Keith Law: Do not use wRC+ to evaluate prospects. And Nunez went into the DSL with more real game experience than most of the competition. That’s not to say he’s a zero, but that this is serious stat-line scouting.

Mark: Did you do voices when you used to read to your daughter ?
Keith Law: Always. After a few books she’d demand it.

SpG: Unbelievably Violent? 80’a Kids were raised on Predator & Robocop, man… it was a love letter to comic book readers.
Keith Law: That doesn’t make it any less violent. And violence is a weak way to write your superhero story.

Kacey: When did white supremacist become an offensive term?
Keith Law: When did Rep. King’s party become comfortable with white supremacists in its house?

Mark: Just curious, given your love of gaming, have you ever played Magic: The Gathering? I know Longenhagen is a fan, and they’ve been making a push into eSports recently with their new Arena product.
Keith Law: No – not interested in CCGs as a genre.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – back to writeups for now. Thank you as always for reading and bearing with me this month. Still more calls to make and words to write. I promise to give you the best words!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ January 9, 2019
→ By keith

The Life and Times of Michael K.

J.M. Coetzee has won two Booker Prizes, the first of them in 1983 for his parable The Life and Times of Michael K., a bleak, opaque novel that seems to draw from Kafka’s The Trial while also influencing Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road. The novel was Coetzee’s immediate follow-up to Waiting for the Barbarians, another fable that also puts its main character through the ringer to make larger humanist points, although Michael K.‘s target, the apartheid system of South Africa at the time, seems more overt than that of Barbarians.

Michael K. is the main character, a somewhat simple man, born with a cleft lip and abandoned by his mother to an institution for most of his life, although when her health begins to fail she reconnects with him for entirely selfish purposes. They live in Cape Town, where he has a job as a gardener and she has one as a domestic servant, but when her health slips further and the country devolves into civil war, she asks him to bring her back to the town of her birth so she can die there. Stymied by a faceless bureaucracy that won’t issue him the permits required to leave the city, Michael builds a rickshaw to carry his mother to the countryside, but she dies before they reach their destination, which sets Michael on a perverse series of adventures that find him living off the land as a hermit, impressed into two different labor camps, accused of aiding rebel forces by growing vegetables for them, and eventually in a hospital where one kind doctor takes an interest in him just as he seems to have given up on living.

I compared Waiting for the Barbarians to the writing of fabulist Italo Calvino, and Michael K. has the same atmosphere, one of watching the action in the story at a greater remove, so that even where Coetzee provides detail on Michael’s surroundings – in the camps, for example, or when Michael plants sees to grow pumpkins and other winter crops while he’s living on his own in the valley – there’s a sense of distance and opacity throughout the text. Michael is an unknowable character, not a cipher to the reader but a man without definition even to himself, and thus his interactions with others – government forces, mostly, but occasionally residents of the towns through which he passes or other people in the labor camps – all have an amorphous tenor to them, as if Coetzee passed them through a filter before presenting them to the reader.

Coetzee is South African by birth and he implies that the civil war in the novel is between the white authorities, who still enforced the apartheid policy to subjugate the country’s black majority at the time of the book’s publication, and rebel forces that included people of color and those sympathetic to them. Most characters are not identified by race, although Michael is identified as “colored” early in the book, which would put him at immediate odds with the racialist white soldiers he meets. Yet beneath the theme of racial animus is a strong streak of individualist philosophy – Michael is happiest, if you could call it that, when he is living off the land, supporting himself, living daily with the simple purpose of sustaining himself, with no contact with others.

The Kafka parallel is perhaps a little too overt here. Michael K. has the same sort of experiences with intransigent, oblique authority figures, from the bureaucrats who won’t give him the permit to leave the city and then give him circular explanations for why to the soldiers and officers at the labor camp who explain that he can’t leave but he’s not a prisoner. His name is such an obvious nod to The Trial, and his experiences in the camps mirror those of Josef K. in detention, so that the result is too on the nose. (Wikipedia says Coetzee was also influenced by a German novel, Michael Kohlhaas, but I’m unfamiliar with it.)

Waiting for the Barbarians was bleak, and often more graphic, but I found I connected to both the protagonist and the themes of the novel more than I did to The Life and Times of Michael K., where Coetzee keeps the reader one degree farther away from the material. I can understand why it was honored and is still regarded as a great novel, but its literary merit far exceeds its accessibility.

Next up: Still reading Anna Burns’ Milkman, winner of the 2018 Man Booker Brize.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: man booker prize, philosophical novels, south african literature

→ January 8, 2019
→ By keith

The Black Angel.

