2 months later, he and close friend and collaborator, actor Oliver Cooper, were shooting for 7 days, for $7,000, with a 3 person crew.

This approach partly stemmed from Cooper having worked with a Welsh director who made entirely improvised movies in 5 days. Then add to this the fact that Burke and Cooper had made a largely improvised short film for $100 during the pandemic and the concept of making a feature for $7,000 seemed entirely possible.

The duo had befriended 69 year old, Parkinson’s-afflicted Los Angeles musician Burt Berger after noticing what a character he was when playing in different small venues throughout LA. They asked him to co-star in a short film and Burt was not only game, but proved surprisingly dependable.

As they got to know Burt better, they also met his roommate, Steve, who was even more of a character, and the idea to bring both roommates into a microbudget feature where they would each play themselves was born.

“The key,” Cooper said in a recent interview with The Important Cinema Club podcast, “Is to cast people who can’t not be themselves. And then create an environment where they’re relaxed enough to have cameras rolling.”

They needed one additional professional actor outside of Cooper, and so they reached out to an acting teacher Cooper had been working with, Catlin Adams, who had been working since the 1950’s. Caitlin agreed. BUT…she was also Stella Adler method AF, for example in one scene her character is meant to have just made homemade chicken soup and she demanded she get to make it from scratch before cameras rolled, much to the director’s exasperation. Especially as they had to shoot all of her scenes in just 9 hours on one day. They compromised by having pre-cooked chicken in the damn thing, but the rest they let her cook as she liked, and she turned in a performance that’s hard to deny.

Joe Burke and Oliver Cooper finished the film at the end of 2023 and expected 2024 to be their festival year. Instead, they submitted to 28 festivals and were rejected by every single one. Burke was disheartened, but the rejections forced a more independent strategy. They emailed theaters directly, arranged revenue-share screenings, sold their own tickets, and took the film on a cross-country theatrical tour. Then festivals began accepting them, and the film went on to win awards at festivals including Phoenix, Anchorage, Florida, and Cinequest. A Los Angeles Times feature followed. The rejection had not ended the film’s life. It had pushed Burke toward a more personal model of distribution.

In April 2026, Filmhub acquired the distribution rights to Burt, and released it digitally on June 23, 2026. It is currently available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime and Apple TV - we bought it! And it was very much worth it. Part of the proceeds goes toward Parkinson’s research and care, which makes it yet more worth it. You can find out more at BurtTheMovie.com

Listen above or on your podcast platform of choice to hear us talk more in depth about the movie and pair some beautiful wines with it, of which you can read more about below.

The Wines

Dave’s Wine Pairing - Municipal Wines’ “Nowadays” Alicante Bouschet, Cucamonga Valley, Calfornia

BURT is light on its feet, effortlessly charming while dealing with heavy toopics such as Parkinson’s, poverty, crime, and unnrealized dreams. So my pairing has to be a lighter expression of a usually heavier wine.

I settled on Municipal Winemakers “Nowadays” label’s release of Alicante Bouschet from Cucamonga Valley 2022. Municipal is a Santa Barbara based winery - though they buy grapes from all over Southern California - whose mission statement is to make wines an everyday experience again, something to gather and drink regularly and not just special occasions. So they make more approachable wines, easy to pop and pour anytime, anyplace, which I thought was fitting for a $7,000 DIY feature film.

Even better, this is their “Nowadays” label which is their natural wine label or as they describe it “Biodynamic, foot-stomped, native yeast. Wine the way it used to be made. Cloudy, funky, alive.” So even more apropos for a film filled with non-actors playing themselves and shot mostly in a single location and otherwise guerilla style.

That said, this Alicante Bouschet is not particularly cloudy or funky - Alicante Bouschet is a thick skinned, dark hued grape and it’s a rare “Tinturier” grape meaning it’s red on the inside as well as the outside! So its wines are typically very dark in color, tannic, dusty, intense, and very dry in mouthfeel. But this one is light red, higher acidity making the fruit flavor more raspberry than dark plum or blackberry. A bit peppery and very smooth tannins, very little of the dry mouthfeel. It’s juicy and vibrant, chillable and easy to drink multiple glasses, like this movie is easy to watch multiple times.

I do not how long the skin contact / maceration was, but plainly not long - to be this light and gentle they couldn’t have soaked the red juice on the thick skins for long, and the red color half comes from the juice itself in this grape so they wouldn’t have to!

I say: look for Municipal Winemakers “Nowadays” Alicante Bouschet from Cucamonga Valley 2022, or a light expression of a wine that’s typically heavy. If you ask someone at your local wineshop about this, they will have something for you, guaranteed, just ask them.

Dallas’ Wine Pairing - 2018 Saddlerock “King of the Mountain” Cuvee, Malibu, California

I realized that the location had a lot to do with this film. These characters were distinctly Los Angeles. And while the film takes place in Sun Valley and was filmed in Sun Valley, these two characters likely spent a lot of time in Malibu, especially in the old days. And there is something about this that makes me want a wine that’s made of that old malibu magic. So I went seeking a malibu wine. Steve is craggy and almost volcanic while Burt is lyrical and artistic, bohemian really. And these two together make for a perfect combination.

I ultimately went with a wine that accomplishes both goals, one it honours the heavy lifting this film and its director had to do in attempting to give burt a fitting tribute to a life of creativity, dreaming and endeavor. I think the director wanted to make sure that the world knew that Burt was in fact the King of his own Mountain. This wine is also made in Malibu, oddly enough!

It is the 2018 King of The Mountain Cuvee from Saddlerock Estate. A beautifully balanced Bordeaux-style blend, Cabernet Sauvignoon heavvy. This wine opens with aromas of ripe black cherry and dark berry preserves. On the palate, rich jammy fruit is complemented by subtle spice and a lingering finish with just the right amount of structure and “kick.” The addition of Merlot softens the Cabernet Sauvignon, creating a velvety texture with smooth, approachable tannins while maintaining depth and complexity.

Look for that or a Left Bank Bordeaux - the Cab Sauv heavy Bordeaux. Perhaps a Haut-Medoc to stay in the North where it’s cooler and the wine will be fresher.

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That’s partly due to the movie largely being unavilable due to rights issues, but mostly because it has the LOWEST RATING OF ANY MOVIE EVER ON ROTTEN TOMATOES!!! That’s right, with 119 professional reviews, that is the highest number of total reviews while still maintaining a splat-tastic 0%.

So we were scared. Did we want to ruin this childhood memory? (By “childhood” I mean young adulthood, but you get what we’re saying.)

Well, then returning special guest (from our MIRACLE MILE episode) took interest in joining us if we ever covered it on the pod, and we said eff it, let’s do it. Let find out:

The answer may surprise you. Listen up above or on your podcast platform of choice, just search “Vintertainment”.

Follow Nick on LETTERBOXD and you can even join us as you like on our shared LB weekly film club, THE COLLAB.

The Wines

Dallas’ Pairing

This film initially made me want to lean into something bright and vibrant and confusing - perhaps something like a fortified or a Mulled wine.

In many ways, this film is absurd, but I still believe that at its core it is a satisfying romp of absurdity with some authentic heart. The action is practical and ground level but also big and bold and brash. This film holds up in terms of its spectacle and pure entertainment. If you are looking for much more than that, then I would look elsewhere. But the film is still quite enjoyable.

So I opted instead for something bloodier, bolder.

The film isn’t terribly deep which means it has space to be complimented by a wine that is a bit deep. The film (to me) has aged steadily, is still enjoyable for all the reasons it was originally enjoyable. So a wine that ages well is likely a consideration.

The film is intense but also feels oddly balanced in its own WTF way.

There is also lots of acid in it, as it agitates and can often leave a bad taste or texture in the mouth for some. And not unlike the notes and flavors you’d find in a good mulled wine, this wine also presents plum notes, black berry, blueberry and subtle spice.

I went with the Precision Napa Cab. Deep but also good astringency and acidity that balances. Like the movie, this is an enjoyable Napa Cab that is no award winner, nothing life-changing but purely and simply enjoyable. Made from fruit sourced throughout Napa, Sonoma, and it’s outlying areas like Lake County, this is an affordable entry level Cali Cab and priced accordingly ($15 - $30.)

Nick’s Pairing

Like Dallas, Nick went with an easily enjoyable, affordable, deep red; and like Dave he went with something maligned, only not a malignedd grape, but a aligned container!

St Hallett Faith Shiraz “Bagnum” - a 1.5 liter bagged wine! One of Australia’s contrinbutions to the world of wine was the “cask wine” or cardboard boxed wine. Also referred to as “goon” in Australia, cheap cask wine or “cheap goon” is a heavily maligned type of wine (look up “Goon of Fortune” for the drinking game associated with it!), thought this St. Hallet is a tastier, more modern equivalent inside a bag with a turn-on/off tap attached. Claiming to “stay Fresh up to 30 Days After Opening!”

Nick noticed a slight metallic tang to the wine when first opened, when first poured, but that went away quickly after, suggesting the wine needed a touch of breathing - sometimes a wine can be too well preserved and too fresh!

Dave’s Pairing

I think there are a number of wines that could fit the bill for BALLISTIC. Something maligned by wine snobs, considered “bad”, rarely great or complex as a wine.

There are grapes like two of my favorites - Sauvignon Blanc as a white grape, that when grown outside of France gets wine snobs to turn their nose up at it. Pinotage and Petite Sirah for reds. I actually drank a Petite Sirah while recording this episode, and did while watching the movie as it truly is a great pairing - Petite Sirah is a thick skinned, dark grape that makes bold, ink-black wines with an intensity of fruit, tannins, bittersweetness, it ages beautifully and can develop tobacco and earthy aromas and flavors, AND California and Australia are the two places that make the lion’s share of the world’s Petite Sirah.

Cali makes 80% of the world’s Petite Sirah with Australia and Israel being the next two major contributors. It’s called “Durif” down under - that was the wine trivia question of the week the last time Nick was on for the Miracle Mile episode - and most of California’s Petite Sirah has been genetically traced back to Durif strains direct from Australia. So this is a grape we share a lot in common with and almost no one else, even though the dumb thing originally came from France. So if you want to go find a Petite Sirah or Durif, I’m not gonna stop you, that would be fantastic and pair beautifully with this movie.

BUT…I think there’s an easier wine to get your hands on, and one that leans more heavily into the hedonistic element of the film.

Let’s talk ZINFANDEL.

You could do a Cali Zinfandel, and that would work well. Turley out of Paso Robles is known for some of the best Zinfandel in the world though they have price points to prove it. Nothing crazy, but we’re talking $40-60 per bottle.

But I think you go Old World, you do Italian Zinfandel, which they call “Primitivo”. Primarily grown in Puglia, find a Puglia Primitivo - fruity, ripe, slightly herbaceous as most old world wines tend to be, likely higher in ABV, and there’s a way to take this to the next level.

Trader Joe’s has a Puglia Primitivo that’s “Appassimento” style, meaning partially dehydrated or raisined grapes. Thai concentrates the flavors and sugars for an even RIPER, JAMMIER, BOLDER, and HIGHER ABV than normal Primitivo! Patroferno Appassimento Puglia Primitivo for $13.99 at Trader Joe’s and clocks in at 15% ABV.

