→ January 1, 2019
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If Beale Street Could Talk.

If Beale Street Could Talk feels like a film that is very of the moment, for its theme and its source material. James Baldwin is himself having a renaissance after the acclaimed documentary I Am Not Your Negro appeared in 2016 and contemporary writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates have explicitly alluded to Baldwin’s works, such as Fire. Even though the novel on which Barry Jenkins, director of the Oscar-winning Moonlight, was written over 40 years ago, it revolves around a very current theme of racial injustice and police misconduct towards African-American men. It succeeds without sermonizing by wrapping those huge themes in a very sweet, straightforward love story between two young black people played by rising stars.

Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt (Stephan James of Homecoming) and Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne, making her film debut) are childhood friends who’ve fallen in love in 1970s New York City, but whose relationship faces many obstacles, including the most obvious one – a society that views them as second-class citizens because they’re black. As the film opens, we learn that Tish, just 19, is pregnant, and that Fonny is behind bars, accused of a rape that he didn’t commit, put there by a vengeful white cop. Jenkins alternates scenes of the present day, where Tish and her family work to try to clear Fonny’s name, with long, languid scenes of their nascent romance, mostly from Tish’s point of view as she also learns more about who Fonny has become as an adult and the challenges a young black man faces, even in a multicultural place like New York.

The story hits a wall when Tish’s mom, played by Regina King, travels to Puerto Rico to try to convince the victim to revoke her identification of Fonnie as the rapist. The scenes that follow are important to the plot, but the lyrical mood Jenkins has set hits an abrupt stop the moment she steps on the island, and it takes the rest of the movie, until the concluding scene, to get that atmosphere back. There’s also an utterly corny scene where Dave Franco, dressed as an observant Jew named Levy, delivers a monologue to Fonnie and Tish to explain why he might be the one landlord in the whole city willing to rent an apartment to a young black couple. The soliloquy is hackneyed, right down to the whole “I don’t care what color you are, black, white, purple” line that could be borrowed from any of a thousand films where a white character tries to explain how he doesn’t see color.

King has been listed as a shoo-in for a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Beale Street, but I don’t think she’s in this film enough to have that sort of impact. She’d slip in under the Judi Dench Exemption, I suppose, but King isn’t the Queen, and her character is actually not that well-developed. There’s nothing missing from King’s performance, but the script just doesn’t demand enough of her. James and Layne are both outstanding, and Bryan Tyree Henry, who is having a year himself, is strong again, this time as a friend of Fonny’s who was just paroled after serving two years for a crime he didn’t commit, but to which he pled guilty rather than face a more serious charge for marijuana possession. (This remains a major reason African-American men are incarcerated today, but first appeared as a weapon of the state, often with the support of leaders of black communities, in the 1960s and 1970s. Locking Up Our Own, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction, documents this trend and its effects on the African-American population.)

Jenkins made several smart decisions that power Beale Street past its flaws and made it one of my top ten movies of 2018, including the choice to retain some of Baldwin’s original prose, often having Tish use it as narration; and the way he maintains much of that glowing atmosphere even into some of the scenes around Fonny’s incarceration and the efforts to clear him. Keeping that mood into early conversations that Tish and Fonny have through glass while he’s in prison makes the scene where he loses control of himself more visceral, and the early scene that you’ve likely seen in the trailer, where the two families come into conflict because Fonny’s mother blames Tish for leading her son into sin, starts out with the same atmosphere only to dissolve as the rancor in the room overtakes it. Between this and Moonlight, Jenkins has made his style very clear – he’s in no rush, often letting scenes breathe longer than any other contemporary director I can name, and when he does take the wheel, such as for close-up shots of specific characters’ faces, you’ll be aware of the transition.

If Beale Street Could Talk seems destined to earn a slew of nominations at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony and lose just about all of them; its best chance, aside from King as Best Supporting Actress, might be in Best Adapted Screenplay, where it will be up against A Star is Born and BlacKkKlansman, although I’d vote for this over both of those. If any film has a chance to upset A Star is Born for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, this would be it. It is a wonderful film, so kind to its two main characters but with a story that will make you seethe by its end, worth seeking out if Annapurna gives it a wider release beyond just the 65 screens it was on this past weekend.

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→ December 31, 2018
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Top ten movies of 2018.

I’ve seen everything I think would likely make this top ten list other than several foreign titles, including Cold War and Capernaum, although I’ll still continue watching 2018 releases for a few more months as they hit theaters or streaming. I’ve seen 40 movies that count as 2018 theatrical releases, not counting the HBO movie The Tale, which would have made my top ten but isn’t eligible for awards because it went straight to television after the network purchased it at Sundance.

With those caveats in place, here’s my top ten as of this morning, and it still could change as I continue to see more 2018 films this winter. Links on the films’ titles go to my reviews.

10. The Endless. A thriller, or perhaps a psychological horror movie, that garnered positive reviews with a modest release, The Endless follows two brothers who, having escaped a cult where they grew up, revisit the compound to try to find some closure, only to discover that a mysterious presence has kept their old cultmates from aging and seems to prevent anyone from leaving.

9. First Man. Considered something of a box-office flop, Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to La La Land goes in a completely different direction, telling the quiet, almost painfully restrained story of Neil Armstrong, from the death of his young daughter to cancer to his landing on the moon. Ryan Gosling and Clare Foy are excellent as the two leads, although the emphasis on accuracy in depicting space flight made some scenes very hard for me to watch.

8. Isle of Dogs. This should win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, although I fear the silly Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse will win (I admit Spider-ham is pretty funny, though) instead. Wes Anderson’s second animated film, his first from an original story, is brilliant, emotional in the right ways, often funny, and extremely well-voiced by a cast of Wes usuals along with the welcome addition of Bryan Cranston.

7. The Favourite. Yorgis Lanthimos’ follow-up to the The Lobster is a bawdy, lowbrow comedy in nice clothes, and it’s hilarious, thanks to the combined efforts of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz, all three of whom deserve awards consideration. The story itself isn’t new – it’s a power struggle combined with a bizarre love triangle – but the dialogue sparkles and the three stars, aided by a strong supporting turn from Nicholas Hoult, all slay in their respective roles.

6. If Beale Street Could Talk. A lovely, languid adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, Beale Street stars Stephan James (of Homecoming) and Kiki Layne as young lovers who find they’re expecting just as he’s headed to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

5. You Were Never Really Here. A taut modern noir thriller, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a damaged private eye who rescues kidnapped girls and ends up caught in a case that threatens his safety and his sanity. Lynne Ramsay’s latest film, her first feature since 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, clocks in at a spare 90 minutes, leaving no slack in the tension.

4. Beast. Driven by a star turn by relative newcomer Jessie Buckley, Beast follows a young woman in her late 20s who falls for the local outcast, who is himself a potential suspect in the murders of three other teenaged girls in their small town. The contrast between the idyllic setting and the darkness throughout the plot further drives the viewer’s sense of unease at every turn.

3. Shoplifters. My top three films are all foreign films, which is purely coincidental, and all made the Academy Award’s shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2019 Oscars. Japan’s entry is a simple, intimate portrait of a makeshift family of grifters who take in a neglected four-year-old girl they find playing outside in the cold in their tenement. Director/writer Hirokazu Kore-eda took hold the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this film, which has a huge heart and explores the essentially human need for the connections and security of family through a group of well-rounded characters.

