The Next Wine Movie (trailer included)
One of the two forthcoming films about the 1976 Paris Tasting, Bottle Shock, has made its debut at the Sundance Film festival. Below is the official trailer for the film. There are initial reviews of the film out too. Not many of them are terrific
FROM VARIETY: "A peculiar demand placed on the cast, from Farina in Paris to Pine, Rodriguez, Taylor and Pullman in Napa (and Rickman in both locales), is credibly reacting when tasting vintages, sending the visual clue that a great wine is at hand. Rickman plays the snob to human scale and never to exaggeration, while Miller lets Pine and Pullman go overboard with unevenly calibrated perfs. Taylor and
Rodriguez, despite one ridiculous love scene, pull off big-screen charm.
Production is slick on a budget (though using Napa spots as a location substitute for France is an obvious flub), and plenty of visuals serve as little more than commercials for California wine country."
FROM CINEMABLEND: "
Is there room in the world for yet another movie about wine? If the movie is Bottle Shock…
then nope. Director Randol Miller has assembled an amazing and talented
cast, but he uses them on a disjointed script which never seems to find
its focus."
FROM FILM.COM: "With the runaway success of Sideways you just know the general
public is ripe for a good wine movie. Even better, the concept here (at
first blush) is even better than Sideways and the filmmakers
have gotten Alan Rickman involved too. So how did things go so terribly
wrong? Well, they violated rule No. 1 of storytelling: they forgot what
story they were trying to tell."
FROM PHILLY.COM: "Director and co-screenwriter Randall Miller insisted in a phone interview that Bottle Shock is "as close to the truth as possible."
In that case, the screenplay from June that I read must
have undergone major surgery before shooting started in August. Even
so, big chunks of truth apparently have been jettisoned for wider
cinematic appeal, and an invented love triangle has been added."
I for one plan to withhold judgment until I see "BottleShock". What I do know is that one more film about wine is nothing but good for the wine industry in general.
When I first heard about this movie, I had my reservations. Sideways worked because it was a great movie about a couple of really interesting characters that happen to like wine.
Bottleshock is almost certainly going to be a movie about wine which happens to have a couple mildly interesting characters (aristocratic french wine critics) in it.
I’m excited to see the movie, and hope that it fails to meet my expectations, but after reading those reviews, I’m not holding my breath.
Saw it at Sundance just a couple days ago.
I’m bummed. Either I had my expectations way to high, or the pizza I had before seeing it was bunk… or, the movie just missed the mark.
It really failed in the story department like one of the reviewers you quoted said. I feel like they got distracted trying to bring in to many Sideways elements (love story, etc, etc).
Oh well…
Thanks for the movie trailer. I like what the trailer show so far. So it is based on a true story? Well, isn’t it be great to actually own a vineyard? Love the scene when the camera flies at a straight angle across the vineyard…
I had high hopes, oh well, we’ll wait for the next great wine film.
I can’t say I agree with you that a bad movie will prove a good advertisement for the wine industry. A bad movie tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth, if you’ll pardon the expression (and even if you don’t).