It’s hedonism in a glass as far as fine red wine goes. It is style AS substance. And that is without question my perfect pairing for Ecks vs. Sever.

Have you ever seen ECKS VS. SEVER? Are you going to try to see it now?

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Last week, we finally tackled SIDEWAYS, one of the most culturally significant wine movies ever made, for better and for worse:

And now, this week, we are tackling a movie whose very genesis is about the most mind-bending thing you could imagine.

Thankfully, you don’t have to imagine. Because comedian Nick Corirossi made it exist.

THE NAPA BOYS is a brand new comedy that debuted last year at the Toronto Internatuional Film Festival (TIFF) and caused quite a stir. The film follows the two sons of Sideways main characters - Jack, Jr. and Miles, Jr. - and their entire “Napa Boys” crew which has become famous throughout the world because - get this - this is in fact the FOURTH Napa Boys movie in an ever-expanding Sideways-sequel franchise which also includes The Napa Girls.

The title screen for this film, when it displays, is THE NAPA BOYS 4: THE SOMMELIER’S AMULET. It’s a fake fourth movie of a never-made franchise of a film that never even spawned a sequel let alone a franchise and it is an SNL-style gross-out comedy-fest and it is going to be divisive.

We know this because…we were divided! Yes, this is the first episode where we strongly disagreed with a guest regarding their movie. had seen it twice and enjoyed it and thought highly of it’s blackly comedic critical lashes while Dallas and myself were…less enthused.

We cover the backstory and making of the film, then spend a half hour being painfully polite, trying to express our differences while nodding to the talent involved, etc. But folks, we get INTO IT at around the hour mark. It had to happen eventually! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Decarceration and both praised the film to us, so plainly it has an audience. Decarceration even added it to his “Best Movies of 2026” list where it ranked #7:

From The Yard To The Arthouse

The Ten Best Movies Of 2026

Well, this is exciting. Not only will this be my 500th entry on Substack (and yes, I’m counting this pissy little one), but I do believe I have reached 1,000 subscribers. Probably, of course — I get a lot of people who immediately unsub when they find out what this is. Either that, or they cannot take all the typos and poor phrasing that comes from bein…

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3 months ago · 48 likes · 11 comments · Decarceration

In that post, he wrote:

But for me and Dallas, another critic expressed our thoughts with the following:

Which side will you fall in regards to THE NAPA BOYS?

You’ll have to watch it and let us know. It’s a unique oddity worth experiencing if nothing else.

The Wines

Dallas’ Pairing

Difficult - this movie is difficult.

Mostly because it flips from the low-brow to the slightly less low-brow without much modulation. The filmmakers clearly have some acid for the things they are attempting to critique and skewer in the piece. I may be wrong, but there seems to be an inherent bitterness toward hollywood’s IP over-exploitation. Which is, admittedly, a lofty aim.

The intent is clear, but the execution left me with a bitter taste in my mouth regarding the writing and execution. It’s as if they simply put all their critiques and gripes into a script with great intent but never bothered to take us any place other than the bitter critique.

When considering all the bitterness that the film has from the bitter critiques of their archetyes and themes to the bitterness I’m left with after watching flavors and notes like Gentian root which is described as a bittersweet, tangy, and dusty come to mind.

Also the Chicona Bark - which is where that flavor in Quinine comes from to mind.

Because of that, I wanted something that takes all those bitter components, plays and experiments with them but then takes them someplace pleasant and satisfying, which is what this film failed to do.

I went with Nicola Centonze’s White House which is a distinct Sicilian vino amaro (bitter herbal liqueur) produced in the Marsala region of Italy.

Marsala is a fortified wine which usually comes from a formula of Grillo, Inzolia, and Catarratto grapes. It is presented in four age categories: Fine, Superiore, Riserva, Vergine (1, 2, 4 and 5 years respectively). The color of the wine usually comes in three classes: Oro (gold - like White House), Ambra (amber), and Rubino (ruby).

It uses a Marsala wine base blended with Mediterranean botanicals like gentian root and cinchona bark to create a unique balance of sweet wine and bitter flavor.

All those bitter notes are clear and present but they are blended with a skill and complimented by a host of complex other flavors and notes and that sweetness that creates something pleasant and overall enjoyable.

It can be found for around 35 dollars a bottle at many local specialty shops.

Dave’s Pairing

This movie wants to be “shitty Sideways” - dumber, crasser, grosser, possibly more crowd-pleasing (depends on the crowd). In one of its most memorable and comedically effective scenes, Miler, Jr. drinks a wine filled with Jack, Jr.’s shit and cum. Like, filled with them. They show it clearly being poured into the wine glass. Then Miles, Jr. sips it multiple times before sputtering a bit that sticks to his mustache.

Miles in Sideways, of course, is a Pinot Noir - difficult, tempermental, can be coaxed into greatness but is not simply great by default. So I if Napa Boys is shitty Sideways, I had to consider: what is the Shittiest Pinot Noir in the World?

Yes, it’s MEIOMI Pinot Noir. Originally founded as part of “The Sideways Effect” and the explosion of Pinot’s popularity in California following the film’s release. Jow Wagner, while working at Caymus, first invented the Belle Glos Pinot Noir, named after his grandmother. You’ve seen the bottles - half encased in red wax:

When Sideways sent Pinot sales into wrap drive, Caymus spun out Bell Glos into its own brand.

Then Wager wanted to make an affordable California Pinot but with consistent quality. He sourced lower priced Pinot grapes from Sanata Barbara, Monterey, and Sonoma. The wine was $22 back in 2009 and recieved 92 Points.

But in 2015, Wagner sold the brand - just the brand, there were no vineyards or wineries attached - to Constellation Brands, one of the largest beverage brand owners in the world.

Now, in 2026, MEIOMI contanis 19-21g of sugar, halfway to a can of Coca-Cola (39g) and is often the worst thing any taster has the displleasure of tasting. Barefoot, Yellowtail, Charles Shaw - wine professionals blind taste these and find themselves liking them more than expected. It happens all the time with blinds. But not so with MEIOMI. It is always the worst wine in the lineup. Cloying, artifical in flavor, bitter in aftertaste, just awful all around.

And it still costs $22. Sometimes more.

So whether you enjoy the comedy antics of Napa Boys or find yourself held at arms length, MEIOMI is still the wine to match the experience. It’s shitty Sideways, it puts everything that’s wrong with “industries”, be that the film or wine industry or both, into instant perspective.

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It’s mildly surprising that Paul Giamatti’s performance was not nominated as it is the primary thing most remember after seeing the movie. It was also the actor’s biggest breakout role, following his very first breakout performance in American Splendor.

Case in point: Sideways’ most significant contribution to the culture was the shockwaves it sent through the wine industry as consumer behavior changed seemingly overnight thanks to one single exchange spoken by Paul Giamatti’s Miles:

With that melodramatic yet otherwise throwaway moment, American consumers started to abandon Merlot en masse. And Pinot Noir - the grape that Miles waxes poetic about in numerous monologues throughout the movie - became a superstar while Merlot sales plummeted.

This became known as “The Sideways Effect”. But, in truth, there was a previous, similar “Effect” from a popular broadcast that led to Merlot’s demise nearly 13 years earlier.

In November of 1991, 60 Minutes aired a feature called “The French Paradox.” It effectively asked, “if all the French consume are cheese, bread, and cigarettes, how are their hearts still beating?” The answer, investigators implied, was red wine.

The effect on the industry was immediate and extreme, and it served as a kind of rough draft for what would come later with Sideways. Across California, vinyards expanded rapidly, and many white varieties were replanted or grafted over to red, to appease public demand.

Madeline Triffon, the first female American Master Sommelier who had been working in wine since 1977 said “I was working the floor at the Rattlesnake Club [in Detroit] at the time, and it was like somebody hit a switch. Suddenly people that never drank wine would plop down and say, ‘No Martini tonight. We want red wine!” And she had to contend not only with an unexpected spike in wine sales, but a clientele that had no idea what they liked. “Most people’s concept of red wine was Cabernet. And they looked to me to give them a bottle that was like that, only softer.”

Merlot was the obvious fit.

The sudden demand for Merlot sent wineries scrambling for Merlot fruit/juice/wine—anything they could get their hands on. Plantings swelled accordingly. And the tendency to plant Merlot in less-than-ideal places - places that were growing white grapes, not red! - gained traction at both the macro (state) and the micro (vineyard) level.

In the end, the market was flooded with a lot of Merlot grown in the wrong places, and very rapidly people started turning away from it.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Sideways, Pinot plantings in California increased 170 percent. Which, to put that into perspective, plantings overall only increased 7-8 percent in that same time. This is especially ironic as Pinot is - as Miles states in the movie - even more finicky and difficult to grow than Merlot, meaning Pinot now in the same position Merlot was in 2004, with many bottom shelf and bulk bottlings of exceptionally poor quality Pinot abounding. And Pinot can rarely work as blends with other grapes, making its quality (or lack thereof) stand out even more than the easily blendable Merlot.

In retrospect, the “Sideways Effect” seems to have been the enormous surge in popularity for Pinot vs. the comparatively modest decline in Merlot sales. Because at the end of the day, the smoothness, fruitiness, and overall easy drinking quality of Merlot is what makes it stand out.

This entire saga is no better encapsulated than in the end of Sideways itself - when Miles drinks a legendary 1961 Château Cheval Blanc out of a styrofoam cup in a fast food diner. This is a priceless bottling of Merlot from Bordeaux, a wine Miles was saving to celebrate getting back together with his ex-wife (an event that was never likely to happen.)

His hatred of Merlot was due to her loving it, and his finally re-embracing it (Miles unquestionably knew it was Merlot) was him letting go of the past, moving forward into a new potential future. Just as we all should, perhaps, let go of TV talking heads and fictional narratives informing what we should drink and why.

We’re here to drink some Merlot, look side-eyed at Pinot, and talk about this legendary character-study dramedy-cum-wine-movie Sideways. Listen to the full episode above or on your podcast platform of choice.

The Wine Pairings

Dave’s Pairing

The main character, Miles, is unquestionably a Pinot Noir - he’s tempermental, difficult, layered, and expressive when coaxed but not a crowd pleaser in his own right. That could work well enough, but I don’t think this movie is a Pinot Noir. It’s easier, smoother, more assured of itself, more densely packed while also being very straight-forward.

This movie is closer to the two women in Miles’ life - Maya, his newfound love interest, and Victoria, Miles’ ex-wife. Both have a similar poise and assuredness. They are both divorcees but have reached a stage that Miles is desperate to achieve - centered on self-confiidence and self-love.

These two characters are what this movie is to me: it’s Merlot. It’s a grape that seems so easy - easy to drink, easy to grow, but it isn’t. It requires specific climates and practices to truly make great wine, just like any grape, just like any person in fact requires TLC and personal growth to reach maturity and self-confidence, but this film is about finding that. Finding your purpose, finding yourself in the current moment and what your future is meant to be. It’s about finding your center as a person.

