→ January 23, 2020
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The Two Popes.

Netflix’s The Two Popes – or, as my friend Will Leitch likes to call it, Coupla Popes! – is a showcase for two great, aged actors, Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, playing the current and previous popes in conversation as Pope Benedict is about to step down as Pontiff and Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, tries to dissuade him through a wide-ranging conversation that covers almost the entire film. As a movie, it’s perfectly fine, often funny, generally thoughtful, a bit verbose, but also problematic in its portrayal of history. As a platform for the two actors, it’s quite good, with Pryce stealing much of the show with his performance and dedication to his accent.

The film is based on a play called The Pope that presents a largely fictionalized conversation between the two men, and that is a bit problematic, as the events are quite recent (mostly 2013) and the two men depicted are still alive. The script definitely brushes aside the very serious matter of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal and Pope Benedict’s role in covering it up; it’s broached, but the characters discuss it and dispense with it. There’s even a fictional confession given by Benedict to Bergoglio, which I find deeply troubling given the role of penance and the Seal of the Confessional in Catholic doctrine; sure, it’s fake, but it feels like an invasion into the character of the erstwhile Pope to assume what he might have said in such a confession.

We get a brief look at the conclave where Joseph Ratzinger is selected as Pope over Bergoglio, who we see was a distant runner-up in the voting, and thus becomes Pope Benedict XVI. He resigned as Pope in 2013, the first such abdication of a pontiff’s own volition in over seven centuries; Bergoglio was selected by the next conclave to replace him, becoming Pope Francis. The bulk of the movie covers Bergoglio’s visit to the Vatican to resign as Cardinal, during which Benedict reveals he plans to resign as Pope, a conversation that reveals their philosophical and theological differences. That meandering dialogue gives us frequent flashbacks to Bergoglio’s youth and to a period in the 1970s when his actions and inactions led to the detention and torture of two priests under his command. The flashbacks are powerful, as are the scenes where Cardinal Bergoglio recalls his actions, and shows remorse; in their entirety, they’re the best parts of the film.

Those scenes are also the best moments for Jonathan Pryce, who is really superb as Bergoglio, right down to a credible Argentine accent – in contrast to Hopkins, who makes scant effort at a German accent. Pryce is a solid likeness for Bergoglio, which helps his performance, but he also infuses the character with emotional depth and a lot of the charm that has made the real-life Pope Francis so popular. He’s the more interesting character of the two in reality, and Pryce brings that to life on the screen. I think it’s the best thing he’s done since those Infiniti commercials. It’s a contrast to Hopkins, who is playing a rather uncharismatic character, and does so accurately, almost as if he was more focused on getting Benedict’s mannerisms and old-man’s gait more than his persona.

As an overall film, however, The Two Popes is a more than adequate, just a bit hollow in the aftermath. The script moves along, thanks in large part to the flashbacks, although it’s so dialogue-driven that there are definitely long stretches where you want something to happen. There are too many odd closeups of the two actors – we get it, they’re old – but the re-creation of the Sistine Chapel is marvelous. There’s also quite a bit of humor in the movie, more than I would have expected and probably a lot more than there was in any real conversation between the two men. It was after watching it, however, that I realized how little the script bothered with the sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the Church for two decades, one that may have contributed to Benedict’s abdication and that exists because of the choices of men like him. Without that, it feels like there’s a giant elephant in the room and these two old men refuse to see it.

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→ January 21, 2020
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American Factory.

American Factory might be more famous now for who produced it than for its content; it’s the first film from Higher Ground Productions, Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, which has a deal with Netflix (where you can find this film). It’s also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, with a strong case for the honor because of how much work clearly went into this endeavor and how timely its themes are – globalization, automation, anti-union sentiment, and people voting against their own interests.

The movie starts with the closing of a long-running General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio, which had operated for more than a half-century and provided thousands of jobs for local residents. About seven years after its closure, the Chinese conglomerate Fuyao acquired and reopened the plant as Fuyao Glass, a move that was initially welcomed by the community for the jobs it would re-create. Fuyao also brought over hundreds of employees from China to try to integrate their operations and improve the efficiency of the new plant, but over time the Chinese management’s practices, including much lower hourly pay, dubious safety procedures, and a staunch anti-union policy, begin to alienate the American workers, even though they and their Chinese counterparts have established stronger relations on the factory floor.

American Factory documents the entire process over seven years, from acquisition to re-opening, through a failed unionization vote, with a level of access that seems comical given how often the Chinese managers essentially confess on camera to violating American labor and work safety laws. There’s no question here who the bad guys are – it’s primarily Fuyao’s billionaire founder and chairman Cao Dewang and a few of his lackeys, who think American workers are lazy and have “fat fingers,” and who go out of their way to crush any attempts to unionize, a bit ironic from a company founded in the ostensibly still-communist country of the People’s Republic of China. (Workers of the world, take what we give you!) The managers openly retaliate against workers involved in organizing or encouraging people to vote yes, while the firm brings in expensive consultants to lecture employees on how there’s actually zero difference between good things and bad things and they should all vote no against their own interests so the billionaire can make more money.

The film may have a clear tilt in the direction of the American workers, but that doesn’t make it less powerful, and the filmmakers manage to keep the documentary more interesting by with some of the funniest bits you’ll see in a movie this year. None is more cringe-comedic than the scenes of the Fuyao company celebration, with a half-dozen Moraine workers flown to China to participate, including a choreographed routine of a corporate song that sounds like a mediocre pop track but has lyrics that sound more like the East German anthem from Top Secret, with lines like “Noble sentiments are transparent!” amidst blind praise of the company and its leaders. Many scenes of culture shock in both directions are simultaneously funny and alarming, as they underline the magnitude of the gap between the two nations’ differing ideas on work (one Chinese manager can’t understand why Americans won’t work six or seven days a week) and ‘loyalty.’ The ultimate outcome in such cases will always favor capital over labor; the workers here try to organize and fail in the face of the company’s overt and expensive efforts to convince them unionizing would somehow be bad for them*, and Fuyao’s vengeance is swift. Paying the workers less than half of what they made under General Motors isn’t enough for Fuyao; workers apparently should say “thank you, sir, may I have another?” while accepting lower pay and reduced safety conditions.

* The economics of unionization are certainly more complex than just “unions good!” but unions almost invariably benefit members; negative economic effects are far more likely to hit consumers or non-member workers.

There’s no narration in American Factory, and no artificial framing device; the Fuyao executives are indicted by their own words, often said as if they forgot the cameras were running or that they were saying such things in a country where workers have more rights than they do in China (for now). The film is full of amusing vignettes to provide some levity, but the slope of this story’s curve is negative and logarithmic. It’s a powerful piece with a call to action and no action available.

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→ January 18, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 1/18/20.

I’ve written five pieces for the Athletic so far over the two weeks since I joined. In reverse chronological order, they are a ranking of the ten best prospects to change organizations this winter; a breakdown of the Josh Donaldson signing; a breakdown of last week’s Rays-Cardinals trade; notes on what I look for when evaluating players; and my introductory post. I also held a Klawchat this week.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Taverns of Tiefenthal, the newest game from Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Wolfgang Warsch, who also designed The Mind, That’s Pretty Clever!, and The Quacks of Quedlinburg, all of which are quite good.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. You can also sign up for my free email newsletter for even more non-baseball content.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Slate has the story of a credible allegation of rape against three Mets from the spring of 1991, with Doc Gooden, Daryl Boston, and Vince Coleman all accused. None was ever charged.
  • The Root and the Young Turks detail outright racism in the South Bend police force under Pete Buttigieg. The details herein, and Mayor Pete’s unwillingness to answer basic questions about them, are quite damning.
  • Did an Oxford classics professor steal and sell ancient pieces of papyrus, including one that would be the oldest known piece of the gospels, to the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby?  (Also, how can you be a billionaire and a devout Christian? I’m reasonably sure Jesus said those two things could not be true at the same time.)
  • The New Yorker looks at a woman who can’t feel physical or emotional pain due to a genetic mutation, and whether the extent to which we feel pain is really an essential part of being human.
  • The New York Times describes how a recently-deceased real estate ‘star’ lied about her entire biography.
  • Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, writes about how sick you’re going to get if you catch various vaccine-preventable diseases. It’s not pretty, and it’s all the more argument for tightening vaccination laws for schoolchildren.
  • Here’s a shocker: Gwyneth Paltrow’s new GOOP show on Netflix is a mixture of pseudoscience, bullshit, and tedium, including an episode with a so-called “energy healer” (which is not real) and another with a self-proclaimed psychic (also not real).
  • Michigan state senator Peter Lucido, who has delusions of governorship, told a woman journalist trying to interview him that a group of high school boys “could have a lot of fun” with her. As of Friday, he’s issued a half-assed apology, but remains in office.
  • The New Yorker talks to the two people behind the great @NJGov twitter account.
  • Writing for VICE, Laura Wagner (ex-Deadspin) writes about the Facebook ‘sponsored post’ fiasco at Teen Vogue.
  • A British Columbia court ruled that two young children must be vaccinated over their mother’s objections. The mother tried to cite one of the most vocal anti-vaccine cranks on Twitter, Toni Bark, who claimed the measles wasn’t a highly contagious disease (it’s considered the most or second-most contagious virus humans can catch).
  • Perhaps “cocktails” of multiple antibiotics aren’t as good of an idea for the long term as we thought, as one new study shows that they may accelerate antibiotic resistance.
  • Tabatha Southey writes for McLean’s about Watergate, my #3 game of 2019, and what a future board game of the Donald Trump presidency and impeachment might look like.
  • I’ve got four new board game Kickstarters to share this week. First is the one I tweeted about on Tuesday, Restoration Games’ Return to Dark Tower, which is already clear of $2.25 million pledged as of Friday afternoon. It’s an update to the 1981 cult classic, and I was hooked when I saw the demo at PAX Unplugged.
  • Next is AlderQuest, an area-control game from Rock Manor Games and Mike Gnade (Set a Watch, Brass Empire). Rock Manor pulled the original Kickstarter from before the holidays and restarted it; it’s about 2/3 of the way to its funding goal as I write this. Full disclosure: I met Mike this week to play an upcoming Rock Manor title, Lawyer Up, as he lives a stone’s throw from me.
  • Leder Games has the newest game from designer Cole Wehrle (Root, Pax Pamir), Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, already more than 13 times past its initial goal.
  • Vesuvius Media has a Kickstarter up for Pacific Rails, a route-building/worker-placement game based on the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869.
  • Finally, here’s an intriguing game of dirty popes: Habeamus, which the publishers describe as “a game for ending 2-4 friendships. This is the farthest from its goal of these five Kickstarters right now.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
→ January 17, 2020
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Corpus Christi.

