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Sideways |
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GALLERY |
OFFICIAL SITE
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Year:
2004 |
Rated:
R |
Runtime:
Insert
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Starring:
Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen,
Alex Kalognomos, Sandra Oh |
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Directed
by: Alexander Payne |
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Written
by: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor |
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Based on the novel
by:
Rex Pickett |
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Music
by: Rolfe Kent |
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Movie
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures |
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BOOK
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Review |
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Sideways Mirror
by Michael Flanagan
Super
I didn’t write a review for Garden
State, which I consider to be the best film of 2004,
because it touched on many personal aspects of my own life.
So I declined writing that review, since this personal
connection was really what I loved about the movie, and to
fully describe any of this would mean revealing far too much
about myself on the Internet, aside from those pictures…hey,
I was young, I needed the money.
I found an unusually similar connection
in Sideways, an extremely well-constructed buddy road
trip movie which is brilliant in both its casting and the
choices made by the director. In this film, though, I
connected to each of the characters, situations, and the
ending, all for different reasons.
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The characters of Sideways are very
human, possibly more human than any character on film in a very
long time. They are often painful and embarrassing in their
humanity, both humbly extrinsic and tragically comic. It would
be nearly impossible to experience this movie as a human being
who truly lives in this world, and not find some kind of
understanding or empathy. My own connections, especially with
Thomas Hayden Church and Paul Giamati, were at times sadly too
familiar.
The situations these characters find
themselves in are both naturally realistic and comically broad,
and for whatever reason, it works here. From the instance of
“recent” divorcee Giamati’s painful dinner date/drunk ‘n dial to
the naked chase scene, the comedy is as human as the characters,
and to fully appreciate it we have to be willing to laugh at
ourselves while we laugh at them.
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The ending, for me, is purely personal.
For a long time I was working on a novel/screenplay/play
(take your pick, at some point I will) about men and women
and their relationships, specifically at the level of early
dating. I think I only got a few scenes down on paper,
leaving most of it in my head for some later day. The
ending, while I never got it on paper, has always been clear
for me. The last 30 seconds of Sideways embodies that
ending. Sometimes Art, on a Jungian level, becomes a
violent chase scene for the artists.
A truly good movie, maybe even a great
one, but Sideways lacks some of the precious,
beautiful heart that is so powerfully evident in Garden
State. |
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