And Merlot is the ultimate center of wine. It’s medium bodied, medium acidity, medium fruit landing between black and red, offering intense black cherry flavors, medium tannins so its slightly dusty but not too much. When allowed to ripen slowly, it will fully develop lush, rich flavors, retain acidity, and the tannins to counter the otherwise fruit-forwardness. Merlot needs clay-rich solid so the roots stay cool and retain moisture so the ripening is slow to retain acidity while also reaching full ripeness) in a climate that is neither too hot nor cold. With a little oak it will adopt cedar and spice notes that harmonize gorgeously with its textures and primary fruit flavors.

Merlot is the primary grape of right bank Bordeaux - Saint-Emillion and Pomerol being two of the best regions for it. And it grows beautifully in parts of Argentina, California, and Washington. I chose a Cali Merlot, in honor of the harm the movie Sideways causes to the Cali Merlot market in particular.

I chose Korbin Kameron 2021 Merlot from Moon Mountain District on the far east side of Sonoma County, Sonoma being the place where Pinot exploded in popularity following this movie’s release. The winery is run by the Ming family, of Chinese descent and named after their twins - son Korbin and daughter Kameron.

The wine is mid-price point, around $40-$50, I got mine for $42 from our sponsor Curated Wine Shop, and it’s deep, rich, velvety, with dusty but not overbearing tannins. The mediuum acidity offers lack cherry and sage and oak offers cedar on the nose and palate. Truly beautiful, a contemplative wine while not being challenging. A wine to sip and then savor for minutes, plural, to parse its many layers, yet it’s also just a lovely deep red. Let’s all remember how goood Merlot can be, even (or maybe especially) Cali Merlot.

Fun Fact: in the novel, at the very end when Miles is drinking his special wine he’d been saving for a reunion with his ex-wife, it was supposed to be an ’82 Chateau Latour, a left bank Bordeaux so Cabernet Sauvignon heavy, but Chateau Latour wouldn’t give the filmmakers the right to use their wine in the film. So Payne, who loves inside jokes and planting things in the frame that have to do with contradictions — especially as the movie is largely about lying, to oneself and to others — had Miles’s coveted bottle be a right bank Merlot heavy wine. The man who wouldn’t drink any fucking Merlot. It was totally intentional by Payne once he was forced to change the wine from Latour to something else.

Dallas’ Pairing

I took an alternate route into pairing this time. I paired with the character of Miles.

Miles is a storm of emotions and likely has a mind cloudy with confusion and regret and longing - all things that make living in the moment difficult.

He also seems rather acidic underneath. Perhaps this is due to Giammatti’s performance but the emotion being communicated behind his mask seems intense and possibly aggressive. This leads me to believe that if his life continued to get any more difficult, things could turn vary dark. (I even imagine a world of fan-fic where Miles is a secret serial killer in wine country on the weekends. Dave suggested the only way it would work is if Miles and Maya were both in on the serial killing. BTW…I may actually workshop this as a script and a spiritual sequel to Sideways.)

Anywho, I chose the 2021 Testamatta Bibi Graetz Toscana. Testamatta actually means “crazy-head” in Italian - and it describes the mind of our lead character to a T. He is tormenting himself with notions about merlot. He even has this hatred for the grape that once he excavates it is shown to just be due to his association with his ex wife.

This wine is a Sangiovese from 35 to 50 year old vines on the top of hills with stony soils. A Toscana (Tuscan) made with 100% Sangiovese - which makes it a proper Tuscan and not a SuperTuscan, which has to have non-ingidenous grapes included like Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, and Merlot.

This one is pure Sangio, and it’s a bit of a jewel in that it is a lovely ruby color.

Aroma-wise I get hints of strawberries, orange zest and orange blossom. And everything is very clear, linear, there is no muddying. Very perfumed. Medium-bodied with noticeable tannins but fine in texture.

This wine is everything our character is: salty, crunchy, minerally and sometimes acidic. It can be found in a few places, but the best price - by a HUGE margin ($47 vs. $80 - $100+!!!) - is at COSTCO. If you’re not a member, it’s gonna be pricey.

We do argue whether that’s actually necessary, certainly at that nutty number, but one thing is certain: Ueda made something AMAZING with One Cut off the Dead.

It’s a zombie movie. Except it isn’t. Many turn the movie off before the half-hour mark; don’t do that. The first 30 minutes are somewhat odd and off on purpose. They’re fun, but not deeply interesting or life changing. Don’t bail; there is a massive payoff for those who keep the faith.

The film soon reveals itself, and it is a celebratory, life-affirming, wild, comedic, charming, unforgettable filmwatching experience by the time the second (?) credits roll.

That’s all you need to know. Go watch it. Currently streaming on AMC+ or SHUDDER in America. Watch it especially if you’re not a horror movie person. And watch it if you are. It broke records at the box office in Japan when it was originally released and it’s not hard to see why.

If you’re the kind of person that adamantly refuses to watch a “horror movie”, then listen to our podcast first, it will likely convince you. But if you’re already interested, don’t you dare listen to our spoiler-heavy discussion. Go watch the movie. Then come back here to revel in its wonderfulness with us.

Listen up above, or on your podcast platform of choice, just search “Vintertainment”.

Screenwriter Mark Palermo

We are joined today by special guest Mark Palermo, writer of one of my all-time Top 5 favorite films, seriously it’s been on my Letterboxd Top 4 since I joined Letterboxd an obscene number of years ago and I’ve never taken it off - DETENTION (2011).

Detention is a meta-horror, sci-fi comedy that follows a group of eccentric high schoolers in Grizzly Lake whose prom night turns deadly when their classmate is murdered by “Cinderhella” an iconic movie killer brought to life. The teens are trapped in a school-wide detention and must figure out the killer’s identity before they-and the world- are destroyed. Think of it as a genre mash-up treatise on teen pop culture in a post-Donnie Darko world and it is brilliant.

Mark is also the co-host of the podcast MOVIES AND CHAOS (also follow their IG here) alongside Serena Whitney; he’s a director of the Halifax cult film screening series Thrillema; and most recently Mark began writing for The Retroscope zine all about repertory, art house & indie film film scene in Nova Scotia.

The Wine (and Hard Float) Pairings

Dave’s Piquette Pairing

FINAL GIRLS WINE 2023 “Frankenfizz” Piquette of Sangiovese

I wanted something fiercely independent, yet also somehow connected to a “team”, relating to the teamowrk aspect of the film. So likely a “negociant”, a winemaker who purchases fruit in small quantities from multiple vineyarrds and makes small batches of wine outside the “estate” system. The multiple vineyards = the team, the co-conspirators. But the vision and making of the thing is in the hands of the artist.

So that + something different, odd, light andd fresh to match the lightheartedness of the full story, from a small lot artisan team working with multiple vineyards. And I was also able to make it horror themed, too!

Enter: FINAL GIRL WINE

Anna Lancucki has been making wine for over 20 years, though she didn’t come from a wine family. Inspired by the Meg Ryan rom-com “French Kiss” which she saw at the age of 13 and which has a whole subplot about a guy starting a vineyard and she decided that’s what she wanted to do. Slightly ironic as she didn’t start a vineyard, but rather became a negociant winemaker, but I digress.

Educated at UC Davis, the top Enology & Viticulture School in the USA, Anna went on to work in Napa, Sonoma and a number of harvests in New Zealand, where she met Peter Lancucki at a party and their first conversation was about what skills they would bring to the zombie apocalypse. And Peter, in his spare time, wrote horror screenplays and podcasts.

Thus Final Girl Wines was born, and the wine in specific that I chose was what they once called their “Piquette”, but now has been renamed their “Frankenfizz”. Not very zombie, but let me explain.

Piquette is a style of wine where you take the used grape skins - the “pomace” - after it’s already been used to make one wine, and then rehydrate them, add water and let the fermentation still happening in the pomace continue. This creates a low alcohol, lightly colored and lightly fizzy flavored wine that’s a stitching together of all these component pieces. The ultimate in recycling.

This is a Piquette of Sangiovese from the Coquelicot Vineyard, certified organic grapes. Native yeast fermented, 6 month barrel aged, and only 6.5% ABV!

This has the lightness, the oddness, the down ‘n dirtiness of that pomace maceration, the creativity, the tart fruitiness, and that low ABV is actually best for a film like this, where you want to pay attention to all the little details as it goes.

Mark’s Pairing

Vodka Root Beer Float

One Cut of the Dead is nostaligic, sweet, and also bitter. And across the street from Mark in Nova Scotia is a Brewery called Propeller Brewery that makes their own Root Beer. They can a drink using blended craft vodka, the root beer, and vanilla and call it a “Hard Root Beer Float” which checks all the above boxes.

Propeller is only avilable to Halifax-based Canadians, but you can craft your own Vodka Root Beet float with the following!

Instructions

• Split a can of soda between two large glasses and then add a shot of vodka to each.

• Carefully drop two scoops of either dairy dairy-free ice cream into each glass (if you have an ice cream that is cinnamon or coconut flavored - or both! - it makes it even better), and then top off with remaining can of root beer.

• Slurp, scoop, and enjoy.

Dallas’ Pairing

2014 Fiddlehead Cellars “728” Pinot Noir, Fiddlestix Vineyard, Sta. Rita Hills

In “Kathy’s Corner” - the section of the winemakers notes devoted to the founders musings about the vintages - she speaks of wines that reflect their unique sense of place and personality.

And our film, One Cut of The Dead mirrors this in the approach taken in creating this film. The film takes a very simple but unique locale and turns it into a place of myth and legend resulting in a product that many consider pure gold. Not unlike Fiddlehead Cellars.

This cool climate Pinot Noir, coming from the fog-heavy Santa Rita Hills and it’s rooted in ancient sedimentary soils that contribute both minerality and spice. Its clusters are hand sorted and given an expert’s touch like the script and subject matter in the film.

The grapes are aged in 37% French Oak (air dried for slower more elegant integration).

ONE CUT s just fun to watch. And while it certainly gives a behind the curtain peak into independent film making, I think its greatest feat is that it leaves many who watch vibrating with Saturday morning “I could go out and do that with my friends” energy.

And with that, I imagine that energy and wanted a wine that expressed the flavors or notes of Saturday morning. Notes like cola, cranberry, black cherry, vanilla, and the baking spices found in root beer which, by the way, are all notes expressed in this wine.

In One Cut of the Dead Ueda makes a world within a world within a world look easy by relying on intuition and copious amounts of practice. And this wine shines in this way as well. Both are satisfying, bold and compel you to revisit it in order to appreciate them more deeply.

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May 23rd, 2026 marked the 50th Anniversary of “The Judgment of Paris”, an event that changed the world of fine wine forever.

Throughout the 20th century, and seemingly even before, wine had been staunchly centered in Europe, and not just Europe but specifically France. Burgundy. Bordeaux. Cote du Rhone. Chablis. Sancerre. Provence. Sauternes. These are words - places - that to drinkers all over the world meant and still mean that the wine in the bottle is some of the finest they can find. It was on a level that almost no others could match.

Behind this thinking was the all important concept of Old World superiority which was and is rooted in the notion that fine wine required centuries of heritage and terroir specific to the “noble grape” of Europe. And these “noble grapes” were, originally, all French.

