DVD of the Week – Four Baseball Movies for Baseball Fans
by HELEN GEIB
Some baseball movies transcend their genre to reach beyond their natural fanbase. Some baseball movies are just plain bad movies. This post is given to four that occupy the middle ground of good baseball movies made for baseball fans.
Rhubarb (1951)
Ray Milland plays the press agent for a major league baseball team whose new owner is the recently deceased prior owner’s pet cat in this charming family comedy. Read more 
Rewind: Films of the 60s, 70s, 80s – Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1971)
by RICHARD WINTERS
Based on the Joe Orton play of the same name, this film deals with a handsome young stranger named Sloane (Peter McEnery) who becomes a lodger at an isolated household in the English countryside. He is on the run from a murder he committed and feels this will be a safe haven due to the only other inhabitants being a quirky old lady name Katherine (Beryl Reid) and her equally quirky father Kemp (Alan Webb). Katherine, or Kath, takes a sexual interest in Sloane despite their wide age difference, which Sloane doesn’t mind as he uses this to manipulate her. When Kath’s brother Ed (Harry Andrews) arrives and takes an amorous interest in Sloane as well, he does the same thing to him. Then Kemp recognizes Sloane as the killer and Sloane is forced to kill him, which culminates with ironic results. Read more
Movie Review – Moneyball (2011)
by HELEN GEIB
It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.
The term “moneyball” refers to sabermetrics, major league baseball’s use of statistical analysis to select players. It comes from the 2003 non-fiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, on which the film Moneyball is loosely based. Both book and film track the 2002 season of the Oakland A’s, when the team relied on sabermetrics to compensate for its lack of money; to put the situation into perspective, the A’s had about $90 million less to spend than American League payroll leader the New York Yankees. Where the book was primarily interested in numbers, the film is a character study of A’s General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt). Read more
My Life As an Indy Moviegoer – September, 2011 Recap
by HELEN GEIB
A monthly series in which I relate my reflections on life as an independent-minded moviegoer in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Warrior and Drive are two of the best movies I’ve seen in the theater this year. However, there is one downside to the return of good movies to the multiplex, namely that when I go out of town for a weekend it’s hard to catch up with what I’ve missed. I’ll have to move fast if I’m going to catch The Debt, and after that comes Killer Elite. Read more