This week’s Academy Award nominations didn’t include many surprises anywhere – at least, not if you assume the worst of the Academy – and many categories already seem like their winners are locks, including Parasite as the Best International Feature Film, which would make it the first South Korean winner of that award (it’s already the first nominee). Three of the other nominees were widely expected – Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, which also landed a Best Actor nod for Antonio Banderas; the acclaimed Honeyland, which doubled up with a nod for Best Documentary Feature; and the French entry, Les Misérables, which isn’t based on the novel, and won the Prix du Jury at Cannes last May.

There was one surprise in the category, however – the Polish entry, Corpus Christi, which was at least less widely-known or reviewed than some of the other submissions, but is an absolute stunner of a story, one that manages to pack substantial themes into a modest plot. Powered by an incredible lead performance by Bartosz Bielenia as Daniel, a paroled convict who wants to enter the priesthood but is told by the prison chaplain that no seminary will accept a convicted felon. When he arrives at his assigned job at a sawmill in a small town on the other side of Poland, a chance encounter with Marta, a girl he seems to want to impress, leads him to pretend to be the new priest temporarily assigned to the village while their main priest is away.

It turns out that his timing is fortuitous for the town, as they’re still reeling from a tragedy that took the lives of seven people and that has created a rift between the families of the victims, with recriminations mostly headed towards one widow whose husband is blamed for the accident and who has been ostracized and targeted as a result. Daniel, meanwhile, fully embraces his role as priest, at first borrowing some ideas from the prison chaplain’s sermons but quickly finding his own voice, expressing his own faith with elements of Jesus’s secular philosophy, a little bit of primal scream therapy, and a powerful ability to connect with people that he didn’t even know he had.

There are points in Mateusz Pacewicz’s script where it feels like we might be heading down familiar territory – maybe this is the time when Daniel gets caught, or maybe the town experiences a spiritual awakening thanks to Daniel and everyone is redeemed. Nothing is that simple, not in the plot as a whole, and not in the subplots like that of the accident or the role of the power-hungry mayor (who owns the sawmill). Daniel’s character is rich and complex, and his transformations reflect a more basic truth about how environments affect people’s ability to change or simply to let their better selves show through. The townsfolk themselves are also well-drawn, and at times inscrutable, closing ranks even when they know they’re wrong, happy to mouth the words in church but not to live it even when Daniel reminds them of the messages of Christ’s love for mankind or of the need to forgive. The script delivers so many powerful scenes, but the one where the victims’ family members are confronted with the hate mail they sent the widow particularly stands out for its impact and how Daniel and Eliza stand in the face of such animosity.

Bielenia’s performance drives this film, and had anyone actually seen this in 2019 – if the film had been in English – he would have been more than deserving of nominations and awards for what he does for Daniel. He’s capable of grand emotions, including the rage he shows in some of the scenes in prison, but his performance is at its most powerful when he slows everything down, even when that’s an indicator that Daniel is in a bit over his head and trying to draw upon his faith to choose the right words or actions. He’s a more effective priest for his inexperience, as his sermons are more authentic, but those scenes had the potential to become trite if overplayed by the actor; Bielenia shows a restraint throughout the film, even when Daniel is confronted with threats to his secret and to his person, that makes the performance more credible and more compelling.

Director Jan Komasa particularly nails the landing of Corpus Christi, which ends in mostly unexpected fashion, including multiple shots of Daniel as he exits the church for the last time or in the final shot of the film. It’s ultimately an uplifting story, but rich with the complexity of actual people who are trying to reconcile their unspeakable grief with their faith, and who default to their baser instincts in a failed attempt to cope with their rage. Parasite is going to win the Oscar, but if the nomination gets more people to watch Corpus Christi when it’s released in the U.S. next month, so much the better. It deserves a wider audience than it might otherwise have gotten.

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→ January 16, 2020
→ By

Klawchat 1/16/20.

Starting at 1 pm ET. I have two new posts up at the Athletic – a breakdown of the Twins signing Josh Donaldson and a brief look at the ten best prospects to change teams this offseason. My latest board game review for Paste covers The Taverns of Tiefenthal, a great new midweight title from the designer of The Mind, That’s Pretty Clever!, and The Quacks of Quedlinburg.


Keith Law: We already did this. Klawchat.

JR: What are your thoughts on Beltran’s involvement with the Astros scandal? Should he be fired as Mets manager? Or does the fact that he was a player at the time and not management absolve him and he shouldn’t be fired?
Keith Law: I’m not sure why players were absolved en masse, but Beltrán’s status as player at the time doesn’t exculpate him, and yes, I think the Mets should move on.

addoeh: Which would have been worse for the Astros, losing their 1st and 2nd round picks for the next two drafts or being frozen out of the international market for two years?
Keith Law: I think the draft.

Wyatt : A different type of Question for You: Do you Prefer light or dark mode on your iPhone?
Keith Law: Light mode is substantially better for your eyes.

Mike: Hi, Keith! I write quite often for my occupation and was wondering what laptop / computer you prefer when writing?
Keith Law: I write on both my windows laptop and my iPad, depending on where I am and what I’m writing.

Greg: Hey, Keith. So glad you’re at the Athletic now. Will you still be able to do ESPN hits though? I know you just left, but there are still people from the Athletic on there all the time (though I can’t think of many who went straight from ESPN to the Athletic).
Keith Law: There’s nothing preventing me from doing so, but then again, they just put a part-time MLB team employee on to comment on an issue that touches the team that employs them, so … maybe not?

Mark: People follow you for your strong opinions. You were a huge supporter of Cora, are you disappointed that someone you thought so highly of, was a large part of this whole sign stealing fiasco? Or, is it more, oh well it was just my guy that got caught?
Keith Law: I am disappointed. I advocated for Alex for years, publicly and privately, because I believed he’d be excellent at the job. I never once expected an outcome like this – if you’d asked me about his integrity at the time I would have said I had zero concerns about it whatsoever.

CyMature: Hi Keith. Has Alex Kirillof “gone backwards?” Injuries? Out of shape?
Keith Law: Uh, what? This is arrant nonsense.

Steve: Granted, everyone needs more pitching but how do you see things shaking out for the White Sox rotation in 2020? Keuchel and Giolito seem like they should give 6+ most of the time. But Lopez gonna Lopez, Gio Gonzalez had a dead arm most of last year, Kopech is going to have some sort of post-TJS innings cap and Cease is sort of a wild card. Tandem starts part of the solution?
Keith Law: Don’t know that I buy your pessimism on Gio, but I agree Lopez remains ill-suited to starting, and they might need another fifth-starter/depth guy. I don’t think it’s out of the question that Stiever makes some starts for them this year.

Greg: A vocal minority of Phillies fans seem to read that Maikel Franco is in FL working in cages and getting to know his new KC teammates and think that THIS is HIS YEAR. Especially now that “he’s free of Kapler and his launch angle nonsense.” This is nuts, right? He’s been in the majors 5 years. And it’s not like he didn’t play for two other managers before Kapler.
Keith Law: That’s nuts. Franco’s issue was never launch angle-related. His approach hasn’t improved since double-A.

Matt: You’re transparent about prospects you whiff on. How about a boardgame. What game did you review too harshly or what game grew on you over time? Any game you reviewed too generously In hindsight? Appreciate your game reviews. Currently playing Imhotep Duel heavily thanks to your review.
Keith Law: I was definitely too high on Bruges and Skyward on first plays. Bruges in particular started to annoy me the more I played (online) because you’re so at the mercy of the cards you draw. It’s a shame as I think there’s a good idea inside there somewhere.

TomBruno23: In your review of Dark Money you mentioned not buying Georgia Pacific products. What about investing? I lean to the left on many issues, but also have holdings in Exxon Mobil and who know what else in some of these mutual funds. Can I still sleep well at night?
Keith Law: For folks who didn’t read that review, I don’t believe individual ‘boycotts’ like that accomplish anything but to make the individual feel better. I try not to buy products from companies owned by Koch industries, I’d never shop at Menard’s, etc. I wouldn’t make direct purchases of stocks in such companies, but I don’t think investing passively in them via index funds is morally questionable. YMMV.

Burton Ernie: Do you see Hinch, Cora or Lunhow (and possibly Beltran) working again in baseball? I think teams wouldn’t want to deal with the fallout.
Keith Law: Yes, maybe (depending on the penalty), unlikely, in that order.

Moe Mentum: Which repeal of an archaic democratic system is the bigger no-brainer – the electoral college, or Iowa/New Hampshire always launching primary season?
Keith Law: Well, both, but I think the Iowa/NH thing would be easier to uproot.

David: Should KeBryan Hayes start the year as Pittsburgh’s starting 3B or does he need more time in AAA? I feel like he is currently the team’s best option, but didn’t know if he was ready yet. (I say all of this knowing they will probably play with his service time and hold him down until July.)
Keith Law: Glove is ready, bat perhaps not, but I also don’t see the harm in starting him now and letting him work with the big league coaches, since he has a full year in AAA already.

Tom: What can a healthy Jordan Montgomery look like?
Keith Law: Fifth starter.

Moe Mentum: What’s Adam Haseley’s ceiling, and has it improved since his major league debut last season?
Keith Law: His ceiling would not have changed just by reaching the majors. A player’s ceiling is his ultimate outcome, a best case scenario based on what he is now and what scouts or analysts project him to become. Getting to the majors doesn’t change that.

mike: If you were the Wilpons (thankfully for you you aren’t), what would you do about Beltran?
Keith Law: Part ways with him.

Ron: Hi Keith- If they would be so inclined, what would it take for the Twins to get Gray from the Rockies? Would Rosario, Gordon, Larnach, Rooker do it or would you have to include a Graterol or Balazovic instead? Thanks
Keith Law: I can’t imagine the Rockies deal Gray and don’t demand one of the Twins’ top four prospects.

Ben: Hi Klaw. With the Donaldson upgrade, should the Twins still look to trade for a pitcher right now? Or, at this point, would it make more sense for them to roll with what they have to start the year, hope they can compete in the regular season like last year, and look to upgrade for “impact” pitching at the deadline when they see how the team shakes out?
Keith Law: They’ve added a lot of pitching already, just not famous pitching.

Dr. Bob: Hi, Keith. The Astros have had a problem with their circle-the-wagons culture and lack of transparency. So they’re looking at Buck Showalter to manage?
Keith Law: Well, if you want someone to come in and impose order, he’s a good choice.