Wines of California and other “New World” wine growing regions were often scoffed at, dismissed as primitive and a poor man’s version of French wine. Even if - maybe especially if - they were growing and making wine with noble grapes meant for France’s terroir.

Yet by the 1970’s, word of mouth was getting around that the wines coming out of California and specifically Napa Valley were pretty g.d. good. British wine shop owner and educator Steven Spurrier was a convert. He thought the world needed to understand how good wines from outside of France and - god forbid - all of Europe had become. So he convinced a panel of all French judges to undergo a “blind tasting” - though he did spring the “blind” part on them at the 11th hour - of French vs. Californian wines. The best of both would be tasted side by side.

Shockingly, two California wines won the two top spots: Chateau Montelena’s Chardonnay, and Stag Leap’s Cabernet Sauvignon, beating out the Chard and Cab hailing from the finest wineries in Burgundy and Bordeaux, respectively. The French judges were so appalled, some tried to destroy their score cards before the news could get out of what they had done. But the news did get out.

What followed was an awakening for California wine - the rise of Napa and Sonoma Valley, and the sudden obsession with all things Chardonnay and Cabernet.

More than that, though, it also showed that other parts of the world could compete: France was no longer the unquestioned king of wine countries. With time, possibly any country, any terroir, could develop into a wine producing territory of equal quality. With or without “noble grapes”. Sometimes even with indigenous grapes that weren’t even of the same species as the noble grapes! It opened up the world, to the world.

That all said, many even in America - especially in America! - have argued that we need to stop talking about the Judgment of Paris. That we can’t keep clinging to this one story, this one event, to proclaim why people should be drinking Californian and American wines.

I am not exactly one of those people. It’s true that we can’t lean on it like a crutch. But it’s also true that the lesson it gave to the world needs to be relearned over and over again. The chokehold of Old World vs. New World is still pernicious. Even within the New or Old World themselves, the lesson needs to be learned as we debate whether there are any good American wines outside of, say, California, Oregon, and Washington; in the Old World, we’re still rediscovering wines and nearly-extinct indigenous grapes from Armenia, Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia, Portugal, and more. Ukrainian wine is now coming into its own!

“But it can’t be that good,” the world exclaims. And the lesson needs to be relearned, again and again.

The full story of American wine’s history is too lengthy to include here in full, but the broad strokes are: American wine in the 1800’s won awards at multiple international competitions before finally clean-sweeping the 1889 World Fair - in PARIS - taking home 34 of 36 possible awards. It was, in all the ways that matter, The Judgement of Paris before The Judgment of Paris.

In the movie BOTTLE SHOCK, Alan Rickman’s Steven Spurrier quips “I don’t foresee the imminent cultivation of the Chicago vine.” Yet it was wine from Chicago! (Well, just outside Chicago.) And Los Angeles; from Livermore Valley in California; even wine from Missouri!!! That all took home awards throughout the 1800’s.

The French were so incensed then, that they changed the rules to invalidate Californian wines in the proceeding Word Fair competitions after 1889. And once we entered the early 1900’s, Prohibition essentially wiped out the American wine industry, which did not fully recover until the 1960’s - 1970’s, when the Judgment of Paris took place. And thanks to Prohibition resetting American culture the way it did, we largely forgot our history of award-winning, internationally competitive wines that existed nearly 150 years ago.

But for now, it’s time to dig into this movie BOTTLE SHOCK from 2008, starring Alan Rickan, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Chris Pine’s wig, Freddy Rodriguez, and Rachel Taylor. And pair some, perhaps, very Californian wines - or perhaps some very new-new world wines? This is a movie all about the new overtaking the old. So…Happy 50th Anniversary Judgment of Paris. As current Californians, we salute you.

Did You Know They Made BOTTLE SHOCK: THE MUSICAL?!? Well, They Did.

This sampling suggests it was…about as good as the movie. Make of that what you will.

THE WINES

DAVE’S PAIRING

I first saw Bottle Shock in the early 2010’s, before I’d fallen into wine. I knew nothing about the real life Judgment of Paris, I simply wanted to see an Alan Rickman / Bill Pullman film. I recall that I liked it quite a bit - similar to how you can be in the mood for a perfectly by-the-numbers Rom Com, this indie drama checked all the boxes for me that day. Did I learn a lot about wine and take to heart anything about the “Judgment of Paris” event? Nein. I watched the movie as though it were pure fiction, though I think I did clock, in passing, that it was “based on a true story”.

Revisiting it now, and even putting aside all my wine knowledge that I’ve accumulated since, the movie does not hold up well. Every actor is dialed to 11 at all times. The dialogue is cliche-riddled and the pacing somehow both too quick and plodding at the same time. We spend an inordinate amount of time in California on bullshit love triangles and made-up father/son meltdowns that never add up to much. The characters never unfold into a second or third dimension - they remain tightly one-note throughout. Alan Rickman being perfectly Alan Rickman can only assist so much.

So…I needed a wine that could be the antithesis of the film, a counter-pairing of complexity and delightfulness. Leaning into the real-life event of the Judgment of Paris, I considered a wine from the “New World”, a wine that the event opened up to the public going forward. At first I didn’t think I’d stick to California, but then I considered…what grapes did I think should have become the red and white grapes of California instead of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon?

I discuss this more at length in the podcast episode, but I soon settled on my pick for the red grape, a parent of Cab Sauv, and a grape that grows with much more elegance and consistent complexity in the state of Cali-for-nai-ay - Cabernet Franc.

Back in the 1970’s, it’s possible that Cab Franc struggled to get ripe enough in Cali, just like it did in Bordeaux. But today, Cab Franc seems far and away the superior fine wine grape. Now adopted by Chile and Argentina as well, it delivers the best of both “Worlds” - the richness of the New World with the complexity, the earth and spice and balancing astringency of the Old World.

Taking the thought even further, I considered how poorly the film was written, and wondered: what if the winemaker was a great writer, too?

Enter from stage left: . The man who harbors a deep, borderline monogamous love with Cabernet Franc, and has worked hard to make it the future red grape of the Livermore Valley in California.

His Steven Kent Winery produces a number of Cab Franc bottles, but one of the more fascinating offerings is his Elements 4-Pack, with a bottle each of Cab Franc aged in STEEL, ROCK (concrete), and WOOD (oak), and a fourth ELEMENTS bottle that’s a blend of all three!

It’s a perfect way to experience the wide range of expressions that Cab Franc can give even within a single vintage. By aiming to make a Loire-style French Cab Franc but in the New World terroir of California, the wines are the best of both worlds. You get generous fruit (to match the movie) but also the missing complexity and depth, the preserved acidity for much needed lift. And by sampling all 4 while watching the movie, you’ll be kept enrapt by the wine and you won’t miss anything from the movie. Trust me: you could fall asleep for 10 minutes and not miss anything critical in the movie.

Buy ELEMENTS 4-Pack

And don’t forget the “great writer” part: Steven is one of the best wordsmiths I’ve yet encountered in the world of wine. And that isn’t shade on any other wiine writer! It’s a high bar! But Steven is ouright novelistic in his ability to write a god damned sentence, my friends.

Over a year ago (because what is time?) Steven send me his book Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine. It’s essentially a Journal, looking back on his history and his present, waxing philosoophical about both, with thoughts toward the future. It’s deeply personal. Not remotely thrilling. It should bore me to tears, but the writing is so beautiful it sucks me right in.

Buy LINEAGE Book

DALLAS’ PAIRING

Alan Rickman’s Steve Spurrier quips that in the coming years he suspects they will see chardonnays from all around the world. And right he was. The new world seemed to open up after this moment.

And as we mentioned in the episode, the film left me wanting to rewrite the hell out of it in order to find something more thrilling, I suppose. The Judgement of Paris stands as a marquis event in the history of wine and calls out for a grander take. It’s a summit of sorts, where old meets new. Where new proves its worth and old is reminded of its limitations.

So for my pairing, I wanted to go with something that combined the cache of the old world with the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world.

And the duo that willed this wine into existence represent both traditions in their work.

My pick is from Domaine Terlato & Chapoutier which is a collaboration between legendary French Australia wine grower, Michel Chapoutier and wine industry icon, Italian-American Anthony Terlato.

The 2019 TERLATO & CHAPOUTIER SHIRAZ

The Chapoutier family have been working in the Rhône Valley since 1808. Their ancestor, Polydor Chapoutier, was the first to buy vines there, shifting from being a simple grape grower to making and trading his own wine. And now that pioneering spirit is visible seven generations later with Michel Chapoutier.

Anthony “Tony” Terlato, chairman/founder of Terlato Wine Group who indelibly influenced the American wine industry and culture for over 60 years with his work with Pacific Wine Company, and Rutherford Hill.

According to the literature the soil is composed of schists, lauzes (rocks made of limestone and quartz).while their harvest is performed at maturity- usually 2 weeks later than neighbouring plots, avoiding over-maturation.

100% destemmed grapes are fermented in concrete tanks with maceration lasting from 4 to 6 weeks followed by a gentle extraction and a long maceration on skins to ensure elegant and fine tannins.

100% of the wine is aged for 18 months in French oak barrels.

It is an intense and deep ruby colour with hints of violet with black fruits, violet and liquorice on the nose. And a spicy, slightly acidic palate with wild strawberries.

And in an uncanny way I give homage to the old world in the grape and in the background of the two people- Terlato of Italian heritage rooted in America and Chapoutier who’s of french heritage rooted in Australia.

Listen Elsewhere

And make sure you listen to our VINTERVIEW with special guest, director Chris McGilvray and learn all about the feature wine documentary he directed, EDEN (2024) about the Mount Eden Winery and Vineyard, considered to have the lonbgest lineage of Pinot Nooir and Chardonnay in all of North America! It was our favorite wine doc ofthe past many years. The human story of the family behind the winery is heart breaking:

The Western As We Knew It

The Western was a cheap pulp genre in Hollywood until the 1930’s, when John Ford’s Stagecoach starring John Wayne became the best selling movie of the year. What followed was an era dubbed “The Golden Age” for the genre, spannning from 1940 - 1960, as Westerns attracted some of Hollywood’s biggest directors and stars.

By the mid-60’s, television Westerns began to supercede the poularity of the films, and Hollywood studios wound down how many of the films they made. But outside of Hollywood, a brand new kind of Western was about to take the world by storm: the Spaghetti Western.

Kickstarted by Sergio Leone’s The Man With No Name trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, over 600 Spaghetti Westerns were filmed throughout Europe between 1964 and 1978, with over 500 of those filmed in Italy alone.

Leone might have sparked this sub-genre, but after his Eastwood trilogy, he had little interest in doing any more. But this was when Hollywood came calling with an offer of a well-financed, no-strings-attached, Henry Fonda-starring Western and the offer was seductive enough for Leone to return to the genre. But this time, he invented yet another subgenre: the art house revisionist Western.

Revisionist Westerns abounded in its wake: Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE, Sam Pekinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH in 1969, Robert Altman’s MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER in 1971, JEREMIAH JOHNSON in 1972.