2. Roma. Alfonso Cuarón’s passion project for Netflix lived up to the lofty expectations set for it. Based on his own childhood in Mexico City, including the life of his nanny/housekeeper Cleo, Roma is told from her perspective, as she gets pregnant by a man who abandons her and sees the marriage of her employers crumble, all amidst the tumult of protest-torn Mexico in the early 1970s. The story can be a shade slow, and Cleo is the only real character of depth, but the cinematography is the best of the year – maybe in several years – and the film seems set to win awards for its sound as well.

1. Burning. Adapted from a scant Haruki Murakami story called “Barn Burning,” this Korean-language film creates an air of uncertainty from the start, and its three main characters remain unknowable to the dramatic conclusion. Lee Jong-su meets a girl, Shin Hae-mi, who says she knew him in grade school, and after a few days he’s clearly in love with her, only to have her go to Africa on a trip and ask him to watch her cat for her. When she comes back, she’s with a suave, wealthy guy, Ben, who might be her new boyfriend, and Jong-su can’t figure out what to do – or what exactly Ben does for his strange hobby. It’s a hypnotic slow burner anchored by one of the year’s best performances from Steven Yeun as Ben.

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→ December 30, 2018
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Minding the Gap.

As much as the awards-season conversation has been dominated by Netflix (for Roma) and amazon (for several TV series, including the very good Homecoming), Hulu has quietly had a banner year as well by moving into documentaries, with two of its properties making the shortlist for this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. One of them, Minding the Gap, seems like a lock for a nomination given its universal acclaim and the timeliness of its subject, exploring the lives of three young men in Rockford, Illinois, all skateboarders and all products of traumatic childhoods.

Bing Liu is the filmmaker and one of the three subjects, having begun filming his friends as they skateboarded around Rockford as preteens and continued it in his early 20s (Liu is 24 now) with both interview footage and scenes from their daily lives. The two other main subjects are Zack Milligan, a handsome, volatile kid of 21 or 22 who now has a son with his 18-year-old girlfriend Nina (also a product of a violent home); and Keire Johnson, an African-American kid who can pile systemic and tacit racism on top of the challenges he already faced from a traumatic upbringing. The three men all respond to the challenges of their lives in different ways, notably Zack, who has become a physically and emotionally abusive partner to Nina and even tries to manipulate their depictions on camera by playing an audio recording of Nina screaming at him without explaining that it was preceded by him physically assaulting her.

As the story progresses, the details of the family lives of all four of these young adults become clear – three grew up in physically abusive environments; Keire lost his father at a young age, while Bing only saw his father three times since age 5. Zack’s childhood is the most opaque, even though he really never shuts up while he’s on camera, and is blessed or cursed with good looks (he reminds me of the ’90s actor Jeremy London) and a self-confidence that convinces him he’s smarter than he really is, which becomes very apparent in a soliloquy later in the film where he justifies his own bad choices by calling people who choose a predictable family life as ‘weak.’ He’s damaged, as all four of the principals (including Nina) are, but he’s also doing the least to cope with it, self-medicating, lashing out physically and emotionally, and stringing Nina along until she finally takes him to court for child support.

The appeal of Minding the Gap is how raw it is, including the footage Liu shot ten years earlier, as well his decision to insert his own story into a narrative that also includes other people. Documentaries seem to follow the either/or path: it’s about your own story (Strong Island) or it’s about someone else’s, but not both. Liu’s history of abuse comes out later in the film, but the arc of his life, including his use of skateboarding as an escape from a bad home situation, dovetails perfectly with those of his friends. And while Liu is occasionally heard interviewing subjects, he’s as unobtrusive in that role as he could be.

Where the film falters is around the three men themselves. Keire and Bing are compelling and sympathetic, but also both reserved by nature, and there’s often a feeling that they’re not revealing as much to the camera as the audience might need to hear from them – especially Keire, who has a mischievous smile he puts on every time he’s lost in thought, even if the thought is unpleasant. Zack, meanwhile, comes off as a real asshole – granted, one with trauma in his own past, someone who probably needs real treatment for PTSD and other mental health issues, but his treatment of Nina and general disregard for others around him is hard to accept even with Bing essentially vouching for his buddy by including his story. He also seems to have a knack for finding women he can manipulate, which comes off particularly poorly as Bing gets Nina’s back story of a horrendous childhood and lack of any kind of family structure until her aunt and uncle take her into their house when she’s 21 and has a 3-year-old in tow.

I personally found the domestic scenes between Zack and Nina excruciating to watch because he is just awful – awful to her, and awful in the way a child trying to act like an adult can be awful. There’s a sense here that Liu is still finding his voice as a documentarian, that he had great material and stumbled on a tremendous subject, but has to learn more about assembling what he collects into a coherent narrative or series of them. Minding the Gap has garnered incredible acclaim to date, with 62 positive reviews for a 100% rating on RottenTomatoes, and the Best Documentary Feature award may come down to this versus Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, but I didn’t see it in quite that light. It’s a strong debut that might be the harbinger of a great career for Liu, but it’s also flawed and didn’t do enough to grab and hold my attention throughout its tapestry of three stories.

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→ December 29, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 12/29/18.

I’ve had several ESPN+ pieces in the last two weeks, including my Hall of Fame ballot and explanation, my analyses of the Jurickson Profar trade and that huge Reds-Dodgers trade, and a post that covered the Michael Brantley and Wilson Ramos signings. I held a Klawchat here on the 20th.

On the board game front, my year-end articles went up two weeks ago – my top ten games of 2018 for Paste and my best games by category for Vulture.

Here on the dish, I posted my top 100 songs of 2018 and top 18 albums of 2018 that same week.

My free email newsletter will resume next week. Join the five thousand other satisfied customers who’ve already signed up for occasional goodness.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first, as always: Marc Randazza, a lawyer who represents or has represented several major neo-Nazi and white nationalist figures in lawsuits, has a very long history of legal misconduct, much of it dating from his time working for gay porn producers, but has only received a slap on the wrist from the Nevada Bar for his misdeeds, detailed in this lengthy Huffington Post piece.
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→ December 28, 2018
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A Brief History of Seven Killings.

I’ve been getting reader recommendations for Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, for several years now, including a recommendation from our Twitter friend Old Hoss Radbourn. I’ve even owned the Kindle version of the book for more than a year, picking it up at some point when it was on sale for $2 or $3, but then procrastinating because the book was so long and seemed dense. Well, it is long, it is dense, and there were certainly parts of the reading experience where I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but it’s also very good, a transgressive work of postcolonial fiction that takes a strong political stance and weaves a compelling, violent narrative around the real-life assassination attempt against Bob Marley in 1976.

Marley isn’t named in James’ book, referred to throughout merely as the Singer, and his 1976 performance at the Smile Jamaica concert, an event held to try to stop violence between supporters of the two main political parties in Jamaica at the time, is central to the book. Two days before the concert, seven gunmen broke into Marley’s house at 56 Hope Road and shot him, his manager, his wife, and one other member of the Wailers, although somehow there were no fatalities. James works from historical accounts of the assault, including manager Don Taylor’s claims that he attended a street-justice ‘court’ and execution of several of the gunmen, and then populates the narrative with a cast of extraordinary characters – including some of the shooters, Jamaican drug dealers and underworld figures, a white Rolling Stone writer covering the Singer, a woman trying to escape the violence for the United States, and more – to build this sprawling novel where even the good guys are probably bad guys too.

