PART II: MOSTLY ABOUT THE MOVIE

1. In the course of my wine drinking I learned several wine lessons like this, Wine's biggest enemy is heat; the long stem handle and broad base of a wineglass are there to provide our hands - heat generators - with parts to hold away from the body of a filled glass.

2. My friend Marty, professionally doing inventory of wines in a hotel, supplied one ridiculous, When we talk aloud in a wine cellar we disturb the wine, thus making noise another wine foe.

3. Some culture are different from others. Reds are kept at room temperature although French people preferred them chilled, like champagne. I like many things French but their treatment of red wine, like the way they carry exposed bread in the grip of their armpits, is something I cannot tolerate.

4. My greatest wine lesson, however, was given by this movie I am reviewing, and I hope to give this lesson, this movie, some justice. Heard this cliche before, 'life is like wine'? Sideways tells us that, and Sideways tell us more (American jurisprudence defended the idea of not providing any legal retirement age for US Supreme Court justices: they age like wine.)

5. Sideways is this year's My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its biggest accomplishment is by strengthening the reinvention of the cinema: no big studio backing, no big actors appearing, inspired scriptwriting, focused acting, great directing.

6. When I saw Paul Giamatti in American Splendor, I counted the weeks and the months to see his next movie. When I finally saw Sideways where he is Miles, the lead character, a loser of many dimensions (sounds like a winner!), I found him to be the movie's 3rd best thing. The 1st is the script (come cut my hand if it loses in the Oscars), the 2nd is the acting of Thomas Haden Church, as Jack, whose fantastic support of the lead is something I've never seen since Chris Cooper in Adaptation and prior to that John Malkovich in In The Line of Fire.

7. There are two pumping scenes in Sideways, in full view (but not necessarily in close up view, sweet J!) and one scene of a fully naked man running in the streets towards the camera. These 3 scenes make up for the R rating but which rating I beg to disagree with because these scenes all look so absurd and atrocious and hilarious that our basest and most prurient of instincts and interests will have no time to react until probably 40 years after we have seen this movie. (True: I saw this movie with my conservative mom and I had never felt an ounce of uncomfort watching those pumping scenes, or even in those scenes where Jack said to Miles, in horror, What the fuck! - which phrase was so hilariously delivered in the given scene I don't know how to explain why it is so hilarious.)

8. Sideways is about relatioships: man's relationship to their parents, to their friends, to their new acquaintances, to their subordinates, and to their current, future, and past flames. It tell us, in performance and not in narrative (this film is not one inch of celluloid preachy) when a relationship has to start, to end, to go slow and easy, to resurrect, and to kill itself.

9. Sideways tells us that you are what wine you drink. Miles' favorite wine, pinot noir, by his own words is a most difficult grape to grow because it is not a survivor, and it has to be coaxed by the winegrower to exude its fullest expression. Miles, a loser, is not a survivor, and has to be coaxed by everyone - hi ex-wife, his best friend Jack, his mother, his current flame - to exude his fullest expression via the manuscript of his novel which had been rejected big time.

10. Miles is the movie's biggest irony. A literature professor, he is shown in one scene as being on the verge of sleep while one of his students is doing, very decently, an oral reading from a classic. And there's the catch. The film is an irony. An average moviewatcher will consider the film as chauvinistic, with women being portrayed as easy pawns in men's sexual palms. Quite the contrary, the movie shows men not only as losers but frauds as well, as personified by Jack who, previously shown as macho, cries like a child without shame after losing his (and his future wife's) wedding rings.

11. There is only one movie I have to wait to make a fearless forecast: Million Dollar Baby. If not for that Clint Eastwood film I can now make my prediction without much predilection - Sideways will be the Academy Award's Best Movie of the Year.

12. Life is like wine. And life, like wine, like Sideways, is great. The envelope please.