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13 articles from 2008

15 August 2008 1:58 AM, PDT | From GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news

It's a very busy weekend at the movies, with three movies in wide release, and several more hoping to grab your dollars on a more limited basis. This is one of the last hurrahs for summer, and certainly, in terms of movies with tremendous financial potential, it's the last big weekend for at least a month.

Probably the most notable new release is Tropic Thunder, the new comedy co-written and directed by Ben Stiller, who also stars opposite Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. They play three of Hollywood's biggest actors whose war movie comes apart at the seams when the fake war they're fighting becomes a real war they don't know they're fighting.

(Check out the official Tropic Thunder site)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a little complicated. There was an animated series called The Clone Wars five years ago, which made sense because we were between Episode

Colin Boyd

15 August 2008 12:25 AM, PDT | From GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news

Bottle Shock

Starring Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman, and Chris Pine

Directed by Randall Miller

Rated PG-13

Making great wine is one of the hardest things in the world to do, like hitting a fastball, or believing female Chinese gymnasts are at least 16 years old. To achieve great wine requires an obsession to detail, because who in their right mind would want to go to all that trouble just to make lousy wine? That’s not to say there isn’t bad wine, just that they don’t celebrate it in movies.

For me, the obsession is what was missing from Bottle Shock, an otherwise thoroughly entertaining story in which wine plays as big a role as the actors. There is an obsessive character here, a California vintner named Jim Barrett played by Bill Pullman, but his obsession is with not failing rather than with perfection, and they are two different things.

Colin Boyd

14 August 2008 12:58 AM, PDT | From JoBlo.com | See recent JoBlo news

Plot: In 1976, Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), an English wine expert living in France- traveled to Napa Valley to learn about Californian wine. Amazed at the quality of these American wines, Spurrier organized a blind taste test- pitting the new American blends against the more prestigious French blends. The result revolutionized the wine industry. Based on a true story. Review: It happens every summer. Like clockwork- once the middle of August hits, the summer movie season suddenly...

Chris Bumbray

10 August 2008 6:57 AM, PDT | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news

Actress Eliza Dushku was an odd choice to play a bartender in new wine movie Bottle Shock - because she never drinks.

The role of Joe was originally written for a male but the part was revamped when Dushku showed interest in the film, which is based on a famous wine battle between California and France.

But, though wine was flowing throughout the shoot, the actress couldn't party with her castmates - because she refuses to touch alcohol.

Dushku tells WENN, "I don't drink, which has been a big question mark for people. It's like, 'You did a movie about wine and you don't drink at all?'

"I play a bartender in the film and the bartender is not supposed to be imbibing while on duty, so I keep it under control.

"I did drink wine at one time but, as I started to get a little older - at about 19, getting that headache in the morning or that puffiness is just not very user friendly for my job.

"Everything became a little clearer, sharper and better for me when

I stopped drinking. I missed it, though, on nights when we were shooting in the Napa Valley (California) and there's beautiful wine flowing.

"But getting up early in the morning with a fresh face is better."

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8 August 2008 10:00 AM, PDT | From JoBlo.com | See recent JoBlo news

Another day, another trailer for an ensemble piece - this time, though, a comedy and a pretty funny looking one at that (funny ha ha, not funny "what's that growth on your lip?"). Bottle Shock tells the story of the "Judgment of Paris" wine competition in 1976 in which a Napa vineyard's wine bested the traditionally best French wine in a blind taste test competition. Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Freddy Rodriguez, Chris Pine, Rachael Taylor, Eliza Dushku, Dennis Farina and Bradley Whitford star. Check it out below. The taste testing begins August 8th.

Omar Aviles

7 August 2008 2:35 PM, PDT | From avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news

For good and for bad, Bottle Shock takes its style as well as its substance from the '70s. It gets some mileage from its Doobie Brothers soundtrack and sprawling, Robert Altman-esque approach to storytelling, just as it loses ground with its rust-colored fashions, formlessness, and blithely exploitative sexism. Trouble is, it's too rambling and digressive to feel focused, yet too calculating to feel as observational and natural as a good Altman flick. The story centers on the 1976 "judgment of Paris," when a British wine-shop owner operating in France (played with impeccably dry snobbery by Alan Rickman) organized a blind taste-test pitting French wines against California up-and-comers. Director and co-writer Randall Miller builds up to the event in fits and distracted spurts; as with his previous film, Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, he packs in the characters and side plots, to distracting, diluting effect. Bill Pullman plays...