Although the Singer – the shooting, the concert, just his mere existence at the heart of Jamaican culture in that moment – is central to the story, he’s not a character in the book. James shifts his narrative among multiple people, mostly men, and gives many of them individual stories that give their characters depth. (The BBC story on the Man Booker announcement says the book has “more than 75 characters,” but I think about a dozen come through as core characters with three-dimensional depictions, which is still a remarkable number.) James also writes each chapter in the language of the character speaking it, so much of the book is written in a Jamaican patois that slowed me down while reading, and I’d say it took me a hundred or more pages before I got used to the vastly different vocabulary and speech patterns, but that’s also part of the power of the book to evoke a setting and, for me at least, to emphasize that this is a culture and place that is very different from anything I’ve ever experienced and that I shouldn’t judge its characters or events through my lens.

A Brief History of Seven Killings does imply in the title that the book will be violent, but even that did not adequately prepare me for how violent it is – graphic, yes, but also seeming to revel in its own violence. There’s a scene of a massacre in a New York crack house which is pivotal to the plot of the final section of the book but also horrifying in how casual the murders are and how James chooses to describe them in such bloody fashion. There’s a similarly casual attitude on the part of most of the characters towards rape, and a weird mix of outright homophobia and acceptance of some gay or bisexual men among the gang members involved in the assassination attempt. The novel makes heavy use of many gay slurs, one of which is part of Jamaican patois, which I assume is a fair representation of how these characters might have talked but no less jarring to read.

The core themes of James’ novel, opening a window on a pivotal time in modern Jamaican history while exposing the CIA’s suspected role in fomenting this violence and even accelerating the cocaine trade, recalled those of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which did the same for the brutal rule of Dominican dictator Rafael “El Jefe” Trujillo, who may have been assassinated by the CIA as well. While Diaz’s work made the oppressive Trujillo regime’s crimes against its people more personal, James’s novel puts the government’s misdeeds at a further remove – the authorities’ incompetence and selectively applied attention helped create these enclaves of wealth and poverty, and a lawless environment where local gangs would inevitably pour in to fill the void left by the absence of real government or the corruption of the local police. The infighting between the two main parties and the proxy war in the streets also created the opportunity for the most famous Jamaican in the world at the time, the Singer, to be simultaneously beloved by his people and marked for death by one faction vying for power. I’m at a disadvantage reading such novels, since I came into it with no knowledge of Jamaican postcolonial history and very little knowledge of the country’s culture, but reading James’ novel and then going online to read about events described in the book became a sort of superficial education on the subject.

Because James weaves multiple smaller plots around the central event of the assassination and its aftermath, there’s no single resolution to the novel, and many of the storylines fade out rather than reaching a clear conclusion. One particular death provides closure to other characters, while other events seem to end one phase of Jamaican political culture only to usher in a new one. It all adds to the feeling that James’ novel is the equivalent of a good Tarantino film – it’s hyper-realistic, over the top with violence, with a wide cast of characters, darkly funny at times but also tackling serious themes amidst the shock and gore. It’s not for everyone – one of the Booker committee members said it wasn’t a book you’d give to your mother to read – but it’s a great exemplar of why the Booker’s decision to open the prize up to writers from other countries was a good one.

Next up: Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield.

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→ December 27, 2018
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Zama.

Zama, available on amazon Prime, is the weirdest movie I’ve seen this year. Originally released in Argentina in 2017 and submitted by that country for this past year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, it’s based on a 1956 novel and plays out like a Kafkaesque fever dream in colonial South America, where lives are cheap and promises worthless. It’s violent and full of confusion, to the point that it’s unclear whether any of what we’re seeing is real, or whether the main character himself is losing his mind. I haven’t read the novel, which wasn’t translated into English until 2016, but any sort of guidebook would have helped me navigate this weirdness, which had me befuddled from the opening scene and never did much to set me on track.

Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is a local functionary in Spanish South America, in the town that is now Ascúncion, Paraguay, who has been waiting some time for a transfer order to reunite him with his wife and child. His title, corregidor, was unique to the Spanish colonial system and referred to the top official in a subdivision of the country’s massive holdings in the Americas, dating back to Castile in the Middle Ages, and they were typically quite powerful because they worked at such great distances from their superiors. Zama, however, always answers to a governor in this film, first one and then his replacement, and the transfer is forever delayed or even forgotten by the men with the power to put them into action. He continues to rule over petty matters of the locals but becomes increasingly erratic, at one point promising two Spanish landowners thirty Native Americans as slaves, and eventually gives up hope of a transfer and joins a vigilante party searching for the bandit Vicuña Porto, who was supposedly killed (twice, I think) earlier in the film but remains a threat to trade and travel between cities.

Zama starts the film as a sort of would-be lothario, obsessed with the lady Luciana (Lola Dueñas, who is made up and dressed to look utterly ridiculous), and acting as the protector of some young women in his household of unknown purpose. He becomes more disheveled as the film progresses, and the dialogue starts to break down and become increasingly disjointed, to the point where I wasn’t sure if I had missed bits of it or if the characters were simply speaking past each other. Zama brings up the letter multiple times in conversation at one point, only to have the governor seem to completely forget what he was talking about. There’s also a llama in the governor’s office at one point, never explained and never remarked upon by any characters, who seem to regard it as just another llama in the office (reminiscent of Elizabeth Moss’ roommate in The Square). I assume it was partly a play on Vicuña Porto’s name – a vicuña is a South American camel related to llamas – and thus an acknowledgement that he always exists under their noses and they’re unable or unwilling to defeat him.

Zama felt like an experimental novel brought to the screen but losing too much in translation. The gruesome finale feels absurd and metaphorical, but a scene like that requires a greater foundation to provide it with sufficient impact beyond mere revulsion. The extra descriptive text in that sort of book can make it comprehensible, but here I couldn’t get much further than understanding that Diego de Zama was a man trapped in a remote place in circumstances he couldn’t control, to the point that it may have caused him to lose his sanity. And that is a story I’ve seen before.

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→ December 26, 2018
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Amsterdam.

I’ve never met the novelist Ian McEwan, but after reading two of his books and seeing a film adaptation of a third, I think his worldview is depressingly misanthropic. Amsterdam, a slim novel that won the Man Booker Prize in 1998, plays out like a dark comedy without the comic elements, taking a mutual euthanasia pact between two friends and using it as a core plot device with the most obvious possible ending.

Clive and Vernon connect at the funeral of Molly Lane, a woman with whom they’d both previously had affairs and who has just died of some sort of progressive neurological disease, where they form this pact, saying if either sees the other heading for the same sort of miserable, undignified death, they’ll speed the process by going to Amsterdam where such things had just become legal. While at the funeral they also run into another of Molly’s former lovers, the ambitious politician Julian Garmony, then British Foreign Secretary with eyes on the top prize.

Vernon, an editor of a newspaper coping with falling readership, ends up privy to compromising photographs of Julian that could ruin the latter’s career, and after much debate within the office decides to publish them – over moral objections from Clive. Meanwhile, Clive, a renowned composer working on a piece for the government celebration of the upcoming millennium, is experiencing a bit of writer’s block and goes on a long walk in northwest England’s hilly Lake District, where he comes upon a man fighting with a woman, but chooses not to intervene because doing so might cost him the melody he’s crafting in his head. When he later explains this to Vernon, the latter is incensed at Clive’s selfishness and points out just how serious the consequences might have been. These two subplots turn the friends into mortal enemies, and, between that and the book’s title, you can probably see where we’re headed.