The real fork in the tex-mex grilled steak that was the Hollywood Western seems to be 1974’s send-up of the entire gnere, BLAZING SADDLES by Mel Brooks. A box office sensation upon its release (surprisingly, the very first true-blue hit to Brooks’ name) such an absolute parody seemed to have allowed audiences to put the gerne to bed in terms of taking it too seriously. And whatever trace good will might have remained has firmly wiped out by 1980’s overly indulgent HEAVEN’S GATE, the film that also bears the greatest repsonsibility for ending the “auteaur era” of the 1970’s in America.

What followed was the first real dry spell for the Western as a popular genre, which lasted from roughly 1975 through to the late 1980’s. Which was when a modern period began, one in which ALL the many Western sub-genres could co-exist next to each other.

The pulp silliness of YOUNG GUNS and BACK TO THE FUTURE III sat alongside the straight drama of DANCES WITH WOLVES which sat next to the revisionist flavor of UNFORGIVEABLE which sat next to the Golden Age formula of TOMBSTONE which sat next to the horror-Westerns like NEAR DARK and SUNDOWN. And the genere has never left us since.

But let’s talk about the beginning of the final unique “era” of the Western film. The 3-hour epic work of cinema that launched Charles Bronson’s career at the age of 47 and made audiences see the baby blues of Henry Fonda in a whole new light.

Let’s talk ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and whatt our perfect wines are to pair with it.

The Wines

Listen to the episode to learn the stories behind the wines and our reasoning for each pairing:

Borgo Savaian “Aransat” Orange Wine, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Italy

Pax Syrah, Sonoma Hillsides 2023

Alegre Valganon Rioja Blanco 2024

We chat with Chris about his narrative short filmmaking, how he quickly realized this was never going to lead to the kind of breakthrough previous generations enjoyed, pivoted to branded content and became a champion of pushing that type of work into more organic and authentic expressions, and then segued from that into his first feature length documentary about the Mount Eden Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains, considered to have the longest lineage of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in all of North America.

We thought this Vinterview would run 20-30 minutes. We had the whole thing Q&A’d scripted out and it was only 5 Q’s! But the conversation evolved organically and we talked at length about the themes of the documentary, themes you rarely see in a Wine doc yet pertain to nearly every aspect of the wine industry.

Chris’ story is the first half, roughly, then we chat about the documentary starting at the 28.5 minute mark.

The film opens at twilight, with an older man, Jeffrey, smoking a cigar next to a campfire as the light fades in the distance. We then see his face. He looks lost, bewildered. Contemplative but also adrift.

We cut to beautiful vistas of the vineyard at dawn. A younger man pruning in the morning air. Then making an espresso. This is the son, Reid, and he is uncertain how much he wishes to embrace the vineyard and the winery. It did not make for the happiest childhood, so high up on a mountain, away from friends and greater civilization.

There is an older daughter as well, Sophie, who is more enamored with the work ethic of her parents. Her father was the 7th winemaker in a 9 year period, and the first after its founder to make the vineyard and winery succeed, a 40+ years and counting.

These are the kinds of stories and people-of-the-land myths we celebrate in the fine wine world. And for the first many months of filming, so did director Chris McGilvray. But he soon worked through the footage and realized he had a glorified travelogue. The parents were always acting as brand ambassadors, rarely showing anything under the veneer of the winemaker myth.

Then Reid came home. A much more internal, contemplative chharacter than the others. He had wanted to forge his own path in life, but suffering setbacks, returned to the family business. Not entirely happily. The film’s first real sit down interview with him does something documentaries rarely do: it shows him struggling for words, thinking, starting to speak, stopping, thinking some more. This sets the tone for the doc going forward.

We follow the famiily struggling with legacy: will the children take over? Do they truly want to? Retirement is, eventually, a necessity, but do both parents want to retire? Or has one become the thing that he does?

The film is bookended with Ellie stating this:

In the opening, it’s a curious moment. By the end, it’s repeated in context to heightened effect.

EDEN is a film that is equal parts a celebration of the Patterson family’s incredible achievement with the Mount Eden Winery. But it is equally a tale of heartbreak and familial reckoning, as the obsession and single-mindedness required, the loss of identity outside of one’s work, proves a rupturing force.

The documentary was filmed over the course of 7 years, the story slowly taking shape as the family drama evolved. But it is now my favorite wine documentary I’ve yet seen. It’s about the wine, but it’s much more about the family sacrifice involved. And whether this shows wine in a good light, bad light, or something in-between will be up to the viewer.

Join us in a couple days as Chris joins us for a proper Vintertainment episode to talk about one of his favorite films of all time:

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST - we’ll see you then!

You can watch Chris’ narrative short films:

The Silence

Damage

Out of Nowhere

Terroir

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Released in 2001 in a post-Y2K, pre-social media environment, Pulse was Kiyoski Kurosawa’s (Cure, Before We Vanish) poetical musing in regards to what this thing called the internet might do to society.

In Pulse, we enter a world where people are slipping away thanks to the pull of technology, fading into ghosts and leaving the physical world behind them. When transitioning into a ghost, they “stain” the spot they were last physically present, creating a “forbidden room” which can be sealed off. But if any still-living person enters such a room, the ghost will pull them into their depression, their despondancy, until that person also fades into a stain-ghost.

In many cases, a person turns into a smoky stain-ghost while physically with another person. The other person might be making small talk, cheerfully proclaiming how they’ll stay together and not be lonely while only half-paying attention to the social interaction.

Meaning: physical presense alone isn’t enough. Interactions and interventions can’t alter the trajectory. Loneliness can be - and often is - other people as well.

Life rumbles on. Many strive to save their friends and family while simply being too busy and distracted to accomplish anything of note. And the ghosts continue to spread. Tokyo is soon an empty shell of taped up “forbidden rooms”, and we realize we are witnessing an apocalypse. The old world that we took for granted is literally dead and gone.

Pulse has zero jump scares. Zero blood. Nothing happens quickly, and the most memorable scene of the movie - the scene, as most refer to it - is literally the slowest moving of the entire film. But it is utterly unnerving and, in my estimation, the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.

If you’ve never seen Pulse - and make sure to watch the original Japanese movie and not the American remake, which largely mistranslates the concept - sit down on a nice quiet evening. Get into a contemplative, brooding mood. Then pour yourself one of the two wines below, and sink your teeth into both.

Just not so deep you fade into a stain on the couch.

THE WINES

DAVE: Pulse is a movie about human loneliess. It’s dark, shadowy, literally smoky as people fade into smoke-like stains. So I wanted a wine from a lonely place: high up on a mountain. And a wine that I conisdered an “alone” wine, a wine I drink mostly by myself. One that, even when amongst other people, I often find myself nursing solo.

Loma Prieta is a winery founded in the Santa Cruz Mountains, by Paul Kemp (a personal injury lawyer) and his wife Amy Wiler Kemp (an attorney.) The couple fantasized about Mountain Living. They originally planted Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, but these struggled in the high altitude site facing the cool breezes from the Pacific Ocean. So they then grafted the vineyard to Pinot Noir, after which it began producing award-winning, Gold Medal wines, under the expert guidance of viticulture consultant Prudy Foxx, who is still involved with the vineyard today.

But then came a revelation. Paul discovered another grape. Related to Pinot Noir, that changed everything. A much bolder, darker, smokier grape...

Paul discovered Pinotage, a rare cross between Pinot Noir and a red Rhone grape called Hermitage (aka Cinsault). While it’s the most widely planted red in South Africa, less than 60 acres exist in all of California. He learned of the variety from his first winemaker, Paul Wofford, who was sourcing Viognier, Roussanne and Chardonnay from the Amorosa vineyard in Lodi, a vineuyard that also grew Pinotage.

Paul was never one to do things cautiously, so once he fell in love with this variety he set out to find every vineyard in the state that grew Pinotage, eventually making four vineyard designates of the grape, including the preeminent version from the estate. Out went the Pinot Noir and in went Pinotage in 2013, where 3.5 acres of the highest altitude Pinotage in North America continue to thrive.

And now Loma Prieta is the largest producer of Pinotage in all of North America!

The label is a story in itself. Paul and Amy were big fans of New Orleans artist, Martin La Borde, whose work they collected on each visit to the Big Easy. They contacted La Borde and had him capture the view of Mt. Loma Prieta as seen from winery site to grace their wines. The yellow, red, and orange lines running beneath the green mountains represent the famous 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The flying wine connoisseur is a recurring character in Martin LaBorde’s work, a little magician named Bodo. (And the winery also produces a “Bodo’s Blend”, 80% Pnotage 20% Petite Sirah.) He’s flying over the mountain with a glass of Pinot Noir in hand, a peace offering to the gods that rumble deep within. Unlike in the movie, so far this has worked for Loma Prieta.

After her husband passed away in 2018, Amy became a “wine widow,” and ran the show pretty much single-handedly until November of this year. With both her sons now in college, it was time to move down from the mountain. Sinco 2020, Loma Prieta is now in the care of Chris Arriaga, a real estate entrepreneur and former US Marshall. He and his daughter, Samantha, both residents of Saratoga, will continue to operate the winery under its existing name, retaining all staff, along with longtime consulting winemaker Michael Sones.

I have a number of Loma Prieto Pinotage wines, because I love the grape so much, even though so few others do. They have an Estate Pinotage, two single-vineyard Pinotages, a “Bodo’s Blend” which is 80% Pinotage 20% Petite Sirah, an entry level Pinotage, and a Sparkling Blanc de Noir pure Pinotage!

I sipped the single vineyard - Amorosa Vineyard 2016 Pinotage. Because it was SMOKY. The Bodo’s Blend is smoother, fruitier, but Amarosa Pinotage displayed the smokey or “burnt rubber” or “campfire” quality that Pinotage is often infamous for, and which paired best with the flavor of the film.

I’m usually the only person craving Pinotage. It’s a deep, dark, brooding wine that I drink alone, but one which makes me happy.

DALLAS: My approach to the pairing is more practical this time. It began with a simple question. If I found myself in the situation in act three of this film and I needed to make my way to the coast for a ship and uncertain safety then which wine would I take?

Because I would certainly need wine. And that wine would need to be 1)nearby 2) plentiful enough 3) easy to steal, pilfer a large quantity of.

And Gamblers Ghost CABERNET SAUVIGNON ticks all those boxes. How you ask?

Well,

1. I live near a Costco, so should the proverbial shit hit the fan then I “could” be one of the first people inside Costco.

2. Fior di Sole is a family-owned and operated winery which owns the Gamblers Ghost label. Their wine portfolio spans more than 3.5 million cases and includes 9 million gallons of storage capacity. Fior di Sole makes more than 1 million cases of wine under brands it owns and an additional 1 million cases for other brands, including retailer specific varieties. And Gamblers Ghost or one of its label mates would likely be well in stock on Costco shelves due to these impressive production numbers.

3. And since, we’re talking about the apocalypse, then it stands to reason that I’d have to help the other marauding lunatics break into said Costco and clear its shelves once word got out that it was the end of civilization as we know it. And while everyone else is busy stealing five pound blocks of Velveeta and fist thick pork chops, I’d be skulking away with a pallet of wine across the parking lot and then into the back of the car.

The 2022 vintage of Gamblers Ghost Cab Sauv received a minimum 92 points on a few lists and certainly gives me a bang for my buck.