Tasha Robinson

6 August 2008 8:00 PM, PDT | From MoviesOnline.ca | See recent MoviesOnline news

MoviesOnline sat down with Freddy Rodriguez and Rachael Taylor at the Los Angeles press day for their new movie, “Bottle Shock,” directed by Randall Miller and shot on location in California’s wine country. Based on a true story, the film reveals America’s initiation into and contribution to vinification, along with the enterprising and passionate artisans who bottle it. It's 1976, and Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) is struggling to create the perfect chardonnay at Chateau Montelena, his vineyard in the not-yet-famous Napa Valley, where he has jeopardized everything for a ...

5 August 2008 11:58 PM, PDT | From NYPost.com | See recent New York Post news

As recently as 30 years ago, California wines were considered something of a joke by connoisseurs. Even most Americans were familiar only with gallon jugs of Gallo that sold for $5 or so.

Randall Miller's crowd-pleasing "Bottle Shock" tells the incredible but true story of how that abruptly changed in 1976, when a small Napa winery shocked the wine world by winning a major French blind-tasting contest with a 1973 Chardonnay.

The Bicentennial-themed tasting is organized by Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), who is trying to promote his faltering wine shop in Paris.

Encouraged an

By LOU LUMENICK

5 August 2008 11:58 PM, PDT | From NYPost.com | See recent New York Post news

The French are toast.

To the list of things that America has over France - ice in drinks, a First Lady who hasn't posed nude - you can add one more. And this one may come as gigantic kick in the head, so take a seat and hold on tight.

American wine is better.

It may sound antithetical to everything we think we know about vino, but as dramatized by "Bottle Shock," a new movie opening today starring Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman (read the review), wine produced in California consistently

By REED TUCKER

5 August 2008 8:00 PM, PDT | From MoviesOnline.ca | See recent MoviesOnline news

MoviesOnline sat down with Bill Pullman and Chris Pine at the Los Angeles press day for their new movie, “Bottle Shock,” directed by Randall Miller and shot on location in California’s wine country. Based on a true story, the film reveals America’s initiation into and contribution to vinification, along with the enterprising and passionate artisans who bottle it. It's 1976, and Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) is struggling to create the perfect chardonnay at Chateau Montelena, his vineyard in the not-yet-famous Napa Valley, where he has jeopardized everything for a dream. H...

4 August 2008 8:00 PM, PDT | From MoviesOnline.ca | See recent MoviesOnline news

MoviesOnline had the pleasure of sitting down with Alan Rickman (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) to talk about his new film, Bottle Shock, shot on location in California’s wine country. Based on a true story and directed by Randall Miller, the film reveals America’s initiation into and contribution to vinification by the enterprising artisans of Napa Valley. It's 1976, and Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) is struggling to create the perfect chardonnay at Chateau Montelena, his vineyard in the not-yet-famous Napa Valley, where he has jeopardized everything for a dream. His son, B...

4 August 2008 7:20 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Neil Pedley

This week's delectable delights include, amongst other things, such highbrow morsels as a gallery retrospective on D.I.Y. art and a crash course in the history of the California vineyards. If that's not your cup of proverbial tea, there's always psychotic bikers and the ballad of two stoned losers on the run from gangsters and the police.

"Beautiful Losers"

More than 15 years after founding the hugely influential Alleged Gallery in New York, the freelance curator Aaron Rose continues to serve as a cornerstone of the now-global D.I.Y. art scene. Here he teams with "Blair Witch" actor-turned-director Joshua Leonard to chart the evolution and subsequent commercialization of a movement whose genesis was found in a group of outcasts, slackers and misfits from the fringes of subculture. Emerging from the dirty little worlds of surfing, skateboarding and street graffiti, a group of artists including the likes of Harmony Korine,

Neil Pedley

22 June 2008 10:11 AM, PDT | From GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news

I had the chance to see this trailer before a movie screening earlier this week, so I thought I'd share it with you for one simple reason: Alan by God Rickman.

If you don't have a healthy admiration for Rickman by now, there's no helping you. There aren't too many actors who, when the show up in a movie, you think to yourself, "Oh, this ought to be good." Rickman's right in that group.

He made such a great first impression in Die Hard, and has followed it up by playing Rasputin, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Severus Snape, and of course, Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest. The guy's extremely versatile, although I suspect most of us like his work more when he's playing comedy, because he's so good at it.

Now Rickman has another comedic role in Bottle Shock, and he looks as strong as ever in it, playing British wine merchant Steven Spurrier,

Colin Boyd

13 articles from 2008