Cornell Woolrich’s name is scarcely heard today, although in his era he was one of the most important writers of pulp fiction, with his stories and novels adapted into acclaimed movies like Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, and The Black Angel, the last of which is loosely based on his novel of the same name. The book isn’t easy to find in dead-tree versions, but it’s $1.99 right now for the Kindle and is also available on iBooks. First written in 1943 and adapted for film three years later, The Black Angel is classic noir as it follows a young woman on a desperate quest to exonerate her husband, convicted of capital murder, by finding out who really killed his mistress.

Alberta French is just 22 as the novel opens, and, as the narrator, tells of her wonderful love affair with the man she has now married, but whom she knows has been cheating on her because he’s stopped calling her by the nickname “Angel Face.” She figures out who his paramour is – a chorus girl named Mia Mercer – and goes to Mia’s apartment, but finds the woman’s corpse instead. Within hours, her husband, Kirk has been arrested, and the story skips through his trial and sentencing (to death) to get Alberta on the move, following just a few scant clues she swiped from Mia’s apartment to try to find her murderer. Woolrich then sends her on four missions, one to each of the names she found in Mia’s address book who might fit, each of which puts her in dangerous situations until she finally finds the real killer and nearly dies for it.

I’m a sucker for noir fiction, whether novels or films, and The Black Angel delivers that while avoiding at least a few of the worst clichés of the genre. Noir fiction was viewed as pulp in its own time, a style with commercial appeal but minimal literary or critical merit, and as a result much of what was published was hackneyed and predictable – material written to meet the low expectations of the market. The Black Angel has a female protagonist, which is rare enough, and then has her develop from a meek but determined woman into a clever if overconfident one by the end of the novel, someone who perseveres through failures (obviously, or the book would end rather early) and whose character changes as she learns from them. Woolrich also ditches much of the egg salad you’ll see in pulp short stories or radio programs of the era – the easy violence to jump the plot forward, the women all called up from central casting – to focus just on Alberta’s story and her increasingly involved attempts to deceive each of the suspects to try to figure out who killed Mia. It’s unsurprising given his own background as a failed writer of more serious fiction, but it makes Black Angel a good follow-up for folks who, like me, loved the work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler but have already read their limited output.

I mentioned the film adaptation of The Black Angel above, but haven’t seen it yet; the story changes so that Alberta’s character, now named Catherine, has to pair up with a man to hunt down the murderer, with other substantial changes to the plot. Alberta’s character as the protagonist and de facto detective was one of the most interesting aspects of the book, so demoting her to half of a team with a big strong man to help her along seems like a downgrade.

Next up: Anna Burns’ Milkman, winner of the 2018 Man Booker Brize.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: american literature, detective novels, noir

→ January 6, 2019
→ By keith

Music update, December 2018.

I posted my rankings of my top 100 songs of 2018 and my top 18 albums of the year in mid-December, so this monthly playlist is a little shorter than normal – plus artists tend to release less new material during the holidays. I still found fifteen songs worth sharing, though, a few of which were out in time for my year-end list. As always, you can access the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Are We Static – Weight of Water. A new single from these British alt-rockers who draw on equal parts Britpop, new wave, and classic British psychedelia, this time featuring guest vocals by Sussex-based folk singer Talitha Rise.

White Lies – Finish Line. A middling follow-up to the strong lead singles ahead of the group’s forthcoming record Five, due out February 1st.

Blac Rabbit – Seize the Day. I was sure this was a new Tame Impala track the first time I heard it, but I suppose that’s a compliment, especially since I love that group’s ventures into psychedelic rock. Anyway, Blac Rabbit is a Brooklyn quartet whom Wikipedia tells me often draws comparisons to … Tame Impala.

Sleeper – Look At You Now. All the Britpop icons are getting back together; Sleeper reunited in 2017, and their first album in 22 years, Modern Age, will drop in March. I didn’t realize that in the interim lead singer/songwriter/seductress Louise Wener had written four novels. She still sounds the same, and this track has that same sort of slightly off-kilter riff that Sleeper’s best hits (“Delicious,” “Inbetweener,” “Nice Guy Eddie”) had.

Swervedriver – The Lonely Crowd Fades In The Air. Speaking of ’90s British bands making comebacks, this makes two good songs in three singles ahead of Swervedriver’s upcoming album, Future Ruins, their second since they reunited.

Lauren Ruth Ward – White Rabbit. Ward has put out two covers of classic rock tracks in the last month, this one, which I think is pretty strong and plays well to her vocal strengths, and a cover of the Doors’ “Break On Through (To the Other Side),” where she’s oddly restrained on a song that calls for a bit of bombast.

whenyoung – Given Up. Singer/bassist Aiofe Power looks like Riley Keough and sounds a lot like Dolores O’Riordan, which makes the band’s cover of the Cranberries’ “Dreams,” found on the same EP as this indie-pop track, eerily authentic to the original.