BigDaddeh: Do you think Bernie said a woman couldn’t win?
Keith Law: I think people who’ve defended him, claiming he didn’t/couldn’t have said that, are basing it on their fandom rather than any rational arguments. This coming out presented nothing but downside for Warren, and I think it’s imperfectly analogous to how we treat women who accuse powerful men of harassment and are disbelieved because the accusations are inconvenient. (Meanwhile, The Met Philly is hosting Louis C.K.’s new tour. I’ll cross that venue off my list.)

Matt: Cora is getting a lifetime ban isn’t he?
Keith Law: This is my fear, given the delay in announcing it.

Youngman: What are thoughts on Kyle Wright? Just seems like he’s not meeting expectations and for his age should already be more established.
Keith Law: I don’t agree with anything in that second sentence, sorry.

Alex: What is Emerson Hancock’s upside? Potential ace, Top of rotation, etc– and what is holding him back (other than health)
Keith Law: Best or second-best college starter in the class. Above-average or better starter upside. Health is the major concern.

Ed: Will you reveal your Hall ballot this year? Presumably on the Athletic, if you do …
Keith Law: That is/was my plan.

Aaron C.: Been eyeing pork belly at Costco. You’ve made homemade bacon before, yes? Ruhlman’s recipe from “20”? Any tips/lessons learned?
Keith Law: Yes, that’s the recipe I used, hardest part was maintaining the temperature of the smoker (keeping it from varying too much either way).

ck: Reading Bud Selig’s book. He constantly insists teams were losing money. I know he obviously has his own angle, but could this be true?
Keith Law: No, it’s not true, but I suppose if you repeat a lie often enough eventually you start to believe it.

Guest: And now Beltran is stepping down. Who do the Mets hire now?
Keith Law: Heh, happened right after I started this chat, so I didn’t see it. It’s the right move. Also, this is unrelated, but Beltrán had absolutely no experience relevant to the job. The Mets could end up better off in the end, assuming they hire someone who has some relevant experience.

Chris: I thought the Nats pivoting to Harris and Hudson was solid. They keep cheap, IMO.
Keith Law: They stay flexible, but I don’t think they’ve done poorly and wouldn’t say they were “cheap,” not after they paid to keep Strasburg.

Dave: Which CTY site did you attend? (Dickinson ’95-’97 here)
Keith Law: Franklin & Marshall, ’86-88.

Tyler: Do you think Mitch Haniger is worth a Top 100 prospect in trade?
Keith Law: Probably.

Jason: Thoughts on former colleague Jessica Mendoza’s comments this morning? Should she have to choose between being an ESPN analyst or being a Mets rep?
Keith Law: Yes, she should. You can’t do both. I don’t think she should have commented this morning, and I don’t think the producer(s) in question should have even asked her to do so.
Keith Law: I can’t work for a team. It would present me with endless, insoluble conflicts of interest.

John S: Is predicting pitchers’ health in five years is such a futile exercise that the Padres should just call up Gore?
Keith Law: I mean, you’re not wrong. I don’t know if you’re right, but I know you’re not wrong.

Dave: Can you expand on your answer re: loss of draft picks vs. loss of access to int’l market? Essentially, why do you think draft picks would be dearer?
Keith Law: Those players are two to five years older than July 2nd players and thus much closer to major-league value.

rufreshterp: Can Carter Kieboom play the outfield or is he stuck at 2B/3B? I’ve heard some scouts question his eyes in the outfield (ability to pick up the ball off the bat) so don’t know if OF is viable for him going forward.
Keith Law: Has he played the OF enough to say that? I don’t think so. He’ll be fine at 2b or 3b. I don’t think he can handle SS at all.

Dungeon Master: KLaw, really excited to see you at The Athletic, especially as the timing lined up perfectly with the expiration of my ESPN+ subscription.
Keith Law: That was a big part of my decision. I told my agent we have to delay this until Dungeon Master’s subscription to ESPN+ expires.

Nick: As an Indians fan, am I just off my rocker to expect Ethan Hankins to have a breakout season that launches him into the top 100?
Keith Law: I would bet against that right now.

Bill: Who was punished worse by MLB, the Braves for their signing infractions or the Astros for cheating in games?
Keith Law: Coppolella’s punishment seems even more egregious now with these punishments. Of course, he was accused of violating rules designed to keep owners from having to spend more money on players, and that is an eternal sin in the church of baseball.

Aaron C.: Please rank, in order of deliciousness, pancakes, waffles and French toast.
Keith Law: Waffles. You can have the other two if I get all the waffles.

Scott: Any plans to come through Louisville again this college baseball season?
Keith Law: Not on my current schedule but that can always be subject to change. Nashville and Athens are on the schedule, though.

Bryan: What are your Top 3 board games for families with young kids?
Keith Law: Depends on how young, but if you’re looking for stuff for kids old enough to play family games (not just kid games), I’d say Ticket to Ride, Splendor, and King of Tokyo.

TP: Since you are no longer working for ESPN, any plans to move out of Delaware?
Keith Law: Those two things are not related at all.
Keith Law: And no, I’m not moving.

Guest: What do you make of thr moved St Louis has made. They’ve taken talent away from the major league roster without really replacing it. Are they looking to improve this year or eyeing the future? And for the record i Dont think they will add Arenado. Just not a move they typically make
Keith Law: I don’t think they’re done.

JC: Your Donaldson writeup made the Braves current situations seem…bleak at best, but if you are the Rockies, are you even interested in Riley as part of a return? Is he the type of cheap guy with upside you
Keith Law: Colorado could certainly put together a strong package of Atlanta prospects – Waters/Pache plus two of the better arms plus one of the two catchers – that would make the deal worth their while. Riley isn’t necessary.

Bruce: I know you are a fan of Agatha Christie. Having never read any of her books, which ones would you suggest I read?
Keith Law: I think Death on the Nile is the first Poirot novel … I’d start there. It’s not necessary but it does introduce the character.

Nolan: Which is more likely for 2020: Wil Myers has an above average year at the plate, Franchy Cordero plays more than 100 games, or Manuel Margot improves his offense enough to become a 3 win player?
Keith Law: Myers least likely of the three.

Zach D: Trump tax cuts saved the 6 biggest banks $32billion lol (https://news.yahoo.com/trump-tax-cut-hands-32-171229065.html)
Keith Law: Just as his supporters intended, I’m sure.

Jason: I initially thought absolving the players was utter nonsense, but it did resonate that many of the players are not on the Astros anymore. If you punish the player, you’re punishing other teams, including teams that will play the Astros this year. I’m not sure how you solve that problem. What did you have in mind?
Keith Law: Why couldn’t you just fine the players? How does that punish their new employers?

Darren: Now that the Joker movie has won some awards and nominated in many categories for the Oscars, are you interested in seeing it? It’s similar to Black Panther that it is not just good for a comic book movie, it’s a great movie.
Keith Law: I will see it for completeness’ sake, but I don’t believe that it’s a “great movie.” I guess we’ll see.

TP: How many of the players on your Top 100 prospects list will you have evaluated in person?
Keith Law: It’s usually around 70, with some variance of course.

Tony: Keith, a real draft question to put our expectations in perspective. I have a draft eligible son here in Wisconsin. Currently theres snow and 25 degrees. He’s a RHP and we know how the cold effects pitchers arms. We are all aware of Gavin Lux and think his situation is fantastic for him, his family, and our state. However my concern is that his draft result is anomaly. Wondering with your pro background, considering the climate, the likelyhood of upper level scouts coming to games, and the lack of good “looks” for my son due to the snow, and no directors coming to see him until May, what is the reality of him having a true shot of being drafted within the first couple rounds? My concern is the deck is really stacked against him with things out of his control. Even if he is as good/better than another pitcher his age from FL or CA, I worry by the time an executive comes to see him in May that it is too late to warrant a top 2 round selection. Therefore our only hope is a potential overpay later on. True?
Keith Law: Lux, Kelenic, and Rortvedt were all Wisconsin HS kids who went on day one in the last four years. I don’t know who your son is, obviously, so I can’t comment on his outlook, but if he’s already on scouts’ radar now, he’ll be seen. My concern would be if he wasn’t that well known enough now that teams aren’t already planning to see him, since the window to scout a player in the tundra is pretty short.

Don Gately: Any plans to read Trust Exercise?
Keith Law: I don’t really plan to read many books far in advance … that’s a possible Pulitzer winner, so maybe I’ll read it. I’m just finishing up Michael Kinch’s Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity, which also explains how anti-vaxxers are the worst people on earth.

Bryan: Is Nolan Jones a .300/.400/.500 guy at peak or is that overly optimistic?
Keith Law: That’s really optimistic.

Daniel: Rough day for Puerto Rican managers
Keith Law: Ugh, I didn’t even think of that, but yes, it is. Bad week for diversity in a field that needed it, too.

Thomas: Hi Keith;
Congrats on your move to The Athletic (and a bonus for me since I already subscribe). Since I think it went down just as your ESPN contract was finishing, I didn’t see you do any write-up on the Jays’ signing of Ryu. Curious about your thoughts on it. Thanks!
Keith Law: Great move. I was technically on vacation when that happened – my last work day at ESPN was 12/19, then I used some vacation days and had the holidays, so we wouldn’t get the weird situation of me writing for ESPN on Monday and then showing up at the Athletic three days later or something.

Mike S: HI Keith, Do you believe trammel or grisham can be an everyday CF? The Padres seem to believe so, while the public opinion greatly differs.
Keith Law: Centerfield? They don’t think that. And I don’t either. Trammell doesn’t have the arm for it and Grisham definitely doesn’t have the range.

Aaron: Given 600 AB this year, you would put the Austin Riley strikeout total at ___.
Keith Law: 200+, but I don’t think he gets 600 AB.
Keith Law: I’d feel better about Camargo splitting the difference between 2018 and 2019 than I would about Riley hitting better enough in the majors to justify playing him.

Lars: What is a gender-neutral replacement for sir/ma’am? I know it’s a little dated, but I live in an area where it’s common to use those terms and I’d like to find a compromise (show respect, but not in a gendered way).
Keith Law: That’s an interesting question – I don’t know the answer.

Matt: Beltran is gone. Rosenthal reported it 5 min ago
Keith Law: Bear in mind that I see questions here often several minutes after you post them – I’m 23 minutes behind in the queue right now.

Don Gately: Holding hope that Walker gets the HoF nod this year?
Keith Law: I would love to see that. I voted for him.