The Guardian‘s review at the time says the book has “a distinct whiff of Evelyn Waugh” in both style and subject, but I’d say that’s half right. Waugh’s social satires were often bitingly funny, both in character and in plot. If this reminds one of any of Waugh’s novels, it’s the questionably unfunny A Handful of Dust, where one major character ends up with one of the most unfortunate endings (short of death) in literary history. Amsterdam is devoid of humor; McEwan scorns his characters, and appears to loathe the Netherlands’ lax policy on euthanasia, but the combination of the two means two people we are supposed to hate drive each other to a shared ignominious end. Aside from my reaction that the conclusion probably wasn’t realistic, I was barely moved to shrug my shoulders. Even Tony Last got more of a rise out of me than that.

I didn’t care for Atonement, where McEwan builds a narrative around what I felt was a totally unrealistic event and then pulls the entire rug out from under readers; I did like this year’s film adaptation of On Chesil Beach, but the worldview within is still decidedly pessimistic, with both works arguing, in essence, that we can’t atone for or even recover from past mistakes. Maybe that’s true but it makes for miserable reading.

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→ December 26, 2018
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Blindspotting.

Blindspotting (amazon • iTunes) marks the writing debut for its co-stars, Daveed Diggs (of Hamilton) and Rafael Casal, who play the two lead characters, best friends in Oakland who end up confronting explicit and implicit racial bias over the course of three days in the city. It is spotty – no pun intended – okay, maybe a little bit intended – but also contains many strong scenes that point to the tremendous vision of the two writers that might just need a little more development time.

Diggs plays Collin, who has three days left on his yearlong probation for an assault that occurred while he was working as a bouncer at an area bar, and Casal plays his best friend Miles. Collin is black, Miles is white, and the two have been best friends since grade school. Miles ‘acts’ black, to the point where Collin refers to him with some affection by the n-word, but their relationship doesn’t reflect how the world as a whole views the two of them. Meanwhile, Collin is driving home from one of their jobs for a moving company one night when he sees a white police officer kill an unarmed black man who is fleeing and has his back turned when he’s shot. Because of the circumstances of his probation, he chooses not to come forward as a witness, which haunts him over the remainder of the film.

Blindspotting is about everyday racism, which means we get a greatest hits sort of look at the subject. Police brutality and BLM come up multiple times, in humorous and serious contexts. Guns and how people, including the police, view a white man with a gun and a black man with a gun differently also figure in the plot. The gentrification of Oakland, which has been becoming less black, is a regular topic within the dialogue, and drives a scene where Collin and Miles go to a party held by a white hipster tech executive that ends poorly when Miles loses his temper, as he’s wont to do.

There are plenty of well-drawn side characters here, including Collin’s ex-girlfriend Val (Janina Gavankar), whose ethnicity is left unstated in a film where racial identity is paramount; and Miles’ African-American wife Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones, also of Hamilton), but the two men are the heart of the film. Both are complex, but Collin is better developed, and the script maintains the audience’s connection to him by gradually revealing the depth of the character over the course of the film, reserving the story of why he went to jail until somewhere around the midpoint, a flashback that really changes the perception of his character.

The climactic scene in Blindspotting is both absurd and its best, tightest sequence, requiring a fair-sized coincidence and a touch of reality suspension … but this is Diggs’ screaming guitar solo here, and he absolutely nails it. Although this is fiction, it reminded me of the monologue Hannah Gadsby delivers at the end of her comedy special Nanette, where she has lulled the audience into acquiescence with some blisteringly funny jokes, only to turn very serious on her captive audience and give a speech on equality and identity that could crumble mountains. Diggs’ performance in this last scene enters that same zone of unreality – we were here, now you’ve just moved us somewhere else, but we were already in the moment enough that we’ll just come along for the ride. There’s a level of trust required to pull off that kind of trick. Gadsby completely earns that trust. Diggs gets most of the way there, and has to resort to a gimmick to keep viewers in that moment long enough to complete the scene.

Blindspotting‘s humor isn’t as consistent as it tries to be – the best gag in the film is a sight gag around Collin’s hair – with a lot of cringeworthy jokes that don’t land and feel out of place in a film that’s trying to deal with some huge subjects. Miles handles the bulk of the successful comic relief, and Casal’s fast-talking act is riveting to watch. His negotiations with a potential buyer over a sailboat are Marx Brothers-level comedy and among the funniest moments in the film. That lightens the mood for a while, but the humor eventually fades out or just stops working (the scenes at the hipster party, with the utterly clueless white host, are really painful) while the serious nature of the film takes precedence. It’s not a top ten film of the year for me, but it’s a very good one, and I think a very promising writing debut for Diggs and Casal.

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→ December 24, 2018
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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is technically a movie – it was released to theaters, and is also on Netflix as a single, 135-minute … well, movie. But it’s also kind of not a movie: it’s an anthology of six stories that have nothing in common beyond their settings, the American West of the frontier period, and the fact that Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and directed all of them. As you might find with any short story anthology, this sextet has highs and lows; the longest story here is the least interesting and perhaps worst acted, while there are also some truly brilliant moments comparable to the best work the Coens have done.

The first story bears the title of the whole film, and it’s short, silly, and establishes the theme that runs throughout the entire anthology – fate does not care for your narratives. You may take this as meaning the universe is random, or simply that man proposes, God disposes, but regardless, the Coens revel here in setting up one story only to take a right turn at the conclusion. Buster Scruggs is a sharp-shooting, fast-talking outlaw, prone to hifalutin vocabulary and expressing himself through song, a bad guy who enjoys killing worse guys and then singing over their corpses. He’s utterly ridiculous except that he’s good enough to shoot off a man’s trigger finger at a significant distance, until, of course, he meets someone a bit quicker.

The six films are all pretty dark, even when they’re very funny, and only one has anything you might consider a ‘happy’ ending. Tom Waits appears in the fourth story as a lonely goldpanner who spends days digging in a bucolic riverside spot to find the vein he believes is there, only to learn he’s been followed by a jumper with a pistol. What follows turns the narrative on its head and then flips it back again, although all of the story takes a back seat to the gorgeous scenery, which reminded me of the incredible landscape shots from the Coens’ remake of True Grit.

The worst of the six, by far, is set on the Oregon Trail, where Zoe Kazan plays a young woman traveling with her mansplaining brother to Oregon, where he’ll start a business and she’s due to be married to his business partner. He dies rather early in the trip, which is no great loss to the viewer, leaving the story to focus on the travails of a young woman left on her own on the caravan with no one to help her but a hired boy she may not be able to pay. The plot itself fits the broader themes of the anthology, but Kazan looks and especially sounds completely out of place here. I thought she was the weak link in The Big Sick, and I think she’s even more of a problem here, only adding value because she’s little and that helps emphasize the helpless nature of her character.

That leads into the concluding story, a gothic horror story set on a stagecoach at night, the one part of the film that feels like a play and by far the portion of this anthology that boasts the best cast, including Tyne Daly and Brendan Gleeson as two of five travelers on the coach. As they talk and argue, telling bits of their life stories, it becomes less clear that the passengers understand where they are going – and, to the Coens’ great credit, it isn’t clear at the end of the story, either.

