...] dramas — that play to his strengths as an anti-cool everyday man (Get Him to the Greek, Superbad, Moneyball etc) he’ll be just [...

...] top gong. This year there were nine. They are The Descendents, Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life, Moneyball, War Horse, The Help, Hugo, The Artist and Extremely Loud and Incredibly [...

Why I feel it’s not Best picture, although I think it can pick up Best Supporting Actor for Jonah Hill, it’s that the editing style just makes it too fast to really allow us in to Pitt’s character Billy Beane.

Editing has been revolutionized when Paul Greenglass made the rata-tat-tat rapid cutting to speed up the action in “The Bourne Supremacy” a few years back. While the technique worked for ‘Bourne’, because there are a lot of silences and background chatter which add to the atmosphere, it doesn’t work as well here. This because when Pitt talks and he has a lot of dialogue, he’s mumbling a lot and it gets lost with the rapid cutting.

‘Moneyball’ is a character movie and the important dialogue, particularly in crucial scenes where Beane is in his element negotiating with other ball clubs falls short and still keeps the viewer outside the action instead of in it.

‘Moneyball’ works on many other levels particularly promoting love of the game but it’s flawed because of this and may well deny Pitt his Oscar.

Pity because Pitt missed out with ‘The Curious case of Benjamin Button’ and he deserves to win not because of sentimentality but because he’s a damn fine actor who’s prepared to take risks. A lot of risks.

That’s my 2 cents.

...] Crikey (blog) [...