Moneyball

The Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane finds himself in a very unfortunate position of losing the three star players to other teams. Now he has to assemble a new team on a limited budget, and he employs young Yale graduate Peter Brand to employ statistical analysis to find the undervalued players.

The story is based on the real events and tells us about the real Billy Beane, making it almost semi-documentary. The case study of Moneyball technique is pretty common in business schools and in general on economic courses, and thanks to the book by Michael Lewis it became known to wider audiences.

Oscar nominees 2012

So, here we go again. The Oscars 2012 are going to be hard-contested, competitive and fabulous. This year's ceremony is miles away from 2011, when there were only two real good movies which were actually up to the benchmark. This time there were many very good movies, and in particular it will be hard to decide between Hugo and the Artist.

I am personally delighted that Hugo got 11 nominations, closely followed by 10 for the Artist. Hugo was the best picture I saw in 2011, but apparently it was little understood and watched. We will see whether the justice will be served. It was also refreshing to see Moneyball in nominations - the movie is pretty distinct from all the others, but I will blog about it in detail a bit later. However, the best actor of the year, I believe, is Gary Oldman. His Smiley is one of the most distinct characters of the year, and the iconic scene recreating the talk between two spies is absolutely brilliant.

The showdown between the Artist and Hugo will be an interesting one, don't miss it on 26th February!

Filmography 2011

Adding to the previous post, almost mindless but very nice-looking cut.

Hello

Beautifully done

Jeeves and Wooster (TV Series 1990-1993)

Sometimes I get very nostalgic about good old British series, which had great sense of humor and a very light approach to entertainment. Whenever the nostalgia sets upon, I usually re-watch Sherlock to remind myself of the inescapable glorious walk of the progress, but this time I opted for Jeeves and Wooster instead. And I loved it.

Bertram Wooster is a wealthy gentleman who manages to get himself into trouble whenever he tries to solve other people’s problems. Then it is the time for his smart and psychological butler, Wooster, to help to resolve all the troubles.

Rango

Rango is a pet chameleon always on the lookout for action and adventure, except the fake kind, where he directs it and acts in it. After a car accident, he winds up in an old western town called Dirt. What this town needs the most is water, but they also need a hero and a sheriff. The thirsty Rango instantly takes on the role of both and selfishly agrees to take on the case of their missing water.

You’ve got to love London Tube’s ads of the movies. During the year, all the movies that were advertised in the underground were great – think Drive, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Hugo, Artist. It may be that good movies have impressive budgets and can afford buying the space underground, or it may be that the Tube workers are actually critics who choose the film adverts on the merit of the film. Whatever the reasoning, Rango was advertised quite a while ago, and yes, in my opinion it is the best animation of 2011.

Movies From An Alternate Universe

Movies From An Alternate Universe on the Behance Network

Great stuff! I laughed on Avatar poster for about 5 minutes.

The Artist

Hollywood, 1927: Silent movie star George Valentin is famous and wanted by his fans. He meets Peppy Miller, a young dancer, and propels her to the top of the movie industry. But as the sound enters the Hollywood, will George Valentin stand up to the challenge or surrender?

I will definitely remember the year 2011 as the year of extreme nostalgia about the old movies. It seems to me that suddenly that feeling overwhelmed all the major producers, and as the result we saw so many films heralding how good the times were. The suit was started with Drive, the movie that initiates a time travel into 1980s movie production with all the main attributes in place: pounding soundtrack, violence and L.A. Then there was Hugo, in which Martin Scorsese took us back to the very beginning of the film production and has shown the fate of one of the pioneers of the industry, Georges Méliès. This time, the nostalgic Michel Hazanavicius take us to 1927, the era of silent black-and-white movies and booming movie industry.

Movies to wait for in 2012

This is the list of movies not to be missed in 2012. Not all of them will be up to expectations, of course, but we will hope for the best.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

In the 4th installment of the Mission Impossible series, Ethan Hunt and his team are racing against time to track down a dangerous terrorist named Hendricks, who has gained access to Russian nuclear launch codes and is planning a strike on the United States. An attempt by the team to stop him at the Kremlin ends in a disaster, with an explosion causing severe destruction to the Kremlin and the IMF being implicated in the bombing, forcing the President to invoke Ghost Protocol, under which the IMF is disavowed, and will be offered no help or backup in any form. Undaunted, Ethan and his team chase Hendricks to Dubai, and from there to Mumbai, but several spectacular action sequences later, they might still be too late to stop a disaster. © IMDb

I do not consider myself as the great fan of Mission Impossible franchise. The first part, released in 1996 (!) was action at its purest, with the small intrigue set up by the question “Who betrayed the group?” and the soundtrack which pretty soon was installed on 95% of mobile phones as the alarm clock signal. Since then Ethan Hunt became iconic spy, even though the franchise overall was going downhill. The second part was an absolute failure, already too surreal for a serious action movie but still not surreal enough for Matrix-style movie. The third part improved a little bit but generally it was still laughable.

Hugo (2011)

The movie is set in Paris in 1930s and closely follows the storyline of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick and tells the story about a boy who lives on the train station, his father, a robot called automaton and dreams which never really leave us.

This is the work of well-known director Martin Scorsese, which is notably different from his other works. The Departed, The Shutter Island, The Aviator, Bands of New-York: those are the most famous ones and they have one feature in common, they are not movies for kids or fairytales. Scorsese’s choice of genre for the next movie, Hugo, caught me by surprise; I definitely didn’t expect him to take on the Christmas tale. I had a bad feeling about it (I am a great fan of the 3 movies mentioned above), and I am so glad that I turned out to be wrong. The genius of Scorsese shines in whatever movie he decides to make.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

This English-language adaptation of the Swedish novel by Stieg Larsson follows a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), as he investigates the disappearance of a wealthy patriarch's niece from 40 years ago. He is aided by the pierced, tattooed, punk computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). As they work together in the investigation, Blomkvist and Salander uncover immense corruption beyond anything they have ever imagined.

This was probably the most waited-for movie of this winter, and you can quite understand why. David Fincher, the director behind the Fight Club and the Social Network, took on the bestseller detective by Stieg Larsson and invited Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara to play the lead roles. On every account that should have been a good movie.

The best movies I have seen in 2011

Little warning to start with: the movies mentioned are not the best of 2011 – simply because I have not seen all the movies that were released in that year. These are the films that moved me most, that intrigued me and fascinated me. I will probably write something about them at greater length later on.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his longtime trusted associate, Doctor Watson (Jude Law), take on their arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), with the help of Holmes's older brother Mycroft Holmes (Stephen Fry) and a gypsy named Sim (Noomi Rapace). © IMDb


This is the second installment of the Sherlock Holmes franchise starring Robert Downey Jr. as the great detective. The first installment, which I saw exactly two years ago, was very impressing. That was a completely new take on Sir Conan Doyle’s never dying detective story, full of style, fascinating action, humorous dialogues and amazing soundtrack. Robert Downey Jr. reinvented Sherlock; his Holmes is arrogant, sociopathic but nevertheless absolutely loveable. The movie was peppered with something called “flash-forward” – which is how Sherlock planned his fights. Overall, the movie was easy to watch, the storyline kept attention and visually it was very organic.

No doubt, after the success of the first part producers had to start working on the sequel. Lucky for them, the arch-enemy was mentioned only briefly and hence there was the storyline left unexplored. Clearly, there was pressure to deliver the same kind of Holmes, but more of it. And this is where, I think, the whole myth broke down.

Hello World

Thank you for reading my blog. After long contemplation I have decided to start the blog about what entertains me the most - movies.

That's me, by the way:

Or maybe not exactly.