Sport and Cinema.com

Sports movies scored well for the 2012 Academy Awards earning nominations in multiple categories

“Moneyball”, the business of baseball story, garnered a half-dozen nominations including Best Picture.

From Sony Pictures Home Entertainment comes “Moneyball” onto DVD, a film using the business of baseball as a backdrop to examine what drives people to take risks. Based on Michael Lewis’s non-fiction book of the same name, this is the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire players.

In time for the holiday shopping rush comes the entire set of thirty films now combined into one DVD package (and available on Blu-ray) from ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series, a compelling “television film festival”. The 30 for 30 Limited Edition Collector Set is packaged in a collectible box & contains 30 for 30 Gift Sets Volume 1 & Volume 2 as well as an exclusive retro ESPN hat featuring the company’s original logo.

Legendary Pictures announced that Chadwick Boseman, who has appeared on “Justified,” “Fringe” and “Castle,” will play Dodger baseball great Jackie Robinson and will be joined by Harrison Ford to play Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers GM who with Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball in 1947.

More important than being a Cardinal or Ranger fan, the 2011 World Series will go down for anyone who appreciates the sport as one of the true Fall Classics of All-time and now Major League Baseball Productions presents all 7 games on 8 DVDs.

Coinciding with the 2011 World Series, A&E Home Entertainment and Major League Baseball have assembled an impressive presentation of 10 exceptional and iconic games on DVD – BASEBALL’S GREATEST GAMES that include the clutch performances of players like Carlton Fisk, Bill Mazeroski and Derek Jeter.

At the start of this season I had one team from the 2010 World Series returning to the Fall Classic. The Giants. While I missed that, look for the other team, the Rangers, to win their first title in its 50 year history as they take on the St. Louis Cardinals beginning Wednesday in the 107th Fall Classic.

Using both traditional portrait angles and innovative looks at the players, Charles Conlon captured the soul of baseball taking over thirty-thousand photographs from 1904 to 1942. Over 200 hundred of his most celebrated appear in his latest book- “The Big Show: Charles Conlan’s Golden Age Baseball Photographs”, a follow up to Baseball’s Golden Age which esteemed author Roger Angell of The New Yorker called “the best book of baseball photographs ever published”.

From humble beginnings in 1961 when they started out in such places as Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, the Angels franchise celebrates its 50th anniversary with two DVD titles.

After a few roster changes, Sony Pictures’ baseball film, Moneyball heads into the box office game led by Brad Pitt as the marquee player. Based on a true story, Pitt portrays Billy Beane, a former ballplayer who never met expectations before switching to the business side of the sport as the general manager of the Oakland A’s. Heading into the 2002 season, he faces a daunting situation: his small-market Oakland A’s have lost their star players (again) to big market clubs (and their enormous salaries) and is left to rebuild his team and compete with a third of their payroll.