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 this tense combat sports film directed by Gavin O’Connor (“Miracle”), Tom Hardy stars as an ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past who returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach (Nick Nolte), to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport.

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.

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.

A promising young golfer, Luke Chisholm (Lucas Black) has a terrible day. His meltdown after contending for the lead in a tournament in Texas drives his father/coach to abandon him and makes television headlines. Heading out onto the back-roads to blow off some steam, Luke instead blows right through the pasture fence of eccentric rancher Johnny Crawford (Duvall) and finds himself stranded in the tiny town of Utopia.

All Things Fall Apart, a drama that tells the story of a Heisman-bound college football star whose career hits a wall when he is diagnosed with a tumor only inches from his heart, has been picked up by Image Entertainment which has secured all U.S. rights.

In 20th Century Fox’ “Win Win”, Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty a small town lawyer struggling to support his family. Moonlighting as a high school wrestling coach, stumbles across a star athlete (Alex Shafer) through some questionable business dealings while trying to make ends meet. Just as it looks like he will get a double payday, the boy’s troubled mother (Melanie Lynskey) shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything.

With reports that a new feature film about auto racing is in the works (Ron Howard reportedly set to direct a Formula One picture entitled Rush), one of the sport’s better feature films was released 40 years ago

The cable sports giant, ESPN, is reportedly going to become the subject of a new film.