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| Movie Cover |
For the love, this
was such a pathetic movie. How in the
hell did it get nominated for best picture???? What am I missing…. Sideways was a terrible romantic comedy
(I guess, but I didn’t think it was funny and the real romance was only in like
the last 3 seconds of the movie). It is
set in Santa Barbara and follows two friends on a week long vacation
there. Seems fine right? … well one
friend is a pathetic loser (Miles) and the other is a pig (Jack). Yes, that’s what I want to spend two hours of
my life doing, watching a movie about a whiney failed writer and his
disgusting, sex-a-holic friend.
Perfect. Anyway, if I could come
up with any redeeming quality it would be that the movie demonstrated how wine
can bring people together. The whole
reason Miles gets together with his love interest in the movie is because they
share a common bond over their love of wine.
Never mind that he’s lying to her for the first hour and a half about
what he and his friend (who is sleeping with and falsely promising love to her
bestie) are doing there but whatever, hooray for situational irony. I guess that’s nice. It’s good to see wine bringing people
together. I wish I could find anything
else in the movie I really enjoyed, but that’s about it. I’m actually sad that I have to blog about
it, but I want my 25 points so here it goes…
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| Movie Still |
The plot. Well I’ve already alluded to what the basic
plot line is but I’ll give it a better summary: Miles and Jack want to get away
in the wine country for a week before Jack gets married. Miles is a pathetic loser who has failed as a
writer and cannot get his book published.
He is mopey and sad because he divorced his wife two years ago and has
to be a middle school English teacher.
Jack has decided he wants to have lots of sex before he gets married and
so he sets his sights on a girl that works at one of the wineries. Miles is attracted to her friend because of
their mutual love of wine but doesn’t get it together to ask her out until
later. Winery girl finds out Jack is getting married, bashes his nose in with
her motorcycle helmet and the bestie is mad at Miles because he lied blah blah
blah, they go home. However, not before
Jack manages to sleep with a married woman whose husband comes home and catches
them. Lucky for Jack, he has a pathetic
friend like Miles to do his dirty work for him.
Miles breaks into this girl’s house (and of course the movie offers up a
nasty sex scene that no one wants to see) and retrieves Jack’s wallet for him so
he can get married. Awwww BEST FRIENDS
FOREVER! Jack gets married and Miles gets a call from his girl who decides she
really likes his book. The movie ends
with him showing up on her doorstep. The
End.
Santa Ynez Valley
(Northern Santa Barbara County) is where the movie is set. Most of the filming was done on location and
features actual local wineries. SYV is
right off the coast of the Pacific.
Miles speaks of this when he talks about his love of pinots. He mentions that they are a very picky grape
with thin skins and flourish in this region
because the pacific wind keeps the
temperatures cool. The terrior in this
region is actually very specific to wine growing and allows for several
different types of wines to be grown there.
Another fun fact is that while Miles goes on and on about how much he
loves pinot, he specifically hates on merlot which is ironic because his prized
61 Chatea Cheval Blanc is a Bordeaux and probably has merlot as one of its main
components.
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| Santa Ynez Valley Scenery |
I will say,
another good quality about this film was that because Miles is such a wine
lover, he uses wine vocabulary. Terms
like malolatic fermentation, vintage, tannins, oxygenated, etc. all would have
been lost on me had I not taken this class.
I was able to nod my head with Miles whenever he described his tasting
technique and described some of the wines.
Neat stuff that I actually know what’s going on.
All in all, yay
for the movie for showing that wine can make your life better. Even when you
are drinking a bottle that cost thousands of dollars with a fast food hamburger,
alone… you can end up with the pretty girl.
Wine is great, I will agree to that.
It brings people together just like food does. I really appreciate how it’s one of the only alcohols
you can sit there and talk about while you drink it. It starts conversations and is so diverse it
could make your head spin. This movie
though…. blecckkkk no thanks. I wouldn’t
recommend it to anyone, and I would not like to thank the Academy.
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| Another Movie Still |
References if you want them:
XOXOVINO,
LJ
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