Everything you say is perfectly true and I enjoyed reading your discussion. I want to say again that I find Sideways much warmer and more entertaining than About Schmidt, which upset me with the meanness of its satire: I couldn't enjoy it, it set off on the wrong foot. Sideways seems to try to damn Miles at the start with his self indulgent, lying morning and his pilfering from his mom's cash stash, but it keeps us watching him with the odd relationship and the wine stuff, and so we stay hopeful for him.

San Diego State. Well, I would have been nonplussed if we were told he went to Stanford or Berkeley. I figured someplace like San Diego State, especially if Jack and he were roommates in some college. And rather than a complex kind of relationship, though its a nicer provenance than meeting in a bar, it's usually a rather static one. It's true, his telling her this fact at that point in the movie is as you say both a defense of himself and a justification of the relationship, but it doesn't imply a complex relationship.

As I said, I like Manohla Dargis, or at least I think I do. But I don't know what she's talking about when she says we need to rejoice over Sideways. I guess because it's a critical success that, she thinks, will influence the big bucks producers to dump blockbusters in favor of little satiric comedies? The system is not broken in this way. And there are more subtle and more truly adventuruous and individual American directors working today. From my 2004 lists, I'd cite David Gordon Green. The new Nicole Kassell is promising. I like Jared Hess. And I am growing to like Wes Anderson, even though his fans on this site appear to have been unpleased by The Life Aquatic.