Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Well, it's odd you pick Short Cuts and Nashville. Do you really want to compare little Sideways with works of such ambition and narrative complexity?
No, probably not. Altman was just the first thing I thought of when I was trying to come up with an American director primarily focused on character-study. Those two Altman films certainly are more ambitious and multi-layered than "Sideways", but at the same time, I don't think it's fair (or accurate) to categorize "Sideways" as a sitcom or to compare it to a fig newton.