Excellent movie about changing the rules to win

Rating: 9/10 (12 September 2011)

Excellent movie. Tells the story of the resurgent Oakland A's under Billy Beane's leadership when his winning team had just lost key players (Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen) to deep pocketed and large market competitors, and the A's couldn't replace them with comparable talent due to financial constraints. The solution? Replace them in aggregate rather than player-for-player by focusing on new metrics that had not previously received much attention and algorithms that were not feasible before computers. Scouts and managers still generally inhabited that prehistoric world - at least before Beane. There's a lovely scene with Brad Pitt's on-screen daughter singing a song with resonant lyrics. Brad Pitt is stellar in his acting (and in his appearance at TIFF, together with someone called Angelina.)