Aside from the uneven nature of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which is inevitable for any set of six mini-films, the anthology suffers from how few real female characters it has in the film. Four of the stories have none; the last two have one each, Kazan’s and Daly’s, and the latter, while probably my favorite performance in the entire movie, shares screen time with four other actors all kind of having the times of their lives. (There’s a little surprise for Major League fans in this segment, but I won’t ruin it.) I could understand an argument that a movie set in the Old West would likely have few women in an authentic plot, but six different stories, only one revolves around a woman, and she’s not very strong at all. In a year where most of the best films had women at or near the hearts of their plots, the lack thereof in this film stands out as a real weakness.

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→ December 20, 2018
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Klawchat 12/20/18.

Keith Law: Buy yourself a dream, how’s it looking? It’s Klawchat.

Andy: What are your thoughts on a salary floor, that’s similar to the luxury tax. There is a floor but if player salaries don’t hit that floor, they get less in revenue sharing from the higher spending teams. I think the rich owners would go for it, since they hate subsidizing “teams not trying,” and it would still allow for bottoming out, owners would just make less money doing so.
Keith Law: I don’t like it, because there are often legitimate arguments for bad teams to avoid spending money on veteran players who aren’t going to be any better than internal options, just for the sake of spending that money. Yeah, the Orioles are going to be terrible this year, but should they spend $8 million on a maybe league-average veteran LF, or try to straighten out Austin Hays and give him 400 AB out there?

Arnold: The Giants selected two players in the Rule 5 draft, Drew Ferguson & Travis Bergen. Is either of them likely to ever be a useful major league piece?
Keith Law: Nope.

Ozzie Ozzie Albies Free: Pres Klaw gets sworn in 2020, what are his goals for his first 100 days?
Keith Law: Ctrl-Z.

addoeh: The Cubs didn’t re-sign Chavez, but you know I wish they had Jesse’s curve. Where can they find a pitcher like that?
Keith Law: Well, Rick, I really didn’t understand them choosing not to sign him at that price. Seemed like a great fit, he pitched extremely well, has no platoon split, Maddon liked him.

Lee D: Keith — You are the GM of Team X. You sign Bryce Harper to a 10 year/$300M contract. Which Team Xs would this be a good idea?
Keith Law: There is no team where it would truly be a bad idea. He’s very likely to exceed that AAV in on-field production.

Joe: Billy Wagner is seriously still getting HoF votes will the madness ever stop?
Keith Law: He’s better than Lee Smith and Trevor Hoffman, both of whom are in.

Mike: Keith, what’s a realistic return for the Blue Jays for Stroman. If they took back Homer Bailey’s salary, could they get one of the top 3 guys – Senzel/Greene/Trammell?
Keith Law: I don’t think the Reds are moving any of those three guys unless they should get a top of rotation starter.
Keith Law: Even then, maybe not.

Aaron G: Since the owners are treating the luxury tax like a hard cap, how long until the players finally figure out that the 6-year arbitration system artificially depresses salaries and should be changed/removed?
Keith Law: I think the union knows this, but never prioritized fighting it. I have to think they will do so next time around.

Ben: Your thoughts on the new proposal for Cuban signees no longer having to take up residence as they await MLB’s declaration of free agency? Does this require approval from the (puke) Trump administration and the xenophobic GOP first?
Keith Law: As far as I know, it doesn’t require any such approvals from the government. I think the new agreement is only good news – yes, it will shift some problems around, but ultimately this benefits players and teams.

Dave: What are your thoughts on Paul Richan? From the lists that have come out so far, he’s been as high as #5 or out of the top 30 all together.
Keith Law: I haven’t finished any individual team lists yet, but he’s not going to be top 5 even in that system.

Brett: Can I get your thoughts on InstaPots? My wife bought one and has tried numerous recipes. I think it makes terrible food and am not a fan.
Keith Law: I do not own one. I own a pressure cooker and a Dutch oven and use those where the Instant Pot would serve. But I also work at home and thus have time to cook that most working adults don’t have.

Mike: Do you ever feel like you’re at a huge disadvantage information wise? Now, it might be easier to find Trackman information, but with teams neuroscouting it would be hard for you to get that info.
Keith Law: I always worry about that, and try to get that info where I think there might be a gap in my knowledge on a player. Of course there will always be times I don’t learn that until later, as with some issues around player makeup.

Guest: Is Luzardo in the majors before September this year?
Keith Law: Yes, I expect so.

alex: Any big cooking plans for you with the upcoming holidays?
Keith Law: Don’t think so. Christmas has always been a small affair around here. I never liked those Christmas days when I was a kid and we were bundled up and shuttled off to visit family as soon as the last present was opened.

Alex K: Bellinger for Kluber (or Bauer): who hangs up first?
Keith Law: Dodgers.

Rick C: The more the offseason goes on, the more I get the sense that the Braves’ remaining moves look something like re-signing Markakis, trading for Gray, and adding a couple low to mid-tier relievers. Do you think I’m off the mark here? I think it’d be a huge mistake considering the strength of the division overall.
Keith Law: Well they made one huge move with Donaldson. I do think Anthopoulos will do something else on par with that, but it might not be until mid-January.

Sam: Dustin May a guy to break through this year?
Keith Law: Wasn’t he already on my midseason top 50? I think he was, so I would say he’s already broken through.

Keith: HOF question: I see a lot of momentum for Edgar and sheffield is more or less stalled. Offensive WAR gives Sheffield a significant advantage that gets eroded by his negative defense. If Sheffield had just been a DH, he’d be close to a no brainer HOFer. How do you reconcile this?
Keith Law: I have struggled with that exact question. My ballot & explanatory column go up next week and I promise you I answer it in there.

Ozzie Ozzie Albies Free: Do you know if there are any guidelines on how fast a kid should pitch as he’s growing up? Velo is the main reason for injuries right? So should a 13 y/o kid be pushing 75? 80?
Keith Law: I don’t know of any guidelines. It’s probably a function of physical effort level and I don’t know how anyone truly measures that (yet).

Hank: You’ve made fun of the fact that the Jays (and others) view their system differently than you do. Where approximately do you place them, and what are the major differences between what you think and what they think?
Keith Law: To be clear, I’ve only made fun of the team’s own overly optimistic view of their system, and how sensitive Mark Shapiro was when I disagreed with them. I don’t have them top 5, or particularly close, but beyond that I’d prefer to wait until I have my actual rankings done.

Jeff: What were your thoughts on the Mets hiring of Jared Banner?
Keith Law: I only know Jared a little bit but have heard nothing but positive things from his colleagues in Boston.

Ron: You think Kepler will put it together this year? If he does can he be a 4-5 win player? Buxton just needs to be healthy, right?
Keith Law: I thought he was going to put it together in 2018, so I guess yes, I still do. Buxton needs to get healthy. Sano needs to get in shape. There’s a lot of upside on that team, which is one reason I don’t agree with fans who think Cleveland has the division on lockdown.

nb: Hey Keith – Happy holidays to you and your family! When do we start receiving the present of prospect evaluations and rankings n ESPN.com? Thanks!
Keith Law: I believe the last full week of January. That’s a decision for my editors, but I’m already working on the phone call portion of the project.

J: Discuss my complicated emotions around the actually reasonable Wilson Ramos signing by Brodie van CAA and the implicit get over yourself to the Marlins.
Keith Law: Thought it was a very smart deal on its own merits, and much smarter than sending prospects for Realmuto, who is just marginally better than Ramos.