Anteros – Fool Moon. I think this is the most danceable song so far from this London quartet, who seem to dabble in all corners of indie rock.

Hinds – British Mind. A new single just a few months after this Spanish band released their second album, I Don’t Run, which featured one of my top 100 songs of the year in “Tester.”

Ten Fé – Echo Park. A bit of a change of pace from these guys, who specialize in ’70s-tinged soft rock that still manages to feel modern.

Lady Bird – Reprisal. These British punks made my top 100 this year with “Spoons,” and capped off their year with this single, more of the same with spoken lyrics and a catchy guitar riff beneath it.

The Raconteurs – Now That You’re Gone. A new song from the Jack White-led supergroup that accompanied a reissue of Consolers of the Lonely and will also appear on a (surprise!) new Raconteurs album in 2019.

Wheel – Vultures. Another one from my top 100, one of only two metal songs on the list (along with Ghost’s “Rats”), from a new Finnish prog-metal act who have promised a debut album in February.

Teeth Of The Sea – Hiraeth. Teeth of the Sea’s 2013 Master made my list of the best albums of that year, but they’d been quiet since 2015’s Highly Deadly Black Tarantula before this new seven-minute opus appeared last month, with more of the same experimental post-rock stylings, showing their ability to create eerie soundscapes is completely intact.

Children Of Bodom – Under Grass and Clover. I liked 2013’s Halo of Blood, especially for the track “Transference,” which is one of the best melodic death metal songs I’ve ever heard, but the 2015 follow-up I Worship Chaos went too far in the commercial direction (and then the silly death growls sounded even more ridiculous than ever). This track is the first single from their forthcoming album Hexed, due out in March, and I’m cautiously optimistic that they’re not going full In Flames on us.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 in music, alternative, metal, Music

→ January 5, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/5/19.

Just one ESPN+ piece this week, due to holidays & my work on prospect rankings, this one looking at the Mariners’ signing of NPB star Yusei Kikuchi. I also held a Klawchat this week.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: There’s yet another grift on the amazon marketplace, for consultants claiming they can teach you how to get rich selling Chinese products without ever handling the goods yourself.
The Guardian retweeted a piece from last January, on why the dominant narrative about depression might be incomplete, in highlighting some their best longreads from the last year. It’s an excerpt from a longer book, and argues that simply giving medication to people with depression may miss the underlying causes.
The Washington Post looks at the rise of ‘deepfakes’ and their potential for extortion or revenge. Deepfakes are porn videos where the target’s face has been swapped for that of one of the performers in the clip.
Packers beat writer Ryan Wood shared the story of his wife’s mental illness, including multiple suicide attempts and, more recently, some hope due to treatment and medications that seem to be helping.
Antibiotic resistance is rising, but the Trump Administration is allowing growers to spray them on citrus plants to fight a disease called “citrus greening.”
The EPA is also trying to make it easier for coal plants to spit more mercury and more particulate matter into the atmosphere by changing how the agency measures costs and benefits. You can still weigh in on this proposal by emailing a-and-r-docket@epa.gov with Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2018-0794 in the subject line.
My friend Tim Grierson explains why we shouldn’t listen to Netflix’s claims of a huge audience for Bird Box. Tim’s year-end post on his personal blog, which includes his top ten movies of 2018, is also well worth your time, even though he’s clearly wrong about Shoplifters.
Outgoing Maine Governor Paul LePage, an outright racist who claimed 90% of drug dealers in Maine were people of color, pardoned a Republican buddy of his of a felony drug trafficking charge, which may in turn complicate an investigation into a firearms possession charge against the latter.
A healthy 39-year-old man got the flu last winter and ended up in a coma, so this year he’s getting his flu shot and encouraging others to do the same. It isn’t too late to get yours.
For subscribers to The Athletic, Cliff Corcoran asks what it takes for a new advanced metric to catch on. One factor that I would have mentioned had Cliff asked me was the reputation of the source – the genetic fallacy in practice, of course, but I believe it matters even though it shouldn’t.
The “likeable” bullshit line has resurfaced this week with Elizabeth Warren’s announcement that she intends to run for President in 2020; the Atlantic points out that the biggest reason for her perceived unpopularity is that she’s a woman. People, both men and women, view women who are in power or who seek power more harshly than we do men, and journalists need to point this out when discussing whether a politician is “electable.”
House Democrats wasted no time after their swearing-in ceremonies in introducing a bill to make it easier to register to vote and harder for states to gerrymander their Congressional districts. It also includes a “requirement that sitting presidents and vice presidents, along with candidates for those offices, release their tax returns from the past 10 years.” I wonder what that’s about.
George Will writes that Republicans should be concerned by ‘signs of intelligent life’ in the Democratic Party after Rep. Cheri Bustos won election as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Bloomberg looks at what opponents of Seattle’s $15 minumum wage law got wrong, as evidence mounts that the hike hasn’t hurt job growth or reduced hours for workers. The article says the early analyses of the law’s impact weren’t just wrong, but extremely wrong, because the people looking at the data did so through the bias of existing theory that the law would indeed have these deleterious effects.
Nicaragua has slipped back into autocracy since the Sandinista leader who ran the country in the 1980s, Daniel Ortega, returned to power in 2007, and this year he’s led a violent crackdown on dissidents. The family of one protestor, a 24-year-old Belgian-Nicaraguan named Amaya Coppens, has been pleading with the international community to pressure Ortega’s government to no avail. It’s as if despots see the void left by the United States’ departure from the international arena and now can act with impunity against their own people.
The same is certainly true of the Saudis, with Jamal Khashoggi of course, but also with other dissidents, including Loujain al-Hathloul, a leader of the Saudi women’s right-to-drive movement. The Saudis kidnapped her and her husband in Dubai, trafficked them back to Saudi Arabia, and jailed them both – even though women were granted the right to drive in June.
CartoonBrew surveyed some animation critics before the Oscar shortlists came out, and they argue that the Academy whiffed on the best shorts of 2018. I’ve seen five of the ten on the shortlist; four were good, including Bao, Weekends (available there for just a few more days), and Lost & Found.
WIRED argues that more people should be using Tor, software that protects your anonymity online by routing traffic through an overlay network of thousands of relays so that your location and history online aren’t visible to sniffers or other forms of surveillance.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: environment, links, maine, mental health, mental illness, seattle, stick to baseball

