SIDEWAYS

Nominated in both Best Picture and Best Direction categories, Alexander Payne’s critically acclaimed Sideways is set in Santa Barbara County’s thriving wine country. Two men reaching middle age, with not much to show but disappointment, embark on a week-long road trip through California’s wine country, just as one of them is about to take a trip down the altar.

The comically mismatched pair-Paul Giamatti, playing Miles Raymond, and Thomas Haden Church, as Jack-share little more in common than their history and a heady blend of failed potential and fading youth. Miles is a failed writer and divorcee who teaches at the junior high school, and Jack, his best friend, is a former hot actor. Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen play the female leads.

While Sandra Oh learned how to ride a motorcycle for her part in this film, director Payne selected the film’s wine list himself. The movie heard (but not seen) on the television in Miles and Jack’s motel room when they get home from the hospital is The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

Payne, who wrote the screenplay with his longtime screenwriting partner Jim Taylor, based it on a novel by the same name by Rex Pickett. Payne and Taylor won a Golden Globe in 2003 for the screenplay of About Schmidt and share Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award and Writers Guild of America Award nominations for the adapted screenplay of Election. Sideways was produced by Michael London with George Parra, a seasoned assistant director on such films as Legally Blonde 2 and About Schmidt, as co-producer. This is the first Academy Award nomination for producer London.