The Gambler’s Ghost is 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot, making it a Bordeaux Blend.

The grapes came from vineyards in the Lake County AVA (North of Napa) and Sonoma (west of Napa). The North Coast AVA is Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake County, and a couple of small AVAs.

It was aged for 10 months in 60% new French oak barrels.

ABV is 14.5%.

It’s black cherry in color. A berry, spice nose.

And you even get a little licorice in the taste.

And again, this wine could be found at Costco for under 10 dollars. But by the time this episode drops I may have already (clears throat) purchased all the bottles and made my way for the coast line. So, hopefully I’ll see you on the rescue ship. But just know, I won’t be sharing my Gambler’s Ghost.

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This week we are joined by no-budget filmmaker , writer/director of WHAT OTHER COUPLES DO, BEDROOM STORY, and IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S LA and writer of the book Yes You Can: How to Make a Movie for Almost No Money

Courtney Daniels

I love making films independently and encourage others to consider film as their medium for self-expression.

Courtney selected the original VALLEY GIRL from 1983 to bring onto the pod. This was the breakout role for Nicolas Cage as well as director Martha Coolidge, who went on to direct such 80’s gems as REAL GENIUS with Val Kilmer.

VALLEY GIRL was meant to be a basic teen sex comedy loosely inspired by the Frank Zappa/Moon Zappa song of the same name that parodied “Val Speak”, the airheaded teen dialect of the SoCal Valley area. But Coolidge brought a female POV and voice to the work, transforming it into something more sincere, layered, and unique. She discovered Cage when she pointed to his headshot and said “That! We need someone like that! Not a pretty boy!” The producers weren’t convinced Cage was sexy enough to be a romantic lead, but he cranked up the charm and magnetism with a wild and unpredictable performance, essentially finding the style of acting that would go on to define him so that he could secure a role he wouldn’t otherwise have qualified for. (At least not in the producers’ minds.)

Coolidge had to agree to include precisely 4 scenes of bare breasts, and make the film within budget, and the producers left her alone outside of those perameters.

The result is a cult classic that only grows in reputation as new genrations discover it. Listen to our full conversation above!

Wine Trivia Question of the Week

The Wines

HUSCH Late Harvest Gewurtztraminer, Anderson Valley, California

One of Dallas’ most cherished wine memories is traveling to Anderson Valley, and stumbling upon this small winery where almost no one else was present. There were a few tables for seating guests, and the winemaker themselves served him some of the best Gewurtraminer he’s ever had in his life. He bought a case of it on the spot.

Years went by as he sang the praises of this wine and winery (but never shared, the stingy bastard jk he drank it all way too fast to share it the greedy bastard.) By the time he found another bottle at a local shop, it didn’t taste as he remembered it. The memory of how unbelivably good the wine was, was just that…a memory. So fondly recalled that no reality could ever compare.

But the Late Harvest Gewurtztraminer still holds up, or so says Dallas. “Late Harvest” being when they harvest the grapes late, allowing them to over-ripen, develop an abundance of sugar content. This would create an alcohol bomb of a wine if they fermented it all the way to being “dry”, but instead the goal is to halt fermentation at a certain point and leave a significant amount of sugar behind, un-fermented, thus creating a sweet desert wine.

Gewurztraminer is an “aromatic” grape, beatifully floral, peach and tropical fruit-driven, a flavor and aromatic profile that lends itself to desert styles. At 17% residual sugar this is a decadent, sweety of a wine, just like the 80’s teen love aehtetic of the movie, but also layered and more satusfying than you’d expect, just like this movie.

Courtney had been gifted this wine by a friend - and is there any more filmmaker / LA wine than MIRAVAL Provence Rose? The answer is “no”.

Founded by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie while they were still a loving couple - though today owned only by Brad as Jolie sold off her shares in the wak of their divorce - this is a pink, light, crisp, proper Provancal style rose made for sipping on the balmy 99 degree days that mark a typical summer day in the Valley. If Miraval existed in the 80’s, these Valley kids would be illicitly sipping it to prove how classy they were.

Thaaaaat’s right! I chose the wine that could have sprung straight out of the 80’s with it’s stickers, charm braceletes, jargon-coated labels, and names like “OMG!?!” and “Obsessed”.

In the episode I read out loud Gen Z founder Jess Drury’s story of starting Whiny Baby, and I speak it in a Valley Girl voice, or “Val speak”. It’s not a very good Valley Girl voice, but I do my best😜

And it’s actually a pretty fascinating, inspiring story that admittedly is going to challenge most tradiitional wine folks to enjoy her POV or passions that had her start up Whiny Baby from her mom’s living room, and now a couple years later it’s owned by Gallo.

You can read her full story on Substack where she interviewed Jess:

Resilient Wine

Why You Should Pay Attention to Whiny Baby

But, like, literally CRINGE…

Read more

2 years ago · 9 likes · 10 comments · Stevie Stacionis

I ultimately paired the movie with Whiny Baby OBSESSED Red Wine as the color, intensity, and the idea of being obsessed with another person (or wine!) is the most apropos for the romance in Valley Girl.

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(LITERAL) EDIT: Now with the correct, edited video above! I accidentally published this with the raw, unedited video originally. Mea culpa.

Anton Yelchin was only 27 years old when he passed away unexpectedly (due to a freak accident which we cover in the episode, so listen if you’re unaware of the story.) I had known and worked with Anton in the year leading up to the event, so it was always difficult to watch the films released posthumously.

But this year marks the 10th anniversary of his death day, and I decided that was enough time. I’d always been curious about these final films of his, so we decided to choose one for the podcast. Naturally, being a Portuguese wine sales rep + having just visted the city of Porto in Northern Portugal back in March + having just covered our first work of Portuguese cinema with ANIKI-BOBO (1942), the film PORTO (2017) by gab Klinger and starrubg Anton and French actress Lucie Lucas was the no-brainer.

Logline: Porto, taking place in a dreamy, remembered version of the gorgeous Portuguese city, stars Anton Yelchin as Jake, an American abroad who crosses paths with Mati (played by Lucie Lucas), a beautiful Frenchwoman also somewhat stranded and vulnerable to coincidence and romantic pull. A relationship flares up, but it’s one complicated by time itself: the film is shot on film in multiple formats (Super 8, 16 mm, and 35 mm), each one used to embody a span of time in the life of the couple before, during and after their one day rendezvous and ardor.

In the podcast, we cover the making of the film, then break it down into 3 Acts and discuss our thoughts after each Act alongside our wine pairing thoughts and how they evolved as the movie evolved.

With a few detours into the distinction between Love and Obsession:

HIGHLIGHT CLIP - “Love: Purely Subjective or Do We Misuse the Word?”

The Wines

2022 Bojador Vinho de Talha Branco, Alentejo, Portugal

As a crucial scene in the movie takes place at an archeological dig site, I though to thematically pair it with an ultra-traditional style of Portuguese wine that uses the “Talha” (tahl-ya) clay vessel, the shattered remains of which are often found at and associated with acient winemaking sites.

Traditional to the Alentejo in Southern Portugal, a hot and flat area that tens to make riper, “hotter” wines, the Talha method tends to produce lighter, more nuanced expressions of the terroir. Bojador is the side passion project of Pedro Ribeiro, one of the winemakers at Herdade de Rocim, one of the largest wineries in the Alentejo. But Bojaodr is all Pedro’s.

His Talha wines are aged in the ceramic Talhas on the seeds, stems, and skins, punched down 3 times per day for 4 months straight, then bottled. This process lends the wines additional tannin, light “green” vegetal notes, and the ceramic vessel a stoney minerality undergirding it all. The punchdowns over the course of 4 months also gives the wines a slight oxidative note on the backend (as the wine is continually exposed 3x per day). The Tinto (or red) version has this briny black olive tang, and the Branco (or white) has a slight sherry undertone.

PORTO is a challenging movie in terms of content, but it glides easily from scene to scene, jumping time and place without holding your hand but also never belaboring it. It’s an engrossing, frictionless watch in that sense, and so I most recommend the Branco/white version of the Bojador Talha. Complex, challenging, but smooth texture and nuanced vs. intense.

Alternate Way to Approach This Pairing

Drink Live You’re Falling in Love! But in the order the movie presents it: first the pain and the misery, then the love. 1 Glass where you’ve made the wine something less good. Then 1-2 glasses where it’s the ideal.

2010 Jose Maria de Fonseca “Alambre” Moscatel de Setubal, Portugal

Aka Muscat of Alexandria, but everyone in wine has to claim shit as their own so here it’s Moscatel de Setubal. Remeber: wine is only complex because it has to be. 🙄

The style was believed to have been invented by José Maria da Fonseca, the founder of José Maria da Fonseca, the oldest industrial-scale table wine producer in Portugal dating back to 1834. J.M. Fonseca company still holds a quasi-monopoly control over the production of Moscatel de Setúbal today.

Similar to Port, these are fortified, sweet wines that are barrel aged, and can come in both “vintage” bottlings of a single year or NV (non-vintage) mixtures of years. At 5-6 years of age they’ll be fresher and fruitier, while older bottlings will begin to develop notes of raisin, caramel, toffee, etc.

Dallas was initially unsure of what to pair with this film. Should he pair with the mood of the backdrop, setting? The moodiness of the female lead? The quiet insanity of the male lead? Or perhaps something referential that mimics the flashback heavy device used in the film?

In the end, we opted for something sweet, savory, and that would have you drunk enough to ignore the narrative shortcomings after 2 glasses!

And there you have it, PORTO (2017) by Gabe Klinger, starring Anton Yelchin (RIP) and Lucie Lucas. Paired with Bojador Vinho de Talha and Fonseca Moscatel de Setubal. Give the full episode a listen either here on Substack or on your podcast platform of choice.

And we both truly enjoyed watching this movie, even though we had oodles of criticisms for it, the experience was actually almost entirely positive. It’s streaming on Tubi here in the States. See if you can find it for yourself on streaming. And Kino Lorber has it on Blu ray.

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First up: our own (me!) guested on someone else’s podcast - THE FANBASE WEEKLY. Alongside host Bryant Dillon and writer extraordinaire Corinna Bechko (The Space Between, Aliens vs. Vampirella, Avatar: Adapt or Die) we discuss Alex Garland’s debut novel THE BEACH on it’s 30th Anniversary.

I’ve long been a fan of the Peter Boyle movie, but I’d never read the novel! Until now. How does it hold up? How does it compare to the movie? We deep dive into it ALL. It was a truly lovely conversation. You can listen above, or find The Fanbase Weekly on your podcast platform of choice!

(Note there is no wine talk in this guest podcast, alas.)

Wine Cellar Cinema (Los Angeles Microcinema Update!)

Our upcoming LA microcinema has a name! WINE CELLAR CINEMA. We’re working on the logo as I type.

And the space itself is taking shape! We test screened a film by a little over a month ago, and realized we needed some equipment upgrades to really do Wine and Movie events at Curated Wine Shop justice, and so that’s what we’ve been busy doing:

Not final, but playing with our brand aesthetic…

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It was nominated for nine Oscars, but because they’re all a bunch of dirty foreigners it only won for Best International Feature Film. Though by doing so, it became the first Norwegian film to ever win the category.

