Word: pinot
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us that it is O.K. not to be happy, that sadness makes happiness deeper. As the wine-connoisseur movie Sideways tells us, it is the kiss of decay and mortality that makes grape juice into Pinot Noir. We need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh...
...what we love, then Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) is exactly like the wine he most treasures: Pinot. He loves that the grape is quirky and vulnerable--that it grows only in certain climates, that it tests the nurturing patience of its growers. And the flavor! For the connoisseur: haunting and thrilling. Which is just what his friends might say of the divorced, depressed, chronically romantic Miles...
...actor pal Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a less learned oenophile. "Pinot Noir?" he asks, guzzling it as if it were Gatorade. "Then how come it's white...
Miles has a habit of missing the moment, even when it grabs him by the hand. One evening, he and Maya talk warmly about wine. He delivers his dark Pinot rhapsody; she speaks of wines as if they were people she wants to meet--people like Miles. It's one of the most poignant falling-in-love duets in movie history, with an ending so faithful to real life, it could break your heart...
Payne applies his brand of direct, specific realism to both wine and filmmaking, and the two collided when he gave his Sideways propmaster instructions to make fake wine that looked like the real varietals. Though the Pinot looked like Pinot, it meant disgusting concoctions like prune and cranberry juice. "The actors rebelled," Payne says. "After a few takes, they said, 'Can you just give us the real stuff...