Scherzers_Blue_Eye: The Mets get a lot of flack, but how poorly run are the Rockies, already looking to deal Arenado a year after his mega-deal?
Keith Law: They’re probably the front office with whose moves and strategy I disagree most right now. Not saying I’m right, by any stretch, but that I think I don’t understand what they’re doing, at least more so than I do for other orgs.

Noah: Why wohld the Rays give Matthew Liberatore up seemingly so easily. Any red flags?
Keith Law: No red flags. I’ve looked into it.

Extra Spicy: With three managerial openings and Dusty Baker still wanting to manage, do you think he gets one of the jobs? And do you think he’ll be good at it?
Keith Law: Given where we are in the calendar, yes, I do, and I would like to think – given his improvement each stop – he would indeed be good at it.

John: Nolan Arenado has a OPS of 770 to 880 away from Coors the past 3 yrs w/ a batting avg around 260-275. Does that mean he’s a Moustakas or Chapman offensive type talent if he gets traded?
Keith Law: There’s 25 years of data now that you can’t just look at the road stats of Rockies’ hitters to project what they’ll do away from Coors (or Mile High). I think he’ll continue to hit at a well above-average level.

Kevin: Can we get Jim Leyland back as a manager just to get shots of him smoking cigarettes in the dugout?
Keith Law: He’d probably be Juuling.

Jeff: Which Corbin will have the better 2020 as a starter – Burnes or Martin? Patrick will obviously top the list.
Keith Law: Still very high on Martin when he returns, but that probably won’t be in 2020. Burnes I think has a mechanical adjustment to make to get back to where he was in 2018, but I don’t see any reason he can’t do so.

Grant: Judas Priest got passed over for the Hall of Fame. I mean come on…
Keith Law: The R&R Hall is kind of a joke. It’s like if the Baseball Hall didn’t have the writers vote, and just used the crony committees for every selection. Priest, Pat Benatar, Motorhead, and Soundgarden were all snubbed and all have excellent cases (Soundgarden especially as influencers, and I guess Benatar for similar reasons as the rare woman in rock, although I’ll never get over how bad the “Love is a Battlefield” video is).

Matt W: Any chance Eduardo Perez would still take the Mets job? Otherwise it seems like it’ll be Jeff Wilpon as Mr. Manager
Keith Law: I’d support that.

Larry: Fangraphs mentioned Corbin Carroll’s exit velocity being surprisingly high. Do you think he has 25+ home run upside? If so, that probably makes him a superstar, no?
Keith Law: He might be a superstar, yes. He has more power than people expect given his height. I had him #4 in the draft class for a reason (that reason being I think he’s a star).

addoeh: If you gave me a choice for “Emerson Hancock, college baseball pitcher or signer of the Declaration of Independence” I would have chosen the latter.
Keith Law: I swear I made that exact joke to Emma Span the other day.
Keith Law: Three of the four 1-1 candidates have great names. Hancock is one. Spencer Torkelson is another. Austin Martin is practically a British luxury car brand. Poor JT Ginn is so ordinary in comparison.

Ridley: Do you watch any online/YouTube cooking shows? We’ve been, um, binging “Binging with Babish” and “What’s Eating Dan” and I find myself enjoying them far more than anything that’s being broadcast these days.
Keith Law: I haven’t – the only cooking show I’ve watched in the last year is GBBO.

Robert: Watching Luis Robert, I am impressed by how hard he plays (scoring from 2nd on a sac fly, beating out infield grounders, etc.). If he wasn’t so physically gifted, would he be more likely to get the “grinder” label?
Keith Law: Well, that’s one reason he’s not tabbed as a “grinder,” but there’s a more prominent reason I can think of…

Dan: Unless Costco has become a purveyor of high-quality meat, I would really suggest not purchasing pork belly there. Find a local small producer and support them. Yes it will be quite a bit more expensive, but meat should be. There’s a reason most of humanity didn’t eat it in large quantities until pretty recently.
Keith Law: I missed that but yes, I don’t buy much red meat these days anyway, but when I do it’s from Whole Foods or a local butcher. That’s a privilege I have, of course, but also I’d rather spend more per pound but buy less of it in total.

Drew_Tomlinson: Where do you think board games go from here? Already some discussion the bubble is bursting.
Keith Law: I haven’t heard any such discussion. I do think there are too many games getting released, but that’s not the same thing; the level of demand is nowhere close to its potential.

Mike: Is organic fruit BS ?
Keith Law: I mean, it’s organic, it’s just not any better for you. Buy what tastes best. That’s probably local; it might be organic but doesn’t have to be. I think organic makes the most difference in eggs, to be honest; unless you can get eggs from a local farm organic eggs will probably give you the highest quality (especially the strongest membrane around the yolk, so they stay intact while cooking).

Dave: Losing their 1st and 2nd round picks effectively tanks their entire drafts, right? Something like 60% of the total slot $ is tied up in those two picks.
Keith Law: Yes, teams that have had this situation recently have gotten nothing from their drafts: the Cubs in 2016 and Cardinals in 2017 had zero day-one picks between them, and neither has produced a big leaguer or a significant prospect yet.

Matt: Favorite Richard Russo book?
Keith Law: 1. Empire Falls 2. Straight Man 3. Nobody’s Fool 4. The Risk Pool

KT: do you plan on watching 1917?
Keith Law: I plan to see the remaining four Best Picture nominees I haven’t seen – that, Joker, Jojo Rabbit, and Ford v. Ferrari – even though I can’t say I’m terribly excited about any of them. I just like to talk about the awards, and to do that you have to see all or most of the nominees. I will see all the international & animated nominees too.

Matt: Chris Shaw anything more than replacement-level in San Fran?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Jake: Do you find any benefit from self-journaling?
Keith Law: I have never done so, sorry.

Matt: Mendoza just released a statement saying that being an employee of the Mets doesn’t shape her opinion LOL. She must be reading the chat.
Keith Law: The criticism of those comments has been very widespread.

Chris: Hi Keith, Based on initial pro scouting looks are their any recent draft picks that you have heard being ranked higher than where they were picked last summer?
Keith Law: You’ll see in a month.
Keith Law: Actually it might be the week of 2/24, rather than 2/17. It’s my editors’ call but I believe it’ll be the former (later).

Mark: What do you see as the most likely role for Jazz Chisholm?
Keith Law: Star at shortstop.

Ben Z: Florence Pugh is now signed up to be in a bunch of Marvel movies. Let us wallow in sadness.
Keith Law: Well, good for her for getting paid, I guess.

Nolan: Keith, I live in a capitol city with truly dismal bagel options. I’ve toyed around with the idea of trying to make my own (on a small scale, at least at first) but ideally I’d like to replicate Montreal style bagels, which need a wood oven. Do you know of any way to replicate that process without actually having a wood oven?
Keith Law: I have made NY-style bagels with a baking soda solution for boiling (no lye, that seemed excessive) and was happy with the results, although I clearly need work on shaping.

Turner : Hi Keith. I’m leading an after school board game club and would like to add a few games from your list. Any suggestions for 10-14 year olds that can be played in an hour or less?
Keith Law: Any of the games I mentioned above would be good for this group. You could expand a bit with Carcassonne, Wingspan (if you can find it), Pandemic, New Bedford, Sagrada, Azul.

Will: Favorite Rush era?
Keith Law: I don’t think of them in terms of eras; I thought the Chronicles two-disc greatest hits set was incredible, but didn’t listen to anything after Roll the Bones (which was not good).

Jay: Proper response to Grant’s R&R HOF comment was that if they think they can keep Priest out they’ve got another thing coming (sorry)
Keith Law: Nice.

Guest: What is your favorite restaurant in the Phoenix area? -Tom J. Gilbert AZ
Keith Law: The Hillside Spot, Crepe Bar, FnB.

Porker: Not to mention, this administration removed quality standards on pork, so all the more important to know where it’s sourced.
Keith Law: The rollbacks in food quality, food safety, and environmental regulations should be the ideal talking point for whoever the Democratic candidate is, because those rules affect every single American, and rollbacks disproportionately hurt those less well-off who lack the resources or even the options that others have (to, say, buy meat at Whole Foods).

Mike Rizzo: If I offer Rutledge, Kieboom amd say tres barrera get me Kris Bryant?
Keith Law: No.

Frank: On your top 10 pros to be traded, how highly rated are they? Are we talking top 50, 100 or fringe level. Thanks
Keith Law: I think only two were on my top 100.
Keith Law: were/would be/whatever, it’s late

Chris: Which is more difficult to learn/teach: Wingspan or Taverns of Tiefenthal?
Keith Law: Taverns is a bit more involved because you have a lot to think about, but I found the turns really rolled (pun intended) once we got into it.

Ben Z: Holy god Joker is not a great movie. Phoenix is admirably going for it, but hes basically Freddie Quill from The Master (an actual masterpiece) but in a Scorsese rip off with no intellectual coherence.
Keith Law: Enough critics and people whose opinions on movies I value and trust have said this, or something similar to it, that I have my doubts that it is worth the accolades it’s received. I’ll see for myself soon.

John: Do you mind if your fans ask you questions about prospects under your articles on FB?
Keith Law: I don’t mind questions at all, but bear in mind I can’t answer every question I’m asked across all fora – I just don’t have time.

James: Any thoughts on the record breaking salary arbitrations? Bellinger, Betts, etc.?
Keith Law: Good. Owners are rolling in it. The players should get paid too.

Ryan: Per your recommendation, my wife and I had a date night just sitting at a bar playing 7 Wonders Duel. It was really enjoyable, thank you!
Keith Law: Love it. I feel like I see folks playing games in public more often now than I did five years ago – but maybe I just didn’t notice it before I was looking.

Brian: What did you eat at the meal at the Love that made it your favorite? I really enjoy it there, but it’s never struck me as being truly great (like Vernick or Vetri), but more very good.
Keith Law: Vernick remains the worst high-end meal I’ve had in Philly. An abject disaster, with one dish coming out burned. It was a process failure.
Keith Law: We had a pasta dish and a chocolate mousse, neither of which is on the menu now.

John-MN: I home make bagels with the baking soda bath too, you also want to get diastatic malt from a home brewing shop as well for the water bath, both for color and flavoring.
Keith Law: Interesting, haven’t heard that.
Keith Law: Thank you.

Dylan: How long does it take you to write a top 100 or top 50 prospect rankings
Keith Law: The top 100 takes about 4-5 weeks in total.

Kyle: what is your suggestion for someone easing alcohol use? AA? Other program? Therapist?
Keith Law: That’s definitely a question for a professional – ask a doctor.

