Artsy Wednesday: Grapes on Film

Bottle Shock, the cinema's (first) ode to the famous 1976 "Judgment of Paris", the blind tasting in which Napa wines cruelly and hilariously beat their French competitors, arrives in theaters this week. I wasn't even one when all the drama went down, and my parents always drank California wines, so it's hard for me to imagine a world where the New World really was thought of as lesser. So for me, this movie will be a history lesson and entertainment.

In the WaPo, reviewer Stephen Hunter likes the movie, with qualifications. This is the graph that got me:

What makes "Bottle Shock" so rewarding, however, is something subtler. Everyone in it simply loves wine, as drink, as science, as art, as culture, as civilized delight. I'm guessing that includes the director and the producers and probably the investors and the key grips and the guy who put out the doughnuts each morning. It's just so much fun to be in the presence of so many people obsessed with a gift from God such as the eternal tingle of pleasure that comes in those little green bottles!

Sounds like Sideways, plus Alan Rickman. Who makes everything better, and a little more evil, anyway.

Of course, we won't actually see it in the theater. But hopefully it'll be on HBO soon enough...