→ January 4, 2019
→ By keith

Sweet Country.

The Australian film Sweet Country, now free on amazon prime, swept the AACTA Awards, that country’s equivalent to our Oscars, last month, taking home Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and a Best Lead Actor prize for first-time actor Hamilton Morris, capping off a sixteen-month run that saw it win major awards in Toronto and Venice as well as Best Feature Film at the Asia-Pacific Screen Awards. It’s a beautiful film to watch with expansive scenes of the northwestern Australian landscape, with a simple, timeless story of racial injustice that could have just as easily been set in the United States.

The details set the plot apart a bit, but the framework is familiar: A black man kills a white man in self-defense, flees, and is then tried for murder, with the gallows already built for him before the trial begins. Sam, played by Morris, is the black (aboriginal) man here, a hired hand for the Christian farmer Fred Smith (Sam Neill), who lends Sam and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber, nominated for an AACTA for Best Supporting Actress) to their new neighbor, a disturbed, volatile war veteran named Harry March. While there for the day, Sam follows Harry’s directions to go do something away from the house, a pretext for Harry to rape Lizzie. On a later day, Harry borrows another hired hand and an aboriginal youth named Philomac, only to chain the kid up on suspicion of theft. When Philomac flees, a drunk Harry goes to Fred’s house looking for him, shooting down the door, after which Sam shoots him dead in self-defense and then takes flight across the outback.

Most of the action in Sweet Country takes place in that first act, which is followed by the extended search for Sam and Lizzie in act two, showing both pursuers and fugitives as they move across territory that is hostile in more ways than one; and then the trial in act three, where a young, progressive judge gives Sam a fair trial despite unfriendly locals and the racist sergeant who led the chase to capture him. Part of director Warwick Thornton’s achievement is weaving them seamlessly into one film despite massive, abrupt shifts in both tone and tempo. The first third is full of (Hannah Gadsby voice) tension, the second contrasts this gorgeous scenery with the injustice of the hunt for Sam and the knowledge that the desert could kill any of these men, and the third becomes an ad hoc courtroom drama without the courtroom, as the trial takes place in the street due to the lack of a town hall in the remote outpost where it occurs. They could play out as three different films, just sharing characters, but Thornton, working from a screenplay by David Tranter and Steven McGregor, keeps the narrative and pace together enough so the entire film can work as a unified piece. That plays out in surprising ways, especially during the trial where the tension comes from silence as much as it does from the revelations during testimony.

Sweet Country is a slow film in many ways, at least in contrast to the pace of most big-studio American releases, and probably would look even better on a big screen where the cinematography would play up, with the second act showing the variety of landscapes and climate types across the northern part of Western Australia. It’s also lighter on dialogue than mainstream films until the trial commences, which is why my attention started to drift during the middle third of the film. I especially appreciated Thornton’s decision to cloak the rape scene in complete darkness; while it would still likely trigger some people by sound, the entire sequence is pitch black on the screen. If you’ve even read the description here of the plot, you can probably guess the film’s ending, although it’s still powerful for the reactions of the characters rather than any real sense of surprise – and again feels timeless for its depiction of a black man trying to find justice in a white man’s world.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 movies, aacta winners, australian films, movies

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