Movie Review: Moneyball (2011)

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Brian Wright

Gentle, confident tribute to the game ___ 8/10
Review by Brian Wright

Peter Brand: Billy, this is Chad Bradford. He’s a relief pitcher. He is one of the most undervalued players in baseball. His defect is that he throws funny. Nobody in the big leagues cares about him because he looks funny. This guy could be not just the best pitcher in our bullpen, but one of the most effective relief pitchers in all of baseball. This guy should cost $3 million a year. We can get him for $237,000. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Lawless Roads

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Brian Wright

America’s everexpanding torture matrix
Chris Floyd

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”
— Henry David Thoreau

In two brief posts over the past week, Scott Horton at Harper’s gives us a harrowing sketch of the entrenchment and ever-spreading expansion of the Torture Matrix that now sits enthroned at the very heart of the American state. This entrenchment and expansion has been carried out — enthusiastically, energetically, relentlessly — by the current president of the United States: a progressive Democrat and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Continue reading →

Book Review: Max Perkins: Editor of genius (1978)

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Brian Wright

by A. Scott Berg
Review by Brian Wright

“The more a man is, the less he wants.” — Max Perkins

Having recently been overwhelmed by Woody Allen’s masterpiece of Francophilia, Midnight in Paris, I was excited to know more about the several leading authors brought to the center of the world stage there. Particularly, Ernest Hemingway, whom the actor Corey Stoll absolutely nails… well, at least in writer/director Allen’s eyes; as a man, I cannot help feeling a little surge of surrogate courage when the character talks so forthrightly yet kindly about love, bravery, honor, and death. [Come to think of it, Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam offers a similar sendup of an inspiringly masculine and creative force in the cinematic community: Humphrey Bogart.] Sorry, this dalliance with hero-worship isn’t to the point. The point is realization of literature and grand world literary figures of the 1920s and 30s. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Drive (2011)

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Brian Wright

Cross between Bullitt and Sin City ___ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenplay by Hossein Amini
Book by James Sallis

Driver: [on the phone] There’s a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don’t need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you’re on your own. Do you understand? [pause]
Driver: Good. And you won’t be able to reach me on this phone again. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Are You Libertarian Enough?

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Brian Wright

Time to man up for the Freedom Philosophy
Anthony Gregory

So-called political compromise is upheld as a high virtue. To be an ideologue is a great vice. The old mantra that the problem in American politics is everyone is an extremist and no one is willing to meet halfway persists, despite its transparent inapplicability in the real world. The distance between the two political parties is small enough to smother a gnat.

For many libertarians there is no worse a sin than to stick stubbornly to purity of principle, to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We never get anywhere because we refuse to budge. We want the whole loaf. This is an old theme. Continue reading →