Joachim Trier and regular co-writer Eskil Vogt hit the scene with Reprise in 2007, a film that took them 5 years to write. They followed with Oslo: August 31st in 2011, the second of what would become Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy”. Then his stab at a film with a Hollywood cast in Louder Than Bombs (2015), a stab at a horror movie with Thelma (2017) and then he concluded the Oslo trilogy with The Worst Person In the World in 2021. The Oslo Trilogy are all set in Oslo and features actor Anders Danielsen Lie in a leading role and tend to revolve around the theme of social exclusion. Trier’s THELMA is also set in Oslo with a similar core theme, but does not have Lie in the cast, and therefore is not considered a part.

Riding high off the conclusion of the Oslo trilogy, Trier found himself with a blank slate for what he tackled next.

When asked about the inspiration for Sentimental Value Trier stated:

Poetically, the house that features in the film, was a house Trier had shot in before.

Trier had scouted dozens of houses before arriving at this one, which he recognized and realized he'd been before. He instantly saw how scenes from the script would be shot there. Likely, the familiarity, the memories spurred this, which are the very themes of the movie itself.

Regarding the title: Trier says:

Trier and Vogt knew they were on a knife’s-edge:

The premise of the film is as follows:

“Sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star (Elle Fanning). Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father — and deal with an American star dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics.”

This is, without a doubt, the best film Trier has directed to date. It’s an evolution and apotheosis of his themes, characters, and style. There are strong similarities to Olivier Assayas’ CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (2014) which we sort-of covered in our batshit 2-Part Fake Movies Within Movies Paired with Fake Drinks Within Movies with the equally batshit . A 2-Parter that Sentimental Value could now be included within!

Wine Trivia Question of the Week

The Wines

Zulal Areni, Vayots Dzor, Armenia

: I wanted a wine with a father-daughter dynamic, though maybe one with a functional vs. dysfunctional one. (Hard to find a working winery if it was dysfunctional.) Also a wine that matched this movie’s emotional complexity but lack of gravitas, lack of elevated emotional quality. I needed to match it’s more grounded, everyday, quiet and gentle approach to peering into the depth of difficult interpersonal relationships.

Areni is Armenia’s flagship red grape. The Areni for this wine comes from small, family-owned vineyards in Vayots Dzor that are 50-70 years old. Situated between 1,400 and 1,500 meters above sea level and completely ungrafted. (So pre-Phylloxera1)

Areni is often compared to Pinot Noir, and it does share similar body, structure, and fundamental flavors - red fruit, herbaceousness, good acidity, noticeable but not hefty tannins. It’s complex, layered, it’s contemplative, but not harsh, and not difficult.

This winery, Zulal, was founded by Aimee Keushguerian, daughter to Vahe Keushguerian, the man who spearheaded the modern wine movement in Armenia. Aimee grew up in Tuscany surrounded by her family’s wine business, but went to study economic development and social entrepreneurship in college, as her interest was in bringing Armenia’s economy into the modern era.

Then her father, Vahe, invited her to work the harvest at his winery Keush in 2015.

Aimee later founded Zulal Wines, dedicated to small-batch expressions of Armenia’s rare and indigenous grape varieties.

So a daughter who had no intention of following in her father’s footsteps, carvibg out her own space, while working to reestablish and reinvigorate her family’s traditions, roots, and culture for the modern moment. And a wine that contains multitudes without demanding anything from or forcing anythign onto its drinker.

P.S. Aimee is featured in A Cup of Salvation, the SOMM TV documentary longlisted for the Academy Awards, which follows her and her father’s efforts to make wine in both Armenia and the first wine from Iran in over 40 years.

: I wanted a wine that matched the watchability of this film, the ease of this film. But I also wanted it to contrast this film’s rather gloomy and austere style.

So it had to pull double duty. It had to be something that was a pleasant and easy drink. It also had to implore me to continue drinking and for the contrast, it had to be bright, sunny and colorful, in a way.

So I settled on the 2023 K Vintners Art Den Hoed Viognier.

It’s a lean and light to medium bodied wine that increases the salivary sensation or mouth watering. Like this film, every frame sort of makes you curious about the next. You want more. It’s sort of energetic and spritzy, like this film. There’s an exciting life behind the top layers.

It’s similar to the film, in that it is a very clean expression of some otherwise dirty and muddy components. It’s also similar in that the film is effortlessly watchable and this wine is effortlessly drinkable.

Note wise, you’re getting some honey suckle, maybe a little apple blossom, faint peach on the nose.

Drink it now. And also, watch this film now.

Located at the base of the Blue Mountains in Walla Walla Washington, K Vintners opened its doors to the public on December 3rd, 2001.

The site was originally homesteaded in 1853 with the adjacent farmhouse built in 1872. The winery grounds with Titus Creek flowing through the lawn and the old pioneer planted trees, is a little slice of heartland Americana.

The Winemaker: He loves to drink wine! Charles Smith, proprietor and winemaker, comes to Walla Walla after 11 years in Scandanavia. Originally from northern California, he has been involved with wine personally and professionally his whole life.

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Two of those fans are yours truly - having watched MacGruber when Netflix was still shipping phsyical DVDs to my mailbox - and , writer of :

How Not to be a TV Writer

Jon is a TV Writer who worked in the writers’ rooms of Veep (HBO) and HouseBroken (FOX). HNTBATVW is a guide to navigating a creative career in entertainment, warts and all.

By Jon Stahl

Jon is joined us for a lengthy chat on what makes MACGRUBER function as a comedy, and why this style of comedy for comedy’s sake needs to make a comeback.

We also chat about Jon’s own writer-producer projects happening as I type, most notably Casen Pointe: True Crime Detective the webseries that just had it’s second episode drop last week! (EDIT: it’s now up for a potential festival screening, so has been taken down temporrariily. It will return!)

Jon also has a 4-part micro-series hitting IG right now - UPSTAGE. Make sure to follow to see what he’s up to there.

MacGruber’s Origin Story

As for MACGRUBER, we cover the full genesis of the character and film, as reocrded in the Vanity Fair article “It’s So Dumb, and It Just Felt So Right”: An Oral History of MacGruber. You could pay for a subscription to read that, or just listen to our pod for free. We give you the highlights ;)

All Films and Shows Mentioned in this Episode

The Wines (and Kombucha)

Jon is living a mostly-sober lifestyle these days (boooo, jk, of course that’s healthy for anyone to jk BOOOOOO.)

As such, he chose a non-alcoholic beverage to pair with MacGruber, so not wine. But instead: Kombucha was a drink he didn’t like much at first (like most people when it comes to wine!) But the flavors slowly grew on him, until he loves the sour-tart, fruity herbal experience that most kombucha is. Just like MacGruber was a grower - “do I like this?” The character is actually pretty terrible. But then: “this is hysterical I love watching everything he does” (even though or maybe especially because he’s still terrible!)

Synergy Trilogy - raspberry, lemon, and ginger - is the perfect kick of all of the flavors listed above, to blend with that MacGrubery experience.

2022 Revelation Vineyards 100% Vidal Blanc

A Belgian mathematician and an Irish dentist walk into a bar…then walk out together, move to California together, fall in love with wine together, move to Virginia together, and buy a horse farm which they then turn into a vineyard together. Easy peasy. Like, where even is the story in that?

So short story short: they now make wine in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, including this Vidal Blanc, a hybrid grape that Virginia and most of the North East Coast loves (it makes an insane ice wine!)

Light, crisp, slightly honeyed in flavor profile, this is a refreshing, easy drinking white that you can sip with a comedy that demands little from you like MacGruber. The wine rewards attention - as does the movie - but neither demands it.

So the next time you’re f**king as hard as MacGruber and Vicki St. Elmo - or a Belgian mathematician and an Irish dentist cum winemakers - and the poor girl has to open-palm swat the beads of sweat dripping off your naked torso before they hit her in the face, make sure you have an open bottle - well chilled - of this refreshing Vidal Blanc from Virginia’s Revelation Vineyards. It’ll enhance the experience for you both, but won’t steal your attenion away. Or, sorry, sip it while watching MacGruber I forgot what I was writing about there for a moment.

Yes, Charles Fackam Hall2 Shaw. MacGruber is, naturally, a parody of MacGyver. The character is, essentially, the incompetent poor man’s version of that better man, so I thought: what kind of wine is usually highly regarded? And then what would the MacGrubery version of that be?

Four buck chuck Pinot, baby. Similar to Dallas’ pairing, this was relatively easy to drink and demanded zero attentiion. Surprisingly made with organic grapes, don’t ask me how. It’s riper and blacker than yoru typical Pinot, but still maintains certain expected Pinot characteristics, such as mild tannins, a certain acidity (though lower than in higher quality Pinots) and a distinct cola backnote that many American Pinots display.

Certainly, MacGruber would pair with a decent quality Pinot, too. So look for one $30 or over and you’ll be in safe territory. Dip under $30 and you’ll be enterting danger zone territory for most Pinots. Dip all the down to under $5 and somehow this is still drinkable. I don’t want to know how ripped off whichever vineyards got selling even this fruit this low, but what a very MAcGrubery thing to do. This CS Pinot is all thiings MacGruber in the shape of a fine wine.

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Even though it makes one squint to realize that 87Eleven (the David Leitch production company) is behind this movie, when 87North (the Chad Stahleski production company) just did Balleina (set in the John Wick universe) the good news is the two movies have very little in common. Plus PRETTY LETHAL gets badges for being written and directed by two women.

The script is the feature debut of actress Kate Freund (who plays one of the villains in the movie, too) and directed by Vicky Jewson, who helmed the Noomi Rapace action film Close in 2019. After the lackluster performannce of Close it seemed that Jewson might suffer the fate of Lexi Alexander before her - who directed Punisher War Journal and went straight to director jail ever since. It still took 7 years for her to get a second chance at an action flick, and I think she’ll do okay with her ballerinas-kick-the-shit-out-of-some-gangsters flick here.

Originally titled Ballerina Overdrive, the film follows an American troupe on their way to an international competition in Budapest. Their bus breaks down so they schlep their way to the nearest bar to make new travel arrangements. But when they insult one of the guests, who happens to be the son of a feared organizeed crime boss, the girls are targeted for death and have to fight their way out.

The ballerinas are played by Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds (the real-life deaf girl from The Quiet Place movies), and Avantika, with Uma Thurman making a wild comeback as the owner of the bar, a charracter who is a former ballerina herself, still looking for revenge for the injury that halted her career (mirroring Thurman’s own Kill Bill injury that had her disappear for far too long. I’m glad she’s back in literal action!)

The fights here are creative, as one would hope. It plays with the ballerina’s sttrenghts and movement patterns, sometimes perhaps too literally such as when the girls run through formations but have razor blades in their shoes, between their fingers, and/or hammers and knives in thier hands. It’s all gleefully silly, and occassionally even rises to being authentically thrilling as the film does recognize that even ballerina-strength can be overtaken by the pure brute strength of larger men.