Rob: Trevor Cahill a good case for just using for multiple innings a couple times a week rather than as a “starter”?
Keith Law: I think he is.

Jim: Will Bubba Thompson garner top 100 consideration? Love his athleticism
Keith Law: I don’t think so, but I’m still working on it.

Chris: I saw Roma in a theater the other night and I experienced anguish and anxiety for much of it, incl the very last climb, and I dont even have issues with anxiety generally. I hear you re the surf noise. Great piece of filmmaking though.
Keith Law: I’m glad I didn’t see it in a theater for that reason, but am also glad Netflix did the wide theatrical release to give people the choice.

Rich J: Which team will sign Gritty? Which team SHOULD sign Gritty?
Keith Law: Doesn’t every team need Gritty, really?

Zac: is the 18 year old the Blue Jays took in the rule-5 a legit major league pitcher?
Keith Law: Is he right now? No. That’s a huge problem I have with the rule 5 draft today – it encourages teams to take players whose development will be stalled or even hurt by the jump to a level for which they’re not ready.
Keith Law: OK, it’s time to get serious: I am now eating Oreos.

Jackson: My pick for biggest lower level MiLB bat to rise in 2019 is Jhon Torres. Am I too optimistic?
Keith Law: He’s a very good prospect.

Foster: Is how batters fare against different arm slots tracked at all my front offices? Do you consider it to be valuable/meaningful?
Keith Law: I doubt the sample sizes would be large enough.

Dave: As a Cubs fan, I’m beyond appalled at the continued employment of Addison Russell. Melisa Reidy-Russell’s account of his abuse is sickening, and I’m especially bothered that Theo likely knew those details when he tendered him a contract. I realize baseball has had its share of bad apples from the beginning, so maybe I’m just being sanctimonious now. But Russell is my line in the sand. Either he goes, or I find another team to support. If only I could guarantee the next team will respond to such issues more appropriately.
Keith Law: I personally do not understand the team continuing to employ him at this point. If enough fans make their displeasure clear, maybe they’ll reconsider.

Brett: Does Scott Kingery make solid progress in 2019 or should we expect more of 2018?
Keith Law: I was hoping the Phillies would give him regular reps at one position, probably 2b, that he can truly play well, so that he wasn’t simultaneously trying to play a position where he had no experience/lacks the skills while also learning to hit major league pitching. I don’t know that that’s likely right now.

nelson: With teams less likely to hand out huge contracts to flawed players and teams also less likely to hand out longer term contracts to players in their 30s, how do you think this affects the future of the sport? Do you think this will lead to fundamental changes?
Keith Law: I think the union will/should push for fundamental changes like getting players to free agency sooner.

Tyler: Mo is a no doubt HOF for me because of the playoffs. However I do not have him even in the top 12 or 13 on this ballot based on regular season numbers. I struggle with how to evaluate RP and how much weight to put on playoff numbers. For example if I was starting a team I would take Oswalt over Mo. Oswalt was one of the best pitchers in the game for 10 years in a row. I do not think Oswalt is a HOFer and do think MO is, but I do think Oswalt was the better pitcher. I am glad Mo is going to get in I just have a hard time putting him in the top 10, is this me under stating his importance in the playoffs? Or is it me not valuing Closer enough in general?
Keith Law: Perhaps, and I’m only playing devil’s advocate here, you aren’t valuing Rivera’s performance relative to any other reliever over such a long period of time highly enough. Whether you believe Hoffman or Wagner was his best contemporary, Rivera was worlds better than both of them.

HOF voting: Do you make a distinction (as others have) between voting for highly credibly PED accused- like say Bonds, Clemons- and someone like Manny who was actually caught?
Keith Law: I do – and I have mentioned it before, so my view there remains the same. I won’t be consistent just for its own sake but in this case I’ve been consistent.

Mike: How many more years do the Indians have before anyone (or everyone) in the AL Central catches up?
Keith Law: like I said above, they may be the favorites but the division isn’t just theirs in 2019.

Sean: I’m almost through The Master and Margarita. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, but I hadn’t even heard of it before I saw it on your top book list (and I like to think I am relatively well-read). Seems to me that it’s not one that is touted much in America despite it’s clear place as a literary classic, could you speculate as to why this is?
Keith Law: It wasn’t written in English, and the anti-communist satire within the novel probably doesn’t land for American audiences.

John : Should I be terrified the Reds are going to trade Senzel and/or Trammell for Kluber?
Keith Law: Yes, I wouldn’t favor that.

Rick C: What is going on with Carter Stewart’s grievance?
Keith Law: Nobody knows.

Tyler: In regards to the salary floor, what if a team does not reach it they have to spend the difference on their minor league players salary?
Keith Law: Now that is the greatest idea I’ve ever heard.

Guest: Do you think Tulo is a worthwhile upgrade (or an upgrade at all?) over Kevin Newman / Erik Gonzalez for Pittsburgh?
Keith Law: Definitely not.

Rell: What do you do with being around immediate family for the holidays that insist on bringing up political views just to have a debate with you?
Keith Law: I don’t have any immediate family who support this Administration or the current GOP in general.

Chris: There is gonna be a riot if the Yankees bring in (so called bad seed) Machado which leads to them not re-signing fan fave and great guy Didi. This is where you tell me Machado’s a clearly better player and the FO doesnt give a whit about what the fans want.
Keith Law: There won’t be a riot. Yankee fans will be thrilled if they sign Machado.

Dan: Do you ever move a book up or down your favortie novels list a year or more after you have read it? Based on a second reading or how something may have struck you after thinking on it further.
Keith Law: The latter, yes. I rarely read novels twice, but I do often find myself thinking about novels differently after some time. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth really grew on me months after I read it.

Em: Love your work, baseball and non. Non baseball though: no love for Middle Kids on the music list…didn’t like or didn’t listen?
Keith Law: Didn’t like, sorry.

Ozzie Ozzie Albies Free: Thanks for your music updates. I really agree with you that it’s been a down year for music. Will Tool save us when they finally release their album next year?
Keith Law: Never been a Tool fan.

Andy: Do you ever go back and listen to previous albums, that you may have missed? It seems like most of your songs/albums you link to are current ones. Do you still find bands/albums that you may have missed from five years ago, but just don’t link them as much?
Keith Law: I only link to current songs/albums because that’s the purpose of those posts – I do monthly playlists of new music, then year-end lists of the best albums or songs of that specific year.

Dan: Sad news from Long Beach- Seoulmate closed and is now up for sale. 🙁
Keith Law: That is a bummer – although their website says they’re hoping to reopen in a larger space. That location didn’t have much seating. The owner was a reader of mine, so I’m very much hoping to hear some good news on that front soon.

Dave: If you think Harper is a generational talent worth the zillion dollars he’s going to get, do you let the fact that you already have three good outfielders (coughNYcough) stop you?
Keith Law: No, you have the DH spot to work with.

Jack: Which prospect will be the next addition to the White Sox rotation: Dunning, Cease, or Kopech (at the start of 2020)?
Keith Law: Cease seems closest.

Cole: Is it time to write off Austin Beck?
Keith Law: Good lord, no. He’s had one full year in pro ball.

Joe: Where they any changes to Hedges swing it approach in the second half of last season that indicates his improvement bcould be sustainable? How good is he defensively, I’ve heard writers claim it slipped last season?
Keith Law: Nothing changed with his swing or approach. I don’t think he’s slipped defensively.

