New THC fanlisting site. Show a little support, I did.

Best Kept Secret

All is quiet on the THC front, but in the meantime:

Thank you MadDog for the Sideways Parody, very cute.

And on a side note:
Congratulations to Paul Giamatti who's getting a lot of attention for his new film,
Cinderella Man. Hopefully this one will give him the Oscar nod he deserves!

Sideways: First Look From Premiere.Com

Paul Giamatti gets wet in Alexander Payne's Sideways

By Cristy Lytal

A pasty Paul Giamatti grades papers in the Jacuzzi of a California inn while two Sideways crew members transfer buckets of hot water to the pool. As the spa level lowers, more of Giamatti's hairy chest and back becomes visible. "Today we're shooting a guy in a Jacuzzi," deadpans director Alexander Payne (About Schmidt), who is sitting in a white plastic patio chair and wearing a V-neck sweater. "Nothing much going on here," Giamatti says.

As if to prove the actor's point, a crew member yawns and stretches out on a nearby bench to sunbathe. Across the street, a sign reading "Buellton, Home of Pea Soup" identifies one of the town's two claims to fame. The other is wine. Based on the upcoming novel of the same name, Sideways follows Miles (Giamatti), an English teacher, and his soon-to-be-married friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) as they take a weeklong bacchanalian tour through wine country. In addition to the local vino, Miles and Jack sample the local women, played by Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, Payne's wife of more than a year. "The guy's a bit of a failure, which I play a lot," says Giamatti. "He's able to tell himself he's not a drunk because he's a wine expert."

The real-life Giamatti drinks his wine from screw-top boxes and is, instead, a connoisseur of arcane wildlife. "The other day Paul was asking me, 'Do you know what a narwhal is?' " Church recalls. "And I do actually know what a narwhal is. I feel I've known him for so long." (By the way, a narwhal is an Arctic whale known for its spotted pelt. The male has an ivory tusk.)

Meanwhile, four extras with Super Soakers cannonball into the pool just before everyone breaks for lunch. Giamatti wraps himself in a white hotel robe and gleefully gives Church the finger. Payne heads to his trailer the same Winnebago Jack Nicholson drove in About Schmidt but Church intercepts the director and yells: "Wow, dude, you just grabbed my penis! He did!" Payne shrugs and says dryly, "I pat the genitals of my cast and crew," before disappearing into the Winnebago for his daily lunchtime nap.


SIDEWAYS CAST TALKS WINE

Beverage of choice? Well, it's not surprising that four out of five people involved in a movie about wine country choose the fruit of the grape.


Alexander Payne: "I've been drinking a lot of wine. I like it all. Everything but white Zinfandel."

Sandra Oh: "I am also a lover of wine, and all of us now have quite a good knowledge of California Pinot. We (she and husband Payne) drink a lot of it."

Thomas Haden Church: "I love wine, and I do fully understand why Pinot is the grape of the elite palate. It has to be nurtured and fully aerated to let the bouquet blossom and to get all the different strains and tendrils of succulence. I am such a pseudo-intellectual."

Virginia Madsen: "I'd never been into Pinots, but because of the movie, of course we were all fascinated with Pinots. And (Santa Barbara County, where the film is set), is one of the most perfect places to grow Pinot grapes because of . . . the wind from the sea and the way it comes through this mountain pass. It's the perfect temperature for such a delicate grape."

Paul Giamatti: "I just enjoy straight vodka. Stoli on the rocks."

Save a horse ride a ...

No forum - I hate eZboard. So, I added a shout box on the right.
Easy simple DONE!

"Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) will play a new as-yet-unidentified villain who is appropriate to that emotional journey, Raimi added. "We had to choose a villain that represented a proper obstacle in the path of that growth," Raimi said. "And so, though I'd rather not say who Thomas Haden Church is playing just yet—because Sony likes to make a proper presentation to the fans along with Avi Arad from Marvel Comic books—he was chosen because he represented that proper obstacle to ... Peter Parker's growth." Spider-Man 3 is in preproduction now."

Read Full Article at SiFi.

Non alcoholic wine with/ Bud chaser at The Hitching Post II: $14.00

Room at the Days Inn, Solvang: $89.99

Brontosaurus Burger and Bud at AJ Spurs : $9.00

Sleeping with the Directors wife accompanied by an Oscar Nod:

Image of Tom with his SAG card courtesy of the Screen Actors Guild

Reel Review - Sideways Roundtable Discussion. As promised, I got together with the guys from Grape Radio for a great roundtable discussion of the film Sideways. We had a blast discussing the film and its impact on Merlot, Pinot Noir and the beautiful wine country of Santa Barbara, California.
Posted by Michael W. Geoghegan