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Following the brilliant About Schmidt, writer/director Alexander Payne serves up another offbeat 'dramadey' about a pair of old college buddies who take a road trip through California wine country. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church star in the "smashing" Sideways, universally adored by critics, moviegoers and members of The Academy. It bagged five nominations, but only Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor came away with the hardware for Best Adapted Screenplay.
All Sides To The Story
On reading the book by Rex Pickett, Payne was struck by "the humanity of the characters", as he explains in a brief behind-the-scenes featurette. He also touches upon his fondness for 70s cinema and how he tries to incorporate a similar sensibility within his own work. Meanwhile Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church talk a little about their experiences on the film. Giamatti, in particular, reveals that Payne likes to "keep the whole set friendly and relaxed" and there's evidence of this in snippets of location footage.
Payne provides written introductions for seven deleted scenes. All of these showcase his gift for character-based comedy while the sparkling chemistry between Giamatti and Haden Church is played to the hilt. Highlights include a sequence shot in the pitch-black darkness of a hotel room where Jack taunts Miles about his lack of testosterone. For broader strokes, there's a great gag spanning two scenes that involves a hapless dog and Miles in a fast-moving car. It's footage you can watch over and over again. (PS No animals were harmed etc.)
Giamatti and Haden Church capitalise on their rare dynamic on the feature commentary. It's a surreal and enjoyably silly experience with Haden Church making pseudo-intellectual observations such as, "This is, in fact, a picture laden with canards (deliberately misleading stories) as the great Samuel Beckett would have proclaimed." Or as Giamatti puts it, "It's a film about lying." Indeed it's Giamatti who anchors the track with some juicy trivia titbits like the recurring bouts of food poisoning that had him "coughing up in the toilet" between takes and Church working with a fever of 104. Disappointingly, Payne doesn't offer a commentary so there's little in the way of nuts-and-bolts insight.
Wine And Eggs
Three Easter eggs get this reviewer's award for the most efficiently hidden extras ever committed to silvery disc. From the deleted scenes menu, press 2 then 10 on your remote control to access Project Searchlight. It's a spoof behind-the-scenes exposé that follows a studio stooge as he attempts to track down Payne after reports of wild parties and - most shocking of all - 7-hour work days! Along the way he gets manhandled by Payne's wife (and Sideways co-star) Sandra Oh and witnesses Giamatti lashing out at the crew. It's an amusing featurette that cleverly reflects the anything-goes atmosphere on set.
For a whopping 13-minute Gag Reel, go to the Language Selection menu and press 2 then 27 on your remote control. Again, the party atmosphere on set is evident in these wacky outtakes. Among them, Payne answers one of Susan's phone calls (that's Jack's would-be wife in the film), Giamatti uses a gorilla mask to scare the bejeesus out of co-star Virginia Madsen, and 'the fat naked guy' gets an accidental circumcision thanks to a shattered window (yeesh). It's compulsive viewing in a Farrelly brothers kind of way. And finally, there's a behind-the-scenes slideshow concealed by Chapter 15 in the scene selection menu (and featuring another appearance by the fat naked guy).
Although Payne doesn't give much away about his creative process, fans will surely be delighted with the extra footage on this DVD - and that includes all the tasty behind-the-scenes goodies in those Easter eggs. Like the film, this package of extras will leave you drunk on a good feeling.
EXTRA FEATURES
