Bottle Shock

Bottle  Shock (2008)
Directed by  Randall Miller
Written by Jody Savin, Randall Miller
Starring Son of Hornell, New York, Captain Kirk-A, Rico from Six Feet Under, That Rickman Dude, Dennis Farina

Synopsis
the story of how napa and sonoma became respected vineyards to the woooorld. on our 200th anniversary as a country to boot. yay for patriotism. america. fuck yeah. hooray for the underdog. we knew you could do it. where's disney when you need them?

MOster
This is a true story.  The story of watching a movie.  It even has title cards.

Until the one-hour mark, my biggest complaint about this thing was that it appeared the executive producer's brother-in-law owns an aerial photography business.  We GOT that they were in a valley, with rolling hills and beautiful grapes.  I was pleased with the acting, direction, and other camera work; and the production elements (especially the music) gelled into a decent period piece.  There were also a few pretty good jokes about British people.

Then.

You know when you go to the science museum and you watch the spiral/funnel thing, and the marble (or quarter, if you're at the carnival) kind of jiggles as it goes along the spiral but at the end its path gets more and more straight, and then it falls into the hole?  The brother-in-law's last quarter went into one of those machines.  Maybe that was the impetus for this entire movie.

The Woman
i was bored by the beginning of this movie. i'm not a wine connoisseur, and i always see prickish pretentious snobbery in it. i didn't like "sideways" either. ooooh, this wine has hints of tangerine, lavender and oak. eh. a big fat raspberry in your face.  so yeah, bored and internally rolling my eyes for the first section of our viewing, then it got too feel good, for feel good movies, and i was rolling my eyes outwardly, and unashamed. there is a line that can be crossed from feel good into diabetic coma. i was there. everything got wrapped up into a pretty little tiffany's box with a white ribbon bow.  yay. not only has our vineyard been saved, but we are a wonderful country. seriously, it was hard to shove down my throat. there was some tamping to keep it in and get me to the many happy ends. i'm vomiting a little in my mouth reliving it for this review. i'm more a fan of.......and then the vineyard was robbed, and everybody was shot in the face, and the caliber of the gun was so great, and at such close range, that the dental records could not be used to identify the bodies so there had to be a mass burial at the vineyard which is now cursed and no grapes will grow on the hillside. and also in rickman's wine shop in paris the building was set ablaze. there were no survivors, but a charred and disfigured dennis farina. the police suspect the french vineyard farmers coalition (that one was moster's). there that made me feel a little better. balance has been restored to the universe.