Matt P: What specifically drew you to Vermont and is it the same thing(s) that keep you there?
Keith Law: Well, I’m not in Vermont, so … nothing? Also it’s really cold up there. There isn’t enough maple syrup in the world to overcome that.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – thank you all for your questions & for reading. Stay tuned for updates on the top 100, and remember you can pre-order my next book, The Inside Game, right now via Harper Collins or wherever fine books are sold.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:
→ January 15, 2020
→ By

Hustlers.

Monday’s announcements of the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were unsurprising and kind of disappointing; the Academy’s one brief moment of acknowledging art outside of the mainstream, when Moonlight won Best Picture in absurd fashion, wasn’t a harbinger of a change in the electorate’s inclinations, but a blip on the timeline. The Academy remains as conservative and insular as ever, nominating five men for Best Director in a year with many deserving women, and snubbing many performances from films outside of the mainstream in favor of giving nods to bigger stars from more commercial films.

One of those snubs was Jennifer Lopez, who plays a supporting role that is absolutely critical to the success of Hustlers (available to rent on amazon and iTunes), a movie I liked more than I expected and in large part enjoyed because Lopez is so damn good. As Ramona Vega, the ringleader of the larceny scam that involves the lead character Dorothy/Destiny (Constance Wu) and a few of their colleagues at the strip club Moves (a fictional version of the NYC club Scores), she dominates the movie from the moment her character arrives, and the movie flags any time she’s off screen.

The film is loosely based on a true story, detailed by Jessica Pressler in a 2015 article in New York magazine, where multiple strippers at Scores concocted a scheme to rob some of their rich clients by drugging them and maxing out their credit cards, taking home a sort of commission for bringing in the clients that was well beyond what they’d ordinarily make through performing and private dances. The script tidies things up quite a bit, including making the women more sympathetic and glossing over the prostitution aspect of the scheme, but follows the original article’s story of the case that exposed them – a victim who wasn’t rich, and who had gone through some horrible personal times, but whom the girls scammed anyway, only to have him fight back and get the cops interested in the case.

The focus here is on these women, who feel demeaned and discarded by a society that values women for their physical appearance, and that only temporarily, more than it values them as people, and fought back against men they figured wouldn’t really miss the money and who were among the biggest offenders at denigrating the women in the first place. Wu’s portrayal of the woman to whom Pressler spoke is actually much softer than the way in which that woman comes across in the original article, but her character isn’t all that deep or interesting – it’s the Vega character that gets the depth and complexity, a woman of great generosity in emotion and material goods with her friends but who has a callous, even frigid side when it comes to the men who misuse her.

The script also makes sure to let the audience know that these women become a surrogate family for each other – Destiny, Vega, two women who dance with them (played by Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart), the club’s ‘den mother’ (Mercedes Ruehl) – filling the emotional void where their biological families, who have either discarded them or died or otherwise vanished, would have been. It’s obvious, and a little manipulative, but it also was largely effective because of Lopez’s performance, with boosts from Ruehl and a brief turn from Wai Ching Ho as Destiny’s grandmother at the over-the-top but still moving Christmas party. (Cardi B and Lizzo also appear as strippers at Moves, and both are incredibly entertaining in their limited time on screen but aren’t on enough.)

The movie frames the story as Destiny telling the story of the scam to a fictionalized version of Pressler (played in sterile fashion by Julia Stiles) after they’ve been caught and have served their sentences, which works a little to give Wu more chance to show some range but flops when screenwriter and director Lorene Scafaria seems unable to figure out how to wrap things up. The conflict between Ramona and Destiny often feels contrived, never more so at the end – perhaps because the New York article stops before the real-life Destiny (named Rosie) had her day in court, and because the real story is a lot messier. The idea Scafaria conceived is sweet enough to rot your teeth, and in the end Hustlers can’t get above the level of high entertainment because the script works overtime to make these women more sympathetic.

Lopez didn’t get her Oscar nod, but I couldn’t tell you if she deserved one over Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell), Scarlett Johanssen (Jojo Rabbit), or Margot Robbie (Bombshell), not yet at least. I wouldn’t put Lopez over the two nominees whose films I did see, Florence Pugh (Little Women) and Laura Dern (nominated for Marriage Story, but just as good in Little Women). I will say Lopez’s performance was worthy of a nomination; perhaps she was just crowded out in a strong year. I don’t think any of the other omissions, such as Scafaria for directing, were actually snubs; Hustlers is good but only Lopez really rises above the material.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,
→ January 13, 2020
→ By

Little Women.

Greta Gerwig’s debut as a writer and director, Lady Bird, was a largely autobiographical story of her own teenage years in Sacramento, with Saoirse Ronan in the lead role as Gerwig’s fictional stand-in. Ronan repeats the performance in a way as Jo March in Gerwig’s generally wonderful adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel Little Women, helping with the framing device Gerwig uses to tell the story in a nonlinear way… although Ronan here is completely upstaged by one of her own (fictional) sisters.

Little Women was itself an autobiographical novel of Alcott’s own upbringing in Massachusetts, telling the story of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth, who live with their mother Marmie and housekeeper Hannah while their father is away serving as an army chaplain during the civil war. The book, published here in two parts (and, in something I just learned, still sometimes seen abroad as Little Women and Good Wives), covers a period of about four years that sees the girls through courtships and tragedy, finally ending with three of the girls marrying and – there’s no way you don’t know this – one of the four dying of complications from scarlet fever. It was an immediate commercial success, spawning two further sequels (which I’ve never read), and remains a favorite for young readers today, in part because it’s one of the only novels of its century that truly focuses on its women, both as unique, well-developed characters themselves, and as women in a highly restrictive, patriarchal society.

The framing device Gerwig uses wears out its welcome a little quickly, especially given some of the abrupt transitions between past and present. She splits the time period across the seven years between Beth’s illness and her death, using different lighting and, eventually, a different haircut for one character as ways to distinguish between the periods, but some of the scenes don’t have enough time to develop fully because the next cut yanks you out of that moment and into a different one entirely. The shot of Jo grieving at her sister’s grave ends way too quickly and transitions to a scene of relative mirth that I think robbed the former of some of its power. There’s probably a good way to tell this story in a nonlinear way, still using the motif of Jo writing her great novel about her family as the framing device, that doesn’t make some of the intervening scenes so terse.

Beyond that, however, this film is just great, anchored by so many wonderful performances that it’s hard to identify just who is carrying what. Ronan is very good as Jo, although of course she is far prettier than Jo is ever described on Alcott’s pages, and particularly excels in any scene where she gets to crank up her emotions in any direction – and in her scenes with Laurie, played rakishly by Timothée Chalamet, who might as well have been born to play this young bachelor on the road to roué. But Florence Pugh is the biggest star here as Amy, a character who gets more emotional growth in the movie than she does in the book, going much farther from snotty younger sister to a young woman aware of how little the world might value her, fighting for any agency she can find. Pugh isn’t the lead, but I think she’s more important to this movie than anyone else.

Laura Dern might win Best Supporting Actress for her turn in Marriage Story, but I liked her performance here as Marmie even more – she’s the original supermom, showing the patience of a saint, and delivering one of the best and most memorable lines in the movie when Jo asks why she’s never angry. Bob Odenkirk is only in the film briefly as Mr. March, but he’s wonderful and is fast becoming one of my favorite character actors, even when the role requires little or no humor at all. Chris Cooper is delightful as Laurie’s grandfather; Meryl Streep does quite a lot with Aunt March, even though the character has maybe one and a half notes to her. Even Tracy Letts has a minor role as Jo’s publisher, and he’s the perfect amount of grump for the job.

And then there are the other two sisters, Meg, played by Emma Watson, and Beth, played by Eliza Scanlen. Watson just seems miscast here, speaking with a sort of affected precision that doesn’t line up with Meg, who truly wants the life of domesticity for which she’s destined. Scanlen, though, is just plain weird as Beth, who is also written strangely – made more infantile on the screen than she is on the page, which becomes particularly offputting when Beth is 13 and 14 in the earlier time period and she’s portrayed by an actress who is 21. Meg’s character isn’t that critical to the film, but Beth’s is, and the portrayal here is a bit jarring.

The ending Gerwig cooks up is rather sublime, and a welcome departure from authenticity. Jo is even more Alcott here than she ever could be in the novel, and Gerwig slips in some details from Alcott’s life to spice things up a bit, making her a shrewd negotiator and getting us to the big finish with a metafictional flourish for the ages. It’s not faithful to the source material, but given how problematic Jo’s literary marriage – which Alcott apparently wrote under duress from her publishers – is for the novel and her character, this is a substantial improvement.

We’ll find out the Oscar nominations the same morning I post this, but I’m guessing we’ll get Best Picture, Best Actress (Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Pugh), Best Costume Design, and Best Adapted Screenplay, with maybe even money on Gerwig getting a Best Director nod. We’ll see if the backlash against the Golden Globes’ all-male director slate helps Gerwig at all; (I’m assuming three slots are locks, for Scorsese, Tarantino, and Mendes, with Boon Jong Ho a good shot at the fourth.) It’s not Best Picture, but it’ll certainly end up in my top 10 once I’ve finished the various candidates from 2019; as long as Pugh gets a nomination, though, I’ll call that a win for the film.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ January 9, 2020
→ By

Klawchat 1/9/20.

Starting at 1 pm ET. I have two new pieces up at the Athletic this week: my introductory post and today’s column on some of what I look for when I evaluate players.

Keith Law: I dreamt that I was dreaming, I was wired to a clock. Klawchat.

Shaun: Does Clint Frazier bring back more in trade than a low level arm or nearer term reliever?
Keith Law: I think his trade value has largely evaporated over the last two years.

Ben: If you’re the Twins, would you part with any of Lewis, Kirilloff, Graterol, Larnach for a #2-3 starter? I am assuming no #1s are available unless it’s a ridiculous package. Given their playoff annihilation I wonder whether a mid rotation guy will push the team to the next level.
Keith Law: I wouldn’t trade Kirilloff; I probably wouldn’t deal Lewis even with his swing issues. The second two I would deal for a mid-rotation guy without hesitation, although I agree that’s not really their need right now.

Aaron C.: Who does Klaw give the A’s 2B job to? Barreto, Mateo, Neuse or Pinder? These are all depressing choices.
Keith Law: Yes, yes they are.

PhillyJake: Has Ben Cherington been abducted by aliens? Seems overly quiet on the North shore of the Allegheny.
Keith Law: What should he have done? I’m really not clear on what moves he should have made already, with a bunch of decent free agents still on the market.