AGirlHasNoName: So, um, Addison Russell is just toast, right? I am glad his exes have put their own words out there, and wish them strength. But he has to be toast, right? Might as well grow an evil mustache and get sharks with lasers on their head or something, there’s no coming back from here, is there?
Keith Law: If he goes out and hits like an All-Star this year, there will be fans (mostly men) lining up to forgive him and/or call his exes liars and golddiggers. Even after he admitted Reidy’s claims of violence were true, and then she and another of his girlfriends both posted accounts of his bad behavior, there were STILL dipshit men in my mentions yesterday calling them liars, or just saying women lie all the time (not about this, they don’t). I gave the block button quite a workout.

Matt from MKE: Love your stuff, Keith! Question about the Brewers and Hiura – why would they even waste time with a temporary 1 year signing to play 2B, when their top minor leaguer plays that spot? Wouldn’t you give him the chance to succeed/fail first?
Keith Law: I would, yes.

Dan: Have you seen Minding the Gap? It may win Best Documentary and it’s fantastic. (Granted I’m biased as it’s filmed in my hometown)
Keith Law: No, I’ll watch it next month. I still feel like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is going to win, though.

Chris: Ive tried to stop getting worked up about things like HoF, awards, etc, but in what way is it remotely fair for a player who never topped 6% to get in as an end around by a small group of cronies? Why does that avenue even exist?
Keith Law: Ask the Hall. It’s their process. I don’t mind a sort of last chance kitchen for candidates whom the voters whiffed on – Trammell already, Whitaker soon, I hope – but a committee that small, filled with voters who have personal relationships with candidates, will ALWAYS produce bad outcomes.

William T.: Keith, a lot of these “early” mock drafts starting to surface. Do you like HS Lhp Hunter Barco to be a fit for my Rangers at #8?
Keith Law: Mock drafts this early are not worth the electrons used to post them.

Adam: Steroid suspicions aside, would you support someone who chose not to vote Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame due to his questionable domestic violence history?
Keith Law: Yes, I would. Unfortunately, we have a few players on the current ballot with such accusations (which, again, I tend to assume are true), and more already in the Hall. Incorporating that into voting would meet my personal morality but raises a question of what the Hall is actually there for. I don’t have a good answer.

Trevor: Brewers rhp prospect Zack Brown seem to be popping up on a lot of radars. Someone you like?
Keith Law: Yep, he’s a guy.

HankQQ: Liked your top 100 songs list yesterday. One band that I thought deserved a spot was Idles. If you haven’t already give Joy as an act of resistance a listen.
Keith Law: I didn’t like that album at all.

Matt: Do you consider the White Sox serious contenders for Harper or Machado?
Keith Law: Yes.

bunt cake: muncy’s floor should be solid/average mlb player with some pop and good walk rate?
Keith Law: I think his floor is below that. Platoon/bench player.

Kacey: I don’t disagree with you on Russell, but would you give him a second chance if he was truly contrite right away, it was a one time thing and he sought counseling?
Keith Law: My view is that a man who puts his hands on a woman’s neck in anger cannot be redeemed or rehabilitated. He’s a danger.

Jon: Keith, how do you feel about die hard Trump supporters reading your chats?
Keith Law: Do they? I use a lot of big words.

Adam: Higher Ceiling? Waters or Pache?
Keith Law: Pache.

Josh: Given the increased specialization of baseball roles, at what point does Hall of Fame worthiness become primarily based on “excellence relative to position/role” like some other sports? In other words, for example, Billy Wagner would be deserving while Gary Sheffield would not – despite the latter being substantially more valuable to an actual baseball team.
Keith Law: I really do not want to see the Hall start honoring the best specialists. I don’t think that’s ever been its purpose nor should it be going forward.

Tinker McSwiggins: I’ve heard of about 3% of the artists on your top 100 songs. Where do you find these artists(literally, not trolling)? Also do you have a link to your go to pie crust recipe? Thanks bro, hang ten dude.
Keith Law: I find them all over the place – there isn’t one spot. I listen to a lot of music, especially when driving or when doing mindless stuff around the house like cleaning, doing dishes, even sometimes while cooking. Pie crust recipe

Kevin: Would you include player opt-outs if you were a GM or overpay to induce the player to sign w/ your team. I am a huge White Sox fan and would be extremely giddy if they signed Harper and/or Machado, however unlikely and out of character it may be. I don’t understand giving them an opt-out after say 3 years though. That will probably be when the White Sox young players start hitting their stride and the team competes, but now you have a star player you have to pay more just to keep. On the other hand, the player could turn into a Jason Heyward where he underperforms expectations and he chooses not to opt-out.
Keith Law: Player options are bad for the team. An “opt-out” is just a euphemism – it’s a player option. If the player stinks, you’re stuck with him. If he’s good, he probably opts out.

Dom: What’s your best advice for somebody seeking a job in scouting, FO or development? Thanks!
Keith Law: Learn to code.

Bryan: Any boardgame recommendations that are good for the whole family (adults and teens) that can also be played with a 7-year or 8-year-old? [i.e., not just children’s games that older people can play with them]
Keith Law: Ticket to Ride, Splendor, maybe Carcassonne (love the game, the farm strategy can be a little abstract for young players).

Krontz: Forbes does MLB team valuations and has said some clubs have net losses in given years. Is that really possible? Aren’t the owners just using the ol’ “shell game” of making it look like a loss on the books while profits from concessions, parking, leases, etc all add up to plenty of profit in the end for MLB owners.
Keith Law: Yes, they use transfer pricing tricks (e.g., paying themselves a well below market price for something like parking, putting parking revenues in a related entity) to pull that off.

Matt: So uhh… Syria. The coming clusterfuck is gonna make Iraq look like a calm serene day at the beach isn’t it?
Keith Law: Yep. I will say that I think the Obama Administration probably mishandled Syria, out of fear that the GOP-held Congress would obstruct any serious efforts.
Keith Law: There’s probably no way I could do justice to the topic of US policy in Syria, about which I only have cursory knowledge anyway, in a chat question.

Imre: Thanks for all you do Keith! Merry Christmas to you and your family! Any suggestions for board games for our 4 yo daughter?
Keith Law: Merry Christmas to you as well. A lot of publishers are doing kids’ versions of the games I love, and some are really good, like Ticket to Ride: First Journey and My First Carcassonne.

Lee: What’s a fair extension for Mookie Betts at this point? Does he bite at 10 years and 250 million?
Keith Law: I think he’d ask for more. A player of his caliber should ask for $30MM+ in free agency.

Sean: Do you have any sense on the approach Zaidi will have this off-season. It’s been quiet so far and they need to make some moves eventually.
Keith Law: Do they? I don’t see them as contenders in 2019. Standing pat for now may be the right move.

Richard: Looking at the Yankees and Red Sox positioning themselves for years of dominance and the Rays being seemingly light years ahead in their turnaround, what can I – a lifelong Blue Jays fan and expert of mediocre baseball team watching – latch onto as a fan while their current management team attempts an AL Central – centric rebuild?
Keith Law: I don’t have a great answer for that, although I think the idea of the Jays rebuilding through the farm, which they are clearly trying to do, should be seen by fans as a positive. We can disagree over the progress of the rebuild, but they are right not to try to fake-compete in the short term.

Danny Boy: Keith, why the vitriol against Israel? Between your remonstration of Israel’s inclusion in the WBC, criticism of Solomonov’s documentary, and your pro BDS tweets, it sounds like you’ve got an Israel problem.
Keith Law: I actually praised Solomonov’s documentary, you stupid troll.

