1.84:1 DVD capture: Sideways The Film

Alexander Payne has a gift for wry humour, of course, and in Sideways, there's a nice, sardonic hold on a bathroom door's sign--"MEN"--after Jack (Thomas Haden Church), having learned nothing from a sour indiscretion that netted him a broken nose, starts hitting on a waitress. By the same token, the curlicue noted above is typical of the level of organization, for lack of a better word, in Payne's work, which always seems a tad elementary in retrospect. Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, and now Sideways are each so auto-critical that they leave next to no room for either interpretation or improvement and leave almost nothing like a lasting impression. Still, they sure are firecrackers in the moment, with Sideways, Payne's most emotionally intelligent film to date, being no exception. Lamenting a generation of overgrown children, this companion piece of sorts to the identically-structured About Schmidt follows depressed wine connoisseur Miles (Paul Giamatti) as he takes impulsive Jack on a tour of California's vineyards just before Jack is due to be married. Giamatti, though typecast as a self-loathing bachelor who's reached a career impasse (see: Storytelling and American Splendor), at last has a role that doesn't hermetically seal him off from his co-stars, but it's Church and especially Virginia Madsen, playing a waitress finally ready to embrace adulthood, who are the true discoveries of the piece--as well as pretty much all that you see in the rear-view when giving Sideways a backward glance.

The DVD
Fox releases Sideways on DVD in competing widescreen and fullscreen editions--we received the former for review. Letterboxed at 1.84:1 and enhanced for 16x9 displays, the simply gorgeous transfer retains the film's intentional, Hal Ashby-esque diffusion without looking dull or washed-out; an occasional minor pulsing--more like flickering--of the image only enhances that old-school vibe, as it's the kind of artifact produced by running celluloid through a projector. The accompanying Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is resolutely non-descript, however, with dialogue taking centre stage in the mix. (Happily, voices are crystal clear.) Stars Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church--comparing themselves not inappropriately to schlumpfier versions of Fernando Rey and Lee Marvin--pair up for a feature-length commentary in which, so as not to seem too masturbatory, they make most of their analytical pronouncements in what Sarah Vowell calls "the nerd voice." That being said, there's an undercurrent of defensiveness to Church's tongue-in-cheek posturing (quoting Beckett, for instance, he says the film is "laden with canards") that suggests he's fearful of being considered Giamatti's intellectual inferior offscreen as well. Though the duo's real-life dynamic is boy's-club in a baser way, their conversation engages and almost never lets up, save the occasional reverent pause to ogle Virginia Madsen ("Let's just swim in her creamy flesh," remarks Church when the actress first appears) and/or Sandra Oh.

Seven deleted scenes totalling 17 minutes come with text-based intros from Payne, a practice he inaugurated on the DVD for About Schmidt. Almost all of these elisions were cut for time and/or momentum, though a throughline involving Miles hitting a dog with his car seems a prudent trim whatever the circumstances, since it ends with an atonal shot of a crow pecking away at the mutt's carcass. (A Paraguayan vulture stands in for the bird due to some obscure American by-law, giving the politically righteous Payne an excuse to crack wise about the exploitation of Third World resources.) Like Payne, I sort of wish he'd reversed his decision to snip a second-unit shot that finds crewmember--sorry, "Factotum"--Tracy Boyd running into frame to help a one-legged man open a door--it has a certain je ne sais quois. Rounding out the disc: a 7-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, interesting mainly for the fact that it contains alternate, 'clean' takes from a couple of memorably profane encounters; and Sideways' excellent theatrical trailer. A cardboard sleeve slips over the keepcase.-Bill Chambers