Wonderful Elegance! No Good at All!

Dear Mr. Morey,

My plan was to watch last night’s two huge, meaningless, self-congratulatory spectacles, and then write you a letter about which NBA All-Stars and Oscar nominees I believe to be overvalued, since I know from reading your Twitter messages that you’re a movie fan and since assessing value is one of your specialties. After all, you're the NBA’s version of Billy Beane (by reputation, at least). I planned to devote space to discussing Aaron Sorkin in particular. In 2011 you wrote about Moneyball for Grantland—though you hadn't yet seen the movie, an unfortunate approach—and the year before, on Twitter, you weighed in on The Social Network, praising Rooney Mara and Andrew Garfield, but disliking the movie overall: "1D characters & should celebrate hard work & smart execution more." (No other GM in NBA history has ever used a phrase like “1D characters.” Another reason I’m glad you run my favorite team.) I was going to say that Sorkin’s work is extremely overvalued, that he makes good drama at the expense of reality, which is questionable since he writes about real people. From there I'd talk about the other Best Picture nominees I believed to be overvalued, even ones that I enjoyed. But first I wanted to see how the night actually unfolded. And now that both the game and the awards are over, with nothing very interesting occurring during the game and two movies I haven’t seen winning most of the awards (The Artist and Hugo), I realize I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up. I'd promise myself that I won’t watch either event next year, except I always do that, and anyway, the All-Star Game’s in Houston next year. Still, after spending way too much time thinking about which movies didn’t deserve any accolades, I’m reminded of something the great Houstonian Donald Barthelme writes at the end of his story "The Party": "Is it really important to know that this movie is fine, and that one terrible, and to talk intelligently about the difference? Wonderful elegance! No good at all!"