Dr. Bob: You may be concerned about falling behind because you don’t see all the data that teams are developing, but it could be worse. You could be Jim Bowden analyzing teams and trades and signings like they still happened over drinks at the hotel bar.
Keith Law: No comment.

Jon: I just love the fact that ANY man that is accused of sexual assault you just blindly believe the woman and hang said man out to dry. Typical liberal for you
Keith Law: Yes, we liberals like data, and since the data say false claims of sexual assault or domestic violence are extremely rare (as low as 3%, probably no higher than 10%), the rational conclusion is that such claims are true.

Tom C: No such thing as a bad one year contract, but does Matt Harvey have anything left?
Keith Law: I think so. Good gamble for LAA.

Jordan: Do you think Mark Vientos could get serious Top-100 consideration by mid-2019? Love his bat.
Keith Law: I love his bat too. It’s not any more, but the mets had a top ten season when October ended.

Allan: Best guess: how many starts does Corbin Burnes make this year?
Keith Law: 25.

Danny: No te gusta Coheed and Cambria?
Keith Law: No, lo siento.
Keith Law: Me gustaría mas cuando fueron llamados “Savatage.”

Brian: A new record (!!!!) – I have heard of 3 of the artists and 0 of the songs on your 2018 top 100. I am officially old. Was there ever a period in your life in which you stopped following new music?
Keith Law: Yes, around when my daughter was born. Never had the time or the mental energy.

J: Any opinion on the removal of Baby It’s Cold Outside from many radio stations Holiday play list?
Keith Law: I’m fine with removing it. If listeners find it problematic through a modern lens – which I do, since “what’s in this drink” sure as hell sounds like a reference to roofies – then why play it? Granted I never cared for the melody anyway…

Dazed and Confused: I generally trust your opinions on baseball, and agree with most of your politics. However, I think I differ with you on the severity of Russell’s punishment. While I’m ok with baseball never employing him again, however, as a society, rather than giving up on people like Russell, we need to find a way to help and rehabilitate people in his situation so that they can be contributing members of this society.
Keith Law: I haven’t really commented on what should happen to Russell outside of baseball. He can go do something else for a living. I’m just saying playing MLB is a privilege, and that wearing the uniform means you’re representing a brand and an organization that can decide they no longer want you doing so.

Ryan: Keith, We are about to embark on a long car ride. Any (cell phone or iPad) app games you can recommend for a 6 year old? Bonus points if it doesn’t require internet connectivity. Happy holidays to you and yours
Keith Law: There is also a Ticket to Ride First Journey app that’s quite good. And a 6-year-old can play Carcassonne against the easiest AI (the “maid”) and fare well.

Joshua: Regardless if the Nats resign Harper, does a trade of Eaton make some sense. The Nats could have an OF of Soto, Robles, and Taylor in RF. Although there would be a dip in offensive production, defense and speed would be added. Maybe an Eaton deal to Cleveland for one of their starters could be a starting point of discussion. Thoughts?
Keith Law: No, I wouldn’t trade Eaton unless Harper is back.
Keith Law: The Nats are close to a complete team right now. Trading Eaton and playing Taylor makes them worse.

Matt: Do you know of any card games that you can play solo that’s not like Solitaire?
Keith Law: There’s one called Friday, a physical game and an app, that’s very difficult. Also one called Onirim that I’ve only played as an app and enjoy but find easier to defeat.

Moe Mentum: Based on performance alone, is Rafael Palmeiro worthy of Hall of Fame enshrinement? If so, will it happen in your lifetime?
Keith Law: He was always just on the wrong side of the line for me.

Aaron G: Ok now my stupid question of the day: if the Yankees decide on Machado instead of Harper, can the Yankees reasonably expect to get another SP1 or 2 via trade using Andujar as a centerpiece?
Keith Law: Not with him as a centerpiece. Maybe as part of a bigger deal.
Keith Law: They did just use their best prospect to get Paxton, who is like a #1 for 2/3 of a season.

Jimmy the Pratt: Are the Mets offficially a contender?
Keith Law: Is there an official designation system I wasn’t aware of? Like how Parmigiano-Reggiano has to come from one of five Italian provinces to bear that name?

Joe: Angels get harvey and Cahill for $20 mil + incentives….decent work by billy?
Keith Law: Agreed.

Josh: I just left a comment on your music post, but I didn’t notice there’s a Klawchat today, so I’m here to needle you a bit in somewhat real-time. Isn’t dinging Ghost for their satanic trappings like complaining back in the day about Griffey’s backwards hat? What does it matter as long as it rocks? And why can’t tongue-in-cheek homages to Satan be taken seriously in a genre that encourages over-the-top thematic elements?
Keith Law: I find that stuff incredibly childish. I’d compare it more to a 12-year-old cursing left and right because he thinks it makes him sound more like an adult.

John: Currently eating at Shake Shack for the first time as I type this. It’s definitely good, but doesn’t quite meet the hype, same as In n Out, IMO. Rank those 2 with 5 Guys?
Keith Law: Shake Shack > In-n-Out > 5 Guys. (I no longer eat beef, but did until about two years ago, and have had burgers at all 3.) Shake Shack uses way better inputs.

Ozzie Ozzie Albies Free: Has Klentak shown to be a good GM so far in your opinion? I have mixed feelings so far.
Keith Law: Overall, yes. But their amateur draft results, notably in the first round, have been poor, and that has to be addressed at some point.

Brian: You stated above the Giants should possibly just stand pat. So would the strategy be just fill their remaining holes with one year fliers and sell what you can at the deadline?
Keith Law: Right. And play internal options where available, although I know there aren’t many.

Joe: Most impactful call up for the angels in 2019? Canning, Suarez, adell, rengifo, someone else?
Keith Law: Not Adell although he’s their best prospect. Canning seems like a good bet.

Jackie: Joe Kelly had a mediocre regular season in 2018, followed by a terrific post-season. The Dodgers just made a massive overpay. Why does it seem like teams always overvalue the three weeks in October vs. a career’s worth of middling results?
Keith Law: That one really surprised me. Didn’t foresee the Dodgers overpaying like that for a reliever.

John: My wifes work has us overseas. Every country we have lived in has ESPN+ (used to be insider) blocked. Why is that? What content right issues don’t allow me to use ESPN+ except for out two week home leave every year?
Keith Law: You aren’t the only person to report this but unfortunately I don’t know the answer. I’m sorry.

JR: Do you think the Mets viewed Dunn and Kelenic as their top two prospects and it was the price they had to pay to get Cano/Diaz, or did they view them differently than the rest of the industry which is why they were willing to trade them?
Keith Law: I believe those were their top two prospects, and that the industry as a whole viewed them the same (consensus, of course, not every person will agree), but BVW didn’t.

J5: Tony Gonsolin a legit sp prospect?
Keith Law: I’ve heard very good reliever but have not seen.
Keith Law: I may have that wrong, actually … going off memory there but now I’m doubting myself. I know I have very good notes either way.
Keith Law: OK, I need to wrap this up with a busy afternoon ahead. Thank you all so much for reading, today and all year long. I’ll still be writing as needed through the holidays but won’t chat again until January 3rd. Have a safe and happy holiday, and please watch yourselves on the roads, especially on New Year’s Eve. We will chat again in the new year.

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