i dug it..tho i was in the cinema with a bunch of utter fuckwits who failed to realise the film was a poignant almost bittersweet story of an alcoholic..some simple minded fucker laughed so hard when his mate got his nose bandaged.....

go and be a nurse in ed motherfucker.....then your day would be giggles all day..or the really tragic scene when he was so pissed off he poured the bucket of wine over himself thus totally humilitating himself.....jeez did the fuckwits find that funny(i wondered if i walked up to them in a bar and poured a bucket of booze over my head would they find it so hysterically funny )

..it reminds me of the time i went 2 see AMERICAN SPLENDOUR(harvey pekar ) when he found he had cancer..some twat thought thatw as hilarious.

anyway.....good film

well, it WAS a funny movie. there was a level of the movie that was sad and pathetic, but i think unless you've been there in life, you're not going to really "get" it. and i don't think the point of the movie was to be a finger-wagging morality tale like "requiem for a dream". to me, the movie was all about honesty and dishonesty - with other people and with oneself. i laughed a lot through the movie, but some of the laughter was kinda awkward.

Yeah, the movie is pretty funny. There can still be tragic themes in funny movies -- like Life is Beautiful -- a comedy about the Holocaust of all things.
Also, in screenwriting, writers know that if you don't give your audience a proper place to laugh, they'll laugh in all the wrong places and the serious parts will be lost.


My favorite LOL moment is when Miles runs to the dresser to get the wallet startling the couple who's screwing, something he would have never been able to do before the trip with Jack.


I liked Sidways. I just rented it this past weekend. However, I felt the characters' changes could have been better illustrated by the screenwriter. There wasn't as much conflict and tension as I like in a plot. It was an easy going little narrative.
[Edited 4/11/05 18:37pm]

SynthiaRose said:

well, i kind of liked how the tension came from little things that you had to keep reminding yourself throughout the movie - like, that one guy stole money from his mom's dresser, and the other guy was cheating on his wife. these weren't "good" people, but still, you wanted to like them. kind of like real life a lot of the time. the morality of the movie wasn't black or white. good people were doing lousy things, but they were still acting the way nice people in movies act. i liked that about the movie, the fuzzy morality. that's how life is.

Anxiety said:

I agree whole-heartedly. I really admired this movie, mainly for the reasons you mentioned.

i seen it it was Funny,intelligent and deep, on a side note beware of angry asian women with bike helmets

Anxiety said:

Yeah, I caught those things (I like analyzing movies as a hobby). The best characters in any movie are the ones who are compromised in some way.

With Sideways, I just felt that the stakes weren't high enough for the characters. No real essential action was required of them.

For example, Maya came back to Miles too easily. And Miles attempt to give life another try after "peaking" happened without real impetus.
Also, Jack's fiancee never questioned if he was cheating and just stepped right into the wedding day, no problems ... even though he missed a lot of messages, was virtually unreachable the week before the wedding, and gave flimsy excuses. He didn't have to try hard to fool her. That's what I mean by tension, the sense that something is do or die, now or never for a character.

And frankly why does Miles deserve another chance. Did he become exalted or ennobled in some way, like I like my protagonists? I don't sense a strong enough transformation here for him to get the golden egg at the end.. Why Maya would even want him is beyond me.

But the fact that such a pessimistic character would finally take a positive act to change his gloomy fate is something to applaud by the end, I guess...
[Edited 4/11/05 18:59pm]

TheRealFiness said:

oooooh, do not MESS with sandra oh.

Anxiety said:

i havent seen this movie but it sounds good i'll need to get/rent it soon.

i just wanted to back up what you were saying about liking peeps in movies that maybe just maybe you shouldnt !. i loved all the characters in trainspotting and they were all junkies !!!

danielboon said:

i like movies with 'anti-heroes'. it's more of a true reflection of life to me, and i also think it's kind of an optimistic way of portraying the world. people ultimately want to be loved and to be viewed as good. but people do dumb things. i think when we see movies where people are likeable and make really bad decisions, it makes us feel more 'normal' about the dumb stuff we do. not that we should aspire to be fuck-ups, but hey - it happens. it's part of being alive.

Anxiety said:

when i describe trainspotting to peeps i say " its just like real life the characters are soooo... real! "

Viginia Madsen's speech on the porch is GOLD she is such a beautiful
woman

JAMIESTARR said:

oh, when they're talking about wine and there's all the subtext flying around? yeah, that was a great scene. she must have been in heaven when she read that script for the first time.

Anxiety said:

I'm pretty sure it bagged her the oscar nod

This is going to sound lame but I laughed my ass off when the main character drinks out of the container that people spit their wine into.

The only person I could find any goodness in were the two women. They are both incredible actresses. I've been trying to follow Sandra's career. I think I first saw her in DOUBLE HAPPINESS.

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

it's not lame at all. i think it's a funny scene because he's doing something absurd that we all wish we could do when we're frustrated and miserable. pain's a great source for comedy. downright theraputic, it is.

sure some people can be stupid in theatres....but seriously, the scene where he totally humiliated himself by pouring wine all over himself....that was INTENDED to be hilarious.

jonylawson said:

I thought it was alright, quite funny in places, but on the whole very predictable. The characters are cliches and the idea of using grapes as metaphors for said characters was too obvious. Overrated. About Schmidt, by the same direector, was way better.
[Edited 4/12/05 23:27pm]