Aaron C.: Your favorite (restaurant) meal of 2019 was…?
Keith Law: 1. The Love, Philadelphia 2. Friday Saturday Sunday, Philadelphia 3. Juniper & Ivy, San Diego 4. The Purple Pig, Chicago 5. Brewery Bhavana, Raleigh

Deke: Noticed on Twitter you asked to be omitted from someone’s “best of baseball Twitter” bracket poll. Why didn’t you want to participate?
Keith Law: Why would I lend my name to that exercise? I don’t get anything from it, and the ‘bracket’ was almost entirely white men.

Alex: As a Braves fan, I am mostly feeling bloodyminded and hoping that MLB’s penalties against the Astros are at least as harsh as they were against the Braves. But the rational part of my brain accepts the propriety of fitting punishment to crime. So… in your view, normatively, what *should* be the punishment levied against the Astros and Red Sox?
Keith Law: I think what the Astros and Red Sox are accused of doing is worse than what the Braves did in the international market, but I also strongly believe MLB doesn’t see it that way for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that the Braves committed the greater baseball sin of trying to pay players more money.

xxx(yyy): any (brief?) thoughts on the upcoming season of Top Chef? will you be bringing back your episode reviews?
Keith Law: I have not watched the show in three years and have said several times I’m not doing reviews any more. They take up way too much time.

Arnold: Just wanted to say congrats on joining The Athletic. That’s been my favorite place to read about sports for the past year. I look forward to seeing your stuff there. My question…is there any Giants prospect without any major league time yet, who may have an impact on the team this year, perhaps later in the year?
Keith Law: It wouldn’t shock me to see Bart in the majors by August, if he’s healthy. That’s it, though.

Ray : What can one expect from Nick Solak in 2020? Will he play everyday in the Rangers lineup?
Keith Law: Think he’s an extra guy, not a regular. At the moment I don’t see playing time for him anyway.

Trey: Keith – Congrats on joining The Athletic! (I am a happy subscriber:) Cubs Q: given their current ‘near ready’ minor league talent (not much), current roster, and owner induced payroll cap, any chance the cubs can regain elite top 5 mlb status this year or next? Other than Ricketts giving Theo another $50M-75M to spend each of the next two offseasons, what can he do?
Keith Law: Money is the only real way out for the Cubs right now, who are good-but-maybe-not-good-enough at the major-league level and have a bottom-tier farm system without much trade capital.

TomBruno23: Did the Ricketts spend all of their money on the GOP and Wrigley to the point where we are to believe all they can do is all players on NRI deals?
Keith Law: That’s what they’re selling. Your choice whether to buy it.

Joe: Is there a provision for raising the luxury tax threshold? It seems that, with salaries for superstars (deservedly) rising, the threshold should increase to reflect this.
Keith Law: Yes, it went up $2 million for 2020, and goes up $2 million more for 2021.

Krontz: Can Nolan Jones stay at 3b for most of his MLB career? Or a corner OF/1b move likely?
Keith Law: I see a nonzero chance he stays at third.

Jason: You identified changeups, splitters, and cutters as out-pitches for opposite-side hitters. My understanding of the pitch movements is that changeups fall off toward the arm side, splitters tend to break straight down, and cutters break toward the glove side (though I was never a pitcher and stopped playing in junior high, so I recognize I could be off). Given the disparate natures of those pitches, why are they all so effective in getting out opposite-side hitters?
Keith Law: Nothing to do with movement; everything to do with how the pitches appear out of the pitcher’s hand, and whether they resemble fastballs or breaking balls.

barbeach: KLAW: Happy New Year! Congrats on the move to The Athletic…it prompted me to subscribe. Do you see a path for Deivi Garcia to crack the NYY major league roster this year? Thanks as always.
Keith Law: Yes, I do. Cole is locked in for 30 starts, but Tanaka has long pitched with an elbow issue, Paxton gets hurt quite a bit, Severino missed all of 2019, Montgomery is just barely back from TJ. There will be starts available.

David: Congratulations on the new job Keith! Like you, I spend a lot of time working from home but struggle sometimes separating home life from work. I feel like I’m always doing both (fitting in trips to the grocery store in the middle of the work day; doing work in the evening and night.) How do you balance your time? Do you struggle with time management like I do?
Keith Law: Don’t worry so much about ‘time management’ and focus instead on what you need to accomplish each day. FWIW, I use non-work things to break up my work day, since it’s hard for me to just sit and write for hours upon hours without a respite.

Tariq: It appears that the A’s swung wildly and missed on consecutive top 10 picks in 17 and 18 in Austin Beck and Kyler Murray – do you think that it was a flawed approach from the start or do you understand their high risk/high reward in retrospect? Congrats on the new job!
Keith Law: Two different picks, two different processes. I still don’t think they blew it on Murray … nobody thought he’d become that good an NFL prospect at the time he was drafted. The criticism, if any, would be that they didn’t accurately assess his desire to play baseball.

Hank: Hey Keith! How do you view Tucker Davidson and Kyle Muller and will they contribute in 2020? Thanks!
Keith Law: Davidson’s a fifth starter, Muller more a mid-rotation guy, would guess neither contributes much in 2020 given who’s ahead of them.

Trey: Hi Keith – Any plans on updating your top 100 books this year? And, any spy novel recommendations (a more modern Le Carre perhaps)?
Keith Law: That list requires a lot of work, and right now I don’t have a lot of free time.

Alex: Do you think the 3b from Vanderbilt (Lewis) can play SS at the big league level?
Keith Law: If you mean Austin Martin, I have only seen him play an excellent 3b, but never seen him at SS. He’ll play short this spring, and we’ll get our answer.

Roger: You appear to have been right all along about Austin Riley, but my question is if you were Atlanta would you trade him before his value completely tanks?
Keith Law: He played nearly a whole summer in the majors and didn’t hit at all, with pitch data that really doesn’t help his cause. His value is already at a local minimum.

Jim: First off, welcome again to The Athletic! What do you see as what’s going on with Donaldson? Based on what some sources (e.g., MLBTraderumors) are saying, it looks to me like it’s not so much waiting out a bidding war as the market falling apart because nobody wants to meet his demands. Thanks!
Keith Law: No idea, sorry. That is not an area I cover, and that hasn’t changed with the job. We have plenty of other writers who’ll wade in the rumor mire.

Christopher: You work for the Athletic now????
Keith Law: Big, if true.

BigDaddeh: If the Cubs put Yu Darvish’s remaining contract on irrevocable waivers, would someone take it? Is it not even underwater anymore given the new market climate?
Keith Law: Teams would fight to take it.

TomBruno23: Latest episode of The Inquiry, “Why was Qasem Soleimani killed?”, is a clear, concise and informative listen on the current situation.
Keith Law: Of course it is – The Inquiry (from the BBC) is consistently smart despite being so concise.

David (Denver): The Rockies are going to sell way too low on Arenado, aren’t they? I’m enthused for yet another underwhelming return of young pitching that never develops.
Keith Law: I don’t understand jumping to extend him and THEN trying to trade him. It looks indecisive.

tempo: What are your thoughts on two of my favorite metal bands – Slayer and System of a Down?
Keith Law: I enjoy peak Slayer, basically RIB through Seasons. By the late ’90s they’d really stopped producing anything novel, unfortunately, but that’s true for all the ’80s thrash icons.

ryan: keith, its awesome your with the athletic now. what made you switch jobs?
Keith Law: I have already written quite a bit about that in my newsletter.

Alan: If the Sox move Mookie to LAD and Lux is off the table what is a good return package in your opinion?
Keith Law: If I’m the Red Sox I am insisting on May and one of the catchers in the deal, at a bare minimum. It’s Mookie Fucking Betts, people.

Dee Arby: If Moniak wasn’t taken #1, how far do you think he would have slid down the draft board?
Keith Law: He was going in the top 5-6 picks anyway … he was pretty famous, hit well enough at showcases, and scouts liked the kid’s makeup a lot (too much).

Anthony: Thoughts on the White Sox offseason? Been incredibly busy, but does it translate into anything in 2020 and beyond?
Keith Law: Yes, I think it does.
Keith Law: I also don’t think they’re done.

Kyle B: Do you think there’s going to be a work stoppage when this CBA expires?
Keith Law: I will know a lot more about that once I get into this job some more and start my reporting on the labor talks.

Shlomo Zinger: Thoughts on Mike King?
Keith Law: Reliever.

Tinker: What do you think about Chris Shaw and his future? His career path / numbers remind me of Max Muncy!
Keith Law: I don’t think he’s more than an emergency callup.

John: Hi Keith. Loved Smart Baseball. Can’t wait for your next book. Do you see Loaisiga or any of their other young arms being viable bullpen replacements for Betances or will the Yanks need to sign/trade for another power arm in the pen? Thanks.
Keith Law: Given all of Loaisiga’s arm problems, can he work back to back days like most relievers do? I don’t know the answer but I think it’d be an issue for him.

Salty: Not sure if you saw the story of Lassiter vs NY Yankees. Was wondering if you’ve ever seen a grievance taken that far, and if it reached dismissal status only because he was representing himself.
Keith Law: It wasn’t a grievance, but a lawsuit, and to be honest it sounds like Lassiter isn’t well and might need real help. The media coverage I’ve seen seems to be making fun of him (it’s easy, he’s claiming this massive conspiracy against him).

NYYMatt99: Do you agree with Manfred cutting minor league teams? He seems to be doing everything possible to stop baseball from growing
Keith Law: That’s not a yes/no question. I wrote about it October for ESPN and will certainly revisit the topic for the Athletic because it’s a lot more complicated than “cutting minor league teams.”

Chris: Think the Mets deal Dom Smith or he remains a bench bat this season?
Keith Law: I have to think they trade him … he’s more valuable in trade than as a 300 AB (if that) bench player.

Appa Yip Yip: How do you think the Jays starting pitching looks over the next couple of years? They have Ryu, hopefully Pearson, then an amorphous mass of dudes at AAA lead by probably Anthony Kay. How do you see it shaking out?
Keith Law: Lot of guys who could be average or better if healthy, but who have dicey health outlooks, including Ryu. Murphy might be #2 behind Pearson if we knew he’d stay healthy.

Mike: Do you get the same royalty when Amazon drops the price of your bookin the Kindle store?
Keith Law: No, it’s a percentage of the purchase price.

