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This week on the Frotcast, the whole gang is here to take your mailbag questions.We do that for about 20 minutes, then I play about ten minutes of Joe King’s stand-up from our show in LA over the weekend. I think my favorite bit is about his idea for a movie about a 30-foot gay falcon who captures guys to drink their cum. “When that falcon tells you to cum, you damn well better fill his dish.”

At around 38 minutes, we bring on Laremy Legel of Film.com to talk Moneyball, which he liked, Drive, press roundtables and how much they suck, Juggalos, and world politics.

• 9:00 – Listener Brian wants to know what to do with his life
• 16:00 – Listener Matt has a question about comedy school
• 22:00 – Joe King’s stand-up clip — I realize, the audio isn’t great. It starts off bad and rustle-y, but sort of mellows after that. Anyway, if it’s unlistenable to you, you can fast forward. It’s about eleven minutes.
• 38:00 – We bloop in Laremy

Keep the questions coming, we enjoy them greatly (hopefully you do too?). Frotcast@gmail.com. Subscribe on iTunes. Subscribe via RSS.

And now, your video of the week (sent in by one of the Mikes).

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Opinions: I Haz Them. Today’s Topic: The story of how in real life, Hollywood told Billy Beane to go f*ck himself.

I wish I could get straight to my point here, the way Moneyball the movie became the opposite of Moneyball the concept, without first explaining why Moneyball isn’t a good movie. But seeing as how it’s currently tracking 94% recommended on RottenTomatoes, it looks like I owe it some time. So here goes.

At best, Moneyball is inoffensive. It’s one of those movies that’s great at looking like an important movie without coming close to ever being one. It has the trappings of a good movie. It’s a stuffed shirt. It’s Ryan Seacrest, a news anchor you listen to because he’s wearing a suit.

Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane isn’t a character so much as a collection of quirks. He’s always chewing and spitting and pursing his lips, and sometimes he gets mad and throws stuff. He’s stressed, get it? Mainly, he’s a handsome delivery vehicle for expository ideas from the book who never actually connects with any of the other characters (not that I blame Pitt, I normally love him). That’s the problem with Moneyball, the only compelling parts are direct exposition of the moneyball concept from the book, and everything else is cutesy Hollywood bullsh*t.

I realize that’s a loaded phrase, so allow me to unpack it for you.

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This weekend was supposed to be the weekend we found out that putting an actor only girls like into a premise only guys like is as horrible an idea as that sounds, but it didn’t quite work out that way. True, Abduction opened in fourth behind Brad Pitt’s Moneyball and Marine Biologist Harry Connick Jr.’s Dolphin Tale, but its $11.2 million take still put it ahead of Killer Elite, which starred Jason Statham, Clive Owen, and Robert Deniro. So just in case Righteous Kill and Little Fockers weren’t big enough hits to Deniro’s credibility, we now know that when it comes to opening a film, he pales in comparison to the retarded kid from Twilight. Boy, he’s really spitting on his legacy now. With a bilious mixture of mostly-digested food from one of his three stomachs, depending on how agitated he is.

Oh, and a 3D re-release of an animated Disney film from 17 years ago in its second weekend beat the opening of a new Brad Pitt movie. But I’m not going to tell you that that means the sky is falling — people really love the Lion King. And to be fair, baseball is really boring, and the best way to spice it up probably isn’t math equations. Maybe next time, turn it into some post-apocalyptic future sport, where instead of a ball, the pitchers throw ninja stars, and the batter has to try to hit them with a big snake! “This summer, Vin Diesel, Nick Cannon, and Cam Gigandet star in…  SNAKEBASE!”

[chart via BoxOfficeMojo]

Haven't the Pittsburgh Pirates suffered enough?

In Wide Release This Weekend: Abduction, Moneyball, Killer Elite, Dolphin Tale

This weekend actually has a little something for everyone, so chances are if you’re in the mood for a movie, then you’ll find something you like. Unless you’re a soccer-loving, socialist thalassophobe, in which case you’re SOL. Go rent Bridesmaids or something. Me, I’ll be at Pearl Jam 20 pretending like I’m a teen again.

Abduction

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“This laughable yarn is intended simply as a vehicle to draw teen audiences eager to feast their eyes upon Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner. And, yes girls, he does take off his shirt and expose his muscled physique rather quickly into the proceedings.” – Claudia Puig, USA Today

“But Abduction is as uninterested in psychological unease as it is in innovative action, and simply shuffles together explosions, bloodless fight scenes and incongruous romantic interludes with little regard for orchestrating tension.” – Andrew Barker, Variety

Armchair Analysis: A few weeks ago, Vince asked me on the Frotcast what my top awkward movie laugh moment was, and I know that if I saw this movie in the theater, it would be when Lautner says, “Not if I find you first.” I laugh hysterically every time the commercial airs. This movie could be the funniest of the year.

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Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter, um, reported that the web site BoxOffice.com was on the verge of releasing an exclusive new study that would blow our minds. With Brad Pitt’s latest film, Moneyball, set to release tomorrow, BoxOffice.com was going to tell us late yesterday that the film is tracking nearly twice as well as The Social Network did.

Unfortunately, the exclusive study has still not been released, but you simply can’t deny the site’s rock solid statistics.

BoxOffice.com editor Phil Contrino tells me that the site has been tracking Facebook and Twitter activity since May 2010, and based its conclusions — which he says are statistically significant — on stats gathered from monitoring the two sites over the weekend before the films opened. On Facebook, The Social Network received 34,645 “likes” within that period, whereas Moneyball received 64,073. On Twitter, meanwhile, the former was the subject of 4,120 Tweets, whereas the latter was mentioned in 5,264.

Look, I’m no expert in movie tracking by any means, but it seems like predicting a movie’s success based on how many people liked it on Facebook or mentioned it on Twitter is like looking out a window and guessing the temperature. People mention all sorts of crazy sh*t on Twitter, and only 10% of it is spelled right. I’d be more concerned that people were trying to buy tickets for “Mun3bal.”

But if we really want to play the prediction game, I’d say a good indicator would be that 8 of Pitt’s last 13 movies have grossed more than $100 million and Moneyball is about baseball, stars Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, has been promoted religiously by Sony, and stars Brad Pitt. Predicting that it will be a success is too easy. Unless they change the name to Babel 2.