John G: Clarke Schmidt or Michael King as Yankees’ long-term no. 4 or 5?
Keith Law: Schmidt might be a starter; King is not.

jayB: Thoughts on the new I lnfield Outs stats? Other than Baez was still robbed in GG voting
Keith Law: Mike Petriello pointed out that it’s useful but incomplete, and you can see that in some of the leaders.
Keith Law: A lot of batted ball types aren’t included.

Kuipers HR: Obviously, I’d rather Indians keep Lindor. But if they’re not going to put even half the $ they’ve saved into team, trading him is next less-worse option. No?
Keith Law: Agreed.

Bobby Northside: When will we see SP throw 250+ innings again? How can we make it happen?
Keith Law: Never. Even a pitcher who might be capable of doing so will not be allowed to do so because you’re better off with relievers facing hitters for the first time than starters facing hitters for the 3rd/4th time.

Moe Mentum: There’s a 3rd Siani brother on the horizon. Is he on your radar yet, or is it too early still?
Keith Law: He’s next year.

Kevin W.: Does our country (and democracy) ever recover from the last 4 years?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Ben: Just finished Confederacy of Dunces and loved it. The whole time I was reading it, I couldn’t help but picture Ignatius as Buster Bluth. Did you have anyone in mind for his character as you read it?
Keith Law: I read it ~20 years ago, so I don’t remember thinking he was anything but Ignatius himself.

Kevin W.: What happened to Aubrey huff?
Keith Law: Nothing. This is who he’s always been.

John G: Why aren’t the Rockies talking trades for Jon Gray, not just Arenado? Dude seems prime for a restart somewhere to shine
Keith Law: I agree – he’s done about as well as you could have hoped with the Rockies but I could see him going somewhere else and exploding like Cole did with Houston.

Mike D: Why would Cleveland want to shop Lindor and Clevinger instead of building around them? Does not seem to make sense to me.
Keith Law: Then they’d have to spend money.

Kevin W.: Will you continue free agent write-ups at the athletic?
Keith Law: Yes, depending on how significant the player and contract are.

Mart Yanh: Law! Congrats on the new job! Do u think Mookie Betts *wants* to remain in Boston long term?
Keith Law: He wants to go to free agency to maximize his value. That’s his right as a player.

Andy: Does the proposed shortening of the draft help college baseball (more kids coming and staying longer) or make it worse (top prospects more likely to go the minors.) I know it’ll definitely be a whole lot worse for the college kids with less senior signs.
Keith Law: The better senior signs will still get signed; the worst senior signs will no longer have automatic paths into pro ball, but their odds of seeing the majors were minuscule. They could go play indy ball or in this new “Dream League” if that proposal came to fruition, and if they do well enough, they’d get opportunities in pro ball. Senior signs only typically get $1000 as a bonus, and then the pathetic first-year minor league salary, so it’s not as if MLB is getting rid of lucrative jobs here.

Eric: Just a statement for the MAGA people: If you support the troops, you should be vehemently against war, especially ones based off ego and narcissism.
Keith Law: The best way to support the troops is to bring them all home.

Mike D: Are you heading to ST this year? Florida or Arizona?
Keith Law: I go to both every year.

Moshe Rabeinu: How far away is Florial?
Keith Law: His pitch recognition hasn’t gotten better in the last year-plus, and he’s been hurt, so right now I don’t see what his role is in the majors.

Blangadanger: Had a chance to play Parks over the holidays. An excellent, quick and immersive game with gorgeous art of US National Parks. Have you had a chance to play?
Keith Law: I haven’t, but it was on my list of 2019 games I wanted to try but never got to play. I’ve heard great things.

Dirk Gently: Let’s say MLB suspends Jeff Luhnow for a year — how do they keep Luhnow from simply working remotely, directing his assistants on what to do, etc.? Are they going to be able to spot check cell phones/emails? And would it be that hard for Luhnow to do is job remotely that way?
Keith Law: Yes, they would be able to check or ask for cell phone records, emails, etc.

Evan: Are your prospect packages going to follow a similar format as they did in ESPN, or will you change it up?
Keith Law: Editorial decision. The content will be very similar.

Adam: hey Keith, subscribed to your newsletter but after your most recent e-mail went out. Is there any way to read the post online?
Keith Law: On the signup page there’s a “letter archive” link.

Jason: Will Monte Harrison amount to anything?
Keith Law: The odds are very much against him … the approach is nowhere near good enough, despite the tools.

Nick: What do you make of JD Davis season last year? His defensive struggles aside, do you think he continues to make an ascension to potential star?
Keith Law: No, I think that was his peak.

Big Fan: Hi Keith, congrats on the move! Do you have any insight into where or when Josh Donaldson will sign?
Keith Law: No, that is not and has never been something I cover.

Nick: Dom Smith for Tarik Skubal. Who says no?
Keith Law: Pretty sure the Tigers would say no.
Keith Law: Skubal might be their best pitching prospect at this moment.

Sean: Bart, Ramos and Hjelle are being sold to us Giants fans as the first wave of the future. Should I get excited or pump the brakes a bit?
Keith Law: Their system is improved, but not yet good. They’re a draft or two away from that, and they didn’t add any prospects at the deadline last year, I assume because the team had a bit of a mirage run of contention.

Grant: Which books coming out in 2020 are you most excited to read?
Keith Law: I don’t really track those unless it’s an author I especially like (Jasper Fforde has one coming).

PA Prospects: What high schoolers will you be watching locally this spring?
Keith Law: Near me, probably nobody. Austin Hendrick is a prospect but on the other side of the state from me.

Andy: Bring them home, and then fund the programs to help them with their physical and mental well being.
Keith Law: We both know that’ll never happen. You’re asking politicians to spend money that doesn’t produce results they can show off for the cameras.
Keith Law: Evidence-based treatments for PTSD etc. exist, but they’re tough sells to constituents.

Jesse B: Do you think Honeywell can still throw the screwball? Do you think he can still be a starter?
Keith Law: After two missed years, he’s probably going to end up in relief.

BenL: Congrats on the new gig, Klaw! Just a housekeeping question: Klawchats to continue here, be moved to the Athletic’s site as this new venture takes shape, combination of both? Thanks, as always
Keith Law: Klawchats are here and will stay here for the foreseeable future.

Matt W: I agree the Mets should free Dom Smith but with their depth as thin as it is, can they really afford to part with more of it? Have you seen their list of ST invites?? Egads.
Keith Law: It’s OK, they have Tebow.

John: How much of the Phillies issues in the draft do you think are down to bad draft evaluation (ie, you didn’t love the picks at the start), poor player development after they drafted the guys, or just bad luck? The poor drafts have obviously really hindered their teardown/rebuild
Keith Law: They’ve chosen poorly more than anything else.

Erik: Awkwafina’s gonna lose Best Actress to another cosplayer. Will the Academy ever change?
Keith Law: That’s always the safe bet, right? Who played a historical figure, or played a character with a disability, or played a character who was LGBT+? I only get worked up about the Oscars because they mean money: if your film wins something, more people will go see it, and more money for good films should mean more money for good films in the future.

Dave: Trump: hawk or dove? Displays both at times
Keith Law: LOL, don’t fall for it, Dave.

Bradley: Thoughts on the Luis Robert deal? Seems to be a good deal for the player’s long term financial secure and nice to not see blatant service time manipulation from a team. Win win?
Keith Law: Win win, mostly. He has no leverage in this situation and the team has it all, but he did fairly well for a player with 0 MLB games, and I’m glad to see the White Sox pushing this model of paying prospects early.

PD: Have you addressed how your coverage with interact with Sickels?
Keith Law: It doesn’t. My coverage is independent of anything else at the Athletic. I’ll do more or less the same stuff I did for ESPN+, just at a new site, and over time adding some additional types of content like labor coverage.

dan: Tony Gonsolin Future starter or Reliever?
Keith Law: Yes, he will be one of those things.

jeff: does skubal come up before mize?
Keith Law: Mize finished 2019 hurt, and didn’t look right just before he got hurt, so right now Skubal is closer to his debut despite Mize’s pedigree and superior pitch mix.

Ron: Twins need a first baseman. Wouldn’t trying to work a trade with the Mets for Dom Smith make sense? Better than trying to sign Donaldson? What would it take?
Keith Law: What do they have that the Mets would value for 2020? The Mets are trying to win now, but so are the Twins. Do the Twins have surplus somewhere I’m not thinking of? Maybe if a third team is involved and the Twins send a prospect to team 3 and get Smith, so team 3 sends the Mets whatever it is they need (pitching?).

Brian: Let’s be honest, the guy that claimed he would cancel the subscription to The Athletic that he doesn’t currently have because of your hiring will be tough to top.
Keith Law: That was quite special.

Kevin: Do you think Dalbec will be the Red Sox opening day 1B in 2020?
Keith Law: I do not.

jeff: Gore over 125 IP in 2020? rookie of the year?
Keith Law: Unlikely, and almost certainly not.

Todd: Are Mets fans over estimating Steve Cohen as an owner? Just because someone has ample means doesnt necessarily mean they’re a great baseball owner
Keith Law: I think Mets fans are latching on to the fact that he is Not a Wilpon.

Turner : If DL Hall were to improve his control this year, would he have #2 starter potential?
Keith Law: He has #2 starter potential already, if he improves both his command and his control.

Sam: Will you be active at all in the comments section of your articles?
Keith Law: No, again, no time for that. I’d rather chat here and leave it at that.

Eric: How worried would you be about giving a 4 year deal to 34 year old Donaldson? Better than trading prospects for Bryant?
Keith Law: Someone asked earlier at what point Donaldson should just take the best deal … if he has viable four-year offers on the table, he should take one. Given his age and some of his injury history, that feels like more than he should have reasonably expected from the market.
Keith Law: I’d rather trade something for Bryant, but of course we don’t know what that ‘something’ is.

Danial: Looking forward to more klawtent; does your new job come with new leeway or restrictions and how can we expect that to be reflected in your work?
Keith Law: I don’t know how to answer that other than to say keep reading. I don’t think I have more leeway in prospect coverage. ESPN never restricted me there.

Ben: Theoretical Question: Your world series window is the next 1-2 years. If you have a prospect who is guaranteed to be a lights-out reliever right now and has the potential to be a top-end starter but isn’t ready yet, do you use them in the bullpen now before your window closes, or screw the window and think about the best use of the asset?
Keith Law: David Price 2008. I use the guy in relief right now, judiciously (like, don’t burn him out by using him three days in a row).

Todd: Keith, why do republicans just deny climate change? Is it strictly business related denial?
Keith Law: The Party itself? Yes. Climate change mitigation is bad for many industries, including coal, oil/gas, mining, and much manufacturing, so their opposition to it is a financial matter – they do not face future costs of a warmed and damaged planet.

Mark R: Any decent Disney eats this year?
Keith Law: We ate at the Holiday Festival kiosks more than anything else.
Keith Law: That’s probably it for Disneyworld trips for me for a while, since I no longer have the magic pass.

Oliver: It’s kind of weird that the Padres traded for Taylor Trammell and Trent Grisham then blocked each of them in LF for the next two years with Tommy Pham. With Myers stuck (sigh) in RF because Hosmer is entrenched at 1B (heavy sigh), can either play good enough CF defense to make up for the shortcomings of Myers and Pham?
Keith Law: Myers ends up on the bench or released. He’s not blocking anybody.

Jason S: In 2025, is Kelenic, Rodriguez and Marte the best OF in baseball?
Keith Law: The easy answer is ‘no,’ since 1) that’s five years away and 2) we have no idea if all three will stay healthy and develop up to their potential.

Rico: What are your expectations for Gavin Lux this year and long-term?
Keith Law: I think he’s an All-Star in the long term, an above-average regular right now, and the best argument for the Dodgers not trading for Lindor this winter.

Rico: Benintendi struggled last year after a breakout 2018. Any reason for the increasing K% and lack of power? What do you expect going forward?
Keith Law: I don’t know what’s gone wrong with him; in a year when everyone seemed to hit the ball harder and hit for more power, he hit for less. It’s easy to say it’s in his swing – there is some of that – but his approach, esp vs LHP, has gone backwards too.
Keith Law: OK, that’s all for this week. Thank you all for the kind words on my move to the Athletic, and for continuing to show up here for Klawchats. I’ll keep these going on Thursdays until we get to spring training and travel gets in the way. In the meantime, watch this space or my email newsletter for further announcements on upcoming content!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:
→ January 8, 2020
→ By

The Farewell.

Awkwafina got her start as a Youtube comedic rapper, and didn’t even earn her first live acting credit in anything but a short film until 2016’s Neighbors 2, so her rise from that to a Golden Globe for Best Actress – which she won this weekend for her outstanding lead performance in The Farewell – is one of the more incredible and heartening stories out of the movie world in some time. (Was Cate Blanchett all teary with joy when Awkwafina won? I kind of think she was.) I haven’t seen all of the nominated actresses’ films in that category, but I can say Awkwafina gave a performance worthy of awards, and without her and the way her coarse, rational character contrasts with the rest of her slightly loopy family, The Farewell wouldn’t be half the film it is.

Awkwafina plays Billi, a 30ish, struggling Chinese-American writer who has just learned she didn’t get a fellowship she was hopeful she’d land, when she finds out that her grandmother in China, to whom she was once quite close, is dying of lung cancer. The catch is that the family, adhering to a cultural tradition, isn’t telling the grandmother that she’s dying, so she can continue to live her life as if everything was normal until it reaches a point where the truth becomes inevitable (if it ever does). Billi isn’t on board with the plan, since it involves lying to a beloved family member, so her parents tell her not to come with them to China for what is presumably the last visit they’ll have with Nana. Of course, she defies them and flies there on her own, and hilarity ensues in the face of a terminal diagnosis, from the internecine squabbles about telling her, Nana’s desire to find Billi a husband, culture clashes with other cousins who remained in China, and, oh by the way, the sham wedding of Billi’s first cousin to a woman h met in Japan (who speaks no Chinese of any dialect) that is the excuse for everyone coming to visit Nana at once.

Part of the beauty of the comedy of The Farewell is that the premise is rather simple: They’re not telling Nana she’s dying and they’re all there for a fake wedding. Everything else flows naturally from that setup; you just had to get the characters in one place for an obnoxiously passive-aggressive argument about whether the United States or China has the superior culture or is the better place to send your child for college to break out. Billi is often in the middle of the comedy, but not necessarily its prime mover; sometimes she’s Bob Newhart, the ‘normal’ one surrounded by crazy people, providing the voice of reason. 

The scenes with Billi and Nana are more tender, as if maybe Billi can forget for a moment that her grandmother is dying, than the family scenes, where she and her parents keep switching to English to talk about the propriety of the ongoing lie, which also gives the film some needed contrast. I expected more of a one-note story, yet The Farewell is anything but, especially avoiding the trap of simply making Billi the heroine whose position is right and thus for whom you’ll root in every argument. (You will sometimes, though.) Rather than burdening the script with major subplots, writer-director Lulu Wang, who based the story on her own experience with her family and her own grandmother, adds small flourishes to flesh out the main story. The best of these lets Nana’s sister tell her own story, explaining her role in the family, which gets exactly the screen time it needs without becoming a needless, ongoing plot point.

Awkwafina’s win might be the boost she needs to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress this year, which would be great news as I don’t think I’d put more than one performance over hers of what I’ve seen (Scarlett Johanssen in Marriage Story, although she has less to do overall). It seems like it would be an upset for The Farewell to get a Best Picture nod, but I’ll be pulling for it – and GoldDerby.com‘s Oscar odds page has this fifth in Best Screenplay and even has Zhao Shuzhen, who plays Nana, ranked 6th among candidates for the Best Supporting Actress award. (She’s very good.) It’s a good movie, maybe a little insubstantial to say it’s a great movie, but a movie I’ll root for next month, and one I’ll encourage a lot of people to see because almost anyone could watch this movie. It’s a very human story, simply told, without distractions or things to deter anyone from enjoying it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,
→ January 6, 2020
→ By

The Irishman.

I had to get sick to watch The Irishman. 

At three and a half hours, it’s the longest movie I’ve ever watched in a single sitting at home or in a theater; I’ve watched longer films, including Lawrence of Arabia, but over multiple days, because my attention span’s normal limit is around two hours and it takes a lot to overcome that. This Friday, though, I was knocked out by a virus and had a fever high enough that I wasn’t leaving the couch, so we watched Martin Scorsese’s latest entry in his opus of films around organized crime, about a serial liar and trivial mob figure who, near the end of his life, ‘confessed’ to numerous murders, including that of Jimmy Hoffa.

Taken from a dubious non-fiction book called I Heard You Paint Houses (which appears on-screen in an alternate title card), The Irishman follows the career of Frank Sheeran as he goes from a truck driver who delivers meat between Philadelphia and DC to consigliere to a local don, Russell Bufalino, and later to Hoffa himself. It’s a sprawling story with an epic scope but a focus on minute interactions, giving Scorsese’s three leads a chance to do what we all presumably came to see them do – and to see them as younger doppelgängers of themselves, thanks to digital de-aging technology, so Scorsese can use the same actors across a thirty- to forty-year span.

(By the way, Slate breaks down how Sheeran likely confessed to a slew of murders and crimes he never committed. The story is mostly fiction, with lots of real people in it.)

Frank is played by Robert De Niro, who probably looks the least like himself when he’s de-aged but whose voice and accent are unmistakable. (Although the characters are supposed to be from Philadelphia and Detroit, the accents sound a lot more like Brooklyn Italian-American to me.) Hoffa is portrayed by Al Pacino, also given away by his voice even when he’s also been de-aged. Both deliver solid performances, De Niro’s a bit more workmanlike yet a character a bit independent of the movie around him, Pacino infusing the bombastic Hoffa with the kind of bombast Pacino is known for giving his characters.

But this movie is dominated by a scene-stealing performance from Joe Pesci as Russ; I can’t say I ever forgot it was Joe Pesci, because how could you ever forget that, but of the three actors he is by far the most convincing and the most fully in character. Known for playing hair-trigger characters with on-screen histrionics, Pesci here is understated by comparison, measured, sounding well-reasoned even he’s asking Frank to take someone out (and I don’t mean for drinks). He seems the least like someone playing an archetype in a film about mobsters, even though that – and My Cousin Vinny – is what he’s best known for doing. It helps that the de-aging was least noticeable on him out of the big three. For him to come out of retirement – he’d last appeared in a live-action role nine years ago – and deliver this performance is remarkable, and I assume assures him an Oscar nomination.

The film indulges in those archetypes, both in characters and in plot points, although by the end it’s clear that Scorsese, at least, is making a much larger point about the pointlessness of such violence, and how it threatens to dehumanize the perpetrators in the long run. The various executions are gory but ultimately mundane for their frequency, and the ease with which Frank can deliver either a beating or a bullet is never explained even in the extended introduction to his character (which does introduce one of the many wonderful minor performances in the film, this one from Ray Romano). At three-plus hours, the repetitive nature of this cycle becomes clearer, and while the violence is stylized, it’s not glamorized – it’s ugly, and futile, and by the film’s conclusion, everyone involved is either dead or left with nothing.

Frank himself has been shut out by one of his daughters, played almost wordlessly by Anna Paquin in over 25 years in the movie’s present tense, and pleads with another daughter for her to help reconnect them, which she refuses to do. One of the most memorable, awful scenes in the film is when Frank goes to a funeral parlor and shops for caskets (the salesman is rapper Action Bronson, who literally doesn’t seem to know how to stand while Frank is talking to him); when the salesman asks who the casket is for, Frank reveals it’s for himself. No one else cares enough to do this for him. He will die unloved, and likely unlamented.

Paquin’s nearly silent role has come in for a lot of criticism, but the reason is so clear, and writing the character that way, as opposed to making her angry and voluble and demonstrative, is powerful in its own right and because it plays against stereotypes of women in films. The general lack of women characters of any substance in the film is a bigger problem, and not one about or limited to Paquin’s character; Frank leaves his first wife for his second and it barely merits a mention, while his wife and Russ’s are there on a road trip the four take from Philly to Detroit but they’re there for nothing more than comic relief and smoke breaks. And it’s not as if the film lacks room for female voices – there’s a fair amount of fat in this film, at least twenty minutes’ worth of overlong montages or scenes of old white men talking to each other too slowly. The entire sequence leading up to the murder of “Crazy” Joe Gallo, which eyewitnesses say Sheeran did not commit, and the murder itself could have been left out without hurting the film at all, since the murder doesn’t matter in the subsequent timeline of the movie.

The Irishman is going to earn a slew of Oscar nominations, obviously. It’ll get a nod for Best Picture. Scorcese will get one for Best Director. I think all three of my fellow paesani will get acting nominations. A movie of this length hardly exists without extensive editing, and while I have some quibbles with a few specific cuts, I think the sheer size of the job gets the editor(s) a nomination there as well. I won’t be surprised if it wins Best Picture, but little else, however, as the film is more than the sum of its parts, and if you like this film, you love this film. I’ll just personally root for Pesci to take a statue home as well.

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