In one scene, evoking Hostel or Saw, a torturer sets to peel the toenails off one ballerina, and she screams “No, no, please don’t-” he yanks a toenail off, and she doesn’t react. Which makes him react, and she laughs in his face:

The actresses each had a stunt double and a dance double, though they all trained for 1 month prior to filming, and Ziegler and Condor both had ballet training in their past, so did a significant share of thier own danciing and stunts. It’s a breezly, bloody, campy 91 minutes, but only 14.5 minutes of action (roughly 16% of the runtime) so don’t expect an action extravangaza. Expect a comedy thriller with 4 or 5 solid setpieces scattered throughout.

David Leitch and 87North have a thing for shaping action movies around unexpected protagonists. In Nobody and Nobody 2 it’s a middle-aged family man. In Silent Night it’s the literal Santa Claus. In Love Hurts it’s a real estate agent. In The Fall Guy it’s a Hollywood stunt man. And in Pretty Lethal it’s actual ballerinas, still dancing competitively.

In a number of the above, the protagonists are ex-assassins or the like, but in others they have no combat experience whatsoever. Which is the case with Pretty Lethal. And what that means is highly stylized, high concept action sequences that are too clever by half, but are certainly entertaining.

If I have one complaint, it’s that the male characters - to a one - are all terrible. Either actively horrible human beings or completely incompetent, and often both. I know we’re in the era of girl power and all that, but this felt particularly egregious. This is largely how male writers have showcased women for forever and ever, but I’m not sure flipping the script is the best way forward.

The whole time I was watching Pretty Lethal, I had an article penned by wine writer Margaret Rand in mind:

She uses a ballerina en pointe image for the article, ffs! In the piece, she writes about white wines that retain their elegance, their freshness, yet wherein tannins are present. Not as a straight-up skin-contact orange or amber wine (which is wine made from white grapes but soaked on the skins for weeks to months like ared wine is), but rather as a white wine with minor skin soakage or, say, noticeable extractions from pressing/crushing thick-skinned grapes.

We’re talking white wines that are still considered “white”. But have both astringency and texture - a certain powerfulness - added without overtaking the wine’s otherwise elegant nature. These wines don’t turn orange, but more the color that reminds you to drink more water, if you catch my drift. And this balance of power and elegance - of freshness and something stronger and bolder - is a perfect match for a ballerina action movie.

You can find numerous Eastern European wines - to match the setting of the movie - that would fit this bill, but I’m going to cheat slightly and pair mine with an Austrian wine. Which is a country that is sandwiched on three sides by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia but is somehow not considered part of Eastern Europe. I say close enough!

Schödl Grün Grün Grüner is a beautiful example of what minimal skin cotact can do for a white wine, especially one made by a grape as naturally bright, fresh, and crisp as Gruner Veltliner. The color here is dark yellow, cloudy (drink more water!) with aromas and flavors of citrus and stone but then also bruised apples and honey. The wine is minimal intervention / “natural” but isn’t funky - it’s very clean, but that astringency and added complexity from the skins is instantly noticeable. It’s powerful without being over-powering. The elegance is as present as the power. It’s powerful elegance.

See if you can find a bottle of this, or look for a similar white wine with skin extraction but not to the point of being an orange or officially a “skin-contact” white.

And, honestly, an orange wine would work wonderfully with this movie as well. The heft of the full tannic profile in an otherwise white wine - it’s gonna play well with razor-toed ballerinas cutting up some bastards and smashing through scenery to survive.

Have you seen Pretty Lethal? Thoughts?

Have you ever had “powerfully elegant” white wine as defined this way? Do you have a favorite?

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Toyota transformed the plant into the most productive auto assembly plant in the U.S. with quality comparable to its Japanese factories.

That sounds like a pretty cool story, especially as it took place during a time of intense competition between the U.S. and Japan. GUNG-HO ostensibly adapts this story for the screen, with Ron Howard (fresh off Cocoon) and Michael Keaton (fresh off of Johnny Dangerously) at the helm. Jaoanese-American actor Gedde Watanabe (Sixteen Candles and Volunteers) takes the suppporting lead role, and folks, I’ll bet you forgot this movie ever existed.

There’s a reason for that.

Everything here is a caricature. The Japanese, obviously. But also the Americans. Small town factory workers, small town politicians; Japanese executives who try to bathe in the disgusting Pennsylvania factory river like it was a hot springs because I guess they’re children who don’t understand what a completley different fucking country is when they phiscally travel to it. Don’t get us started on the misogyny.

It was perfectly inoffensive in 1986, as all Ron Howard movies are; and perfectly offensive in 2026, as all Ron Howard movies are.

The film (sigh…) did well at the box office. Not amazing, but well: roughly $40M on a $13M budget. So believe it or not they thought it’d be a great idea to turn it into a TV show! You thought moviegoing Americans ate this shit up? Wait’ll the couch potatoes get a load of it! Somehow, we came to our sennses because it only ran 9 episodes.

Michael Keaton was replaced by Scott Bakula, and all the Asian actors from the movie reprised their roles because what the fuck else were they being offered?

Listen to us tear this movie a new one above! Then make sure you check out the pairing below, because while you might want to miss the movie, you do not want to miss these drinks.

The Drinks!

DAVE’S PAIRING

Viña Marty’s “Goutte d’Argent” Sauvignon Blanc, Aconcagua, Chile

Heat is not wine’s friend. But some heat is unavoidable during the process of fermentation. While temperature can be controlled up to a point, wine yeasts start to slow and die if the temperature dips below 10°C / 50°F.

Esppecially when making fresh, armoatic white wines, the less heat you can introduce to the wine - even during fermentation - the fewer aromas and flavors will be lost to the process. It’s the dream of many winemakers to disocover a way to keep wines colder, but still complete fermentation.

And Pascal Marty, winemaker at Viña Marty, stumbled upon a way: Japanese sake yeasts!

Unfortunately, only members of the Sake Productors Federation are allowed to use the yeast, and they had never before inducted a non-Japanese member. It took Pascal years of negotiations and pitching the idea, framing it as a blending of the two cultures in order to promote both cultures abroad.

It took years, but now Pascal is the only non-Japanese member of the SPF. And his “Goutte d’Argent” Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are both fermented using Japanese sake yeast n°7 and n°9.

Vinification in stainless steel tanks with an average length of 90-130 days - which is very slow! Typical wine fermentation is 10-21 days! - at fermentation temperatures about 6-8 °C. Some soakage on lees to add body and creaminess. The saké yeast doesn’t like Sulphur, so minimal sulphites are used.

The Goutte d’Argent (silver drop) Label designed by Drops of God creators, and the wine is featured in the pages of the manga.

Citrus, white flowers, baked goods and vanilla, elegant with a creamy finish. Reviewers have claimed the wine is “...not very varietal, at least it doesn’t have the pungent herbal aromas of many Sauvignon Blancs in Chile.” Which begs the question how something can be “varietal” or “varietally correct” when changing the yeast changes those aromas and flavors.

This wine is spiritually on point for the movie Gung-Ho, while also countering its brash, loud Americanisms with its elegant, aromatic freshness. I desperately needed a wine that would be a counter-pairing to all the poorly aged elements of the film.

DALLAS PAIRING

Yeah, it’s not wine. It’s A Japanese old fashioned.

The Japanese Old Fashioned is the ultimate Gentleman’s cocktail, a perfect combination of Rye Whiskey, Bitters, an orange slice, japanese sugar and a Maraschino cherry.

Ingredients :

• 1 Japanese Sugar Cube (Kokuto preferrably!)

• 1/2 Orange Slice

• 1 Maraschino Cherry

• Orange Peel

• A Dash (or two) of Angostura Bitters

• Large Ice Cube

• 2 Ounces of Nikka Whisky

Directions :

• Pour a touch of water in the bottom of the rocks glass

• Muddle the sugar in the glass

• Add the cherry and bitters

• Pour in the Nikka

• Stir 50-100 times

• Twist and then garnish with an Orange Peel

Before you go! Do you love this Wine and Enertainment Pairing thing?

Then please make sure to subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice! And leave a rating and/or review if you’re so inclined. This truly helps the podcast grow and reach new listeners. No one is looking for a Wine and Movie Pairing pdcast, per se, but everyone seems to love the idea when they find it!

We deeply appreciate it. Thank you so much for being a Substack subscriber, and doubly - no, triply so if you also subscribe on a podcast platform. You da bestest.

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If you work in the wine or film worlds, and would like to attend a unique, relaxed mixed between the two industries, this is an event to consider attending!

First $500 worth of wine is covered, so show up sooner vs. later!

Presented by law firm Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof, they idea is to:

• find new up-and-coming talent, they want to know who the indie / NonDe creators are!

• expect lawyers, agents, managers, writers, filmmakers, and wine peeps galore.

• if you’re part of the wine world, this will be a great opportunity to meet LA area professionals who may find future use for your wine, store, bar, restaurant, and/or services.

• This could be a great opportunity to meet people for future sponsorship and/or branding purposes. Both industries are in a strange place, which means everyone will have an open mind and the opportunities will be diverse and many.

RSVP to this unique mixer by emailing Elle Baker: jbrowningassistant@hwhmf.com

Though, honestly, if you show up last minute, I doubt we’d turn you away. ;)

Note this is not a Vintertaiment hosted or planned event. We are simply sharing details of someone else’s event, though we will be there! And we do know the fella planning it. He’s a great chap. For a lawyer.

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We’re joined by our first NonDe (non-dependent vs. independent) Filmmaker guest - first time filmmaker who recently completed his feature film THE BIG BREAK which is currently being submitted to festivals. Follow Avi’s own NonDe Uprising podcast as well as updates on his movie at .

(Techhnically, of was the first NonDe figure to guest on our show, but she hadn’t begun her first film production yet! You can listen to that one below:)

Avi wanted to talk to us about possibly the most NonDe movie yet made: LISTERS: A Glipse Into Extreme Birdwatching. The documentary made by two brothers with zero financing outside of their own equipment and savings and released ad-free for any and all on YouTube:

LISTERS recieved 1.5 million views its first month online. And now sits at almost 4 million six months in. It’s a movie about two brothers who decide to join the community of burdwatchers competing in a “Big Year”, where you try to spot as many birds as poissible in a single calendar year. The record at the time of filming was 751 birds.

In this episode, we discuss what “NonDe” filmmaking in, how LISTERS fits into that category, why its important for the movement, how distribution plays into it, also who the documentary is all about the fine line between passion and obsession. Whether we’re talking about Birdwatching, Filmmaking, or Wine, when art meets passion it can lead to an unhealthy competitive mindset that can suck all the joy out of the thing.

Help Us List Listers On Letterboxd!

Letterboxd, for those who do nt use it, is the premiere platform for logging and discussing movies, much like the Merlin app is all about logging birds.

It’s “feature films” only - no TV, though that may be added in the future - no music videos, no commericals, no “content” from Tiktok or YouTube, etc.

And that’s where LISTERS ran afoul of Letterboxd’s rules. Being a feature film documentary exclusively avilable on YouTube - but not funded by YouTube as a “YouTube Original” - it doesn’t count a “feature film” via the baseline rules, and so Letterboxd has continually rejected it’s addition to the database even though dozens of users (ourselves included) have tried!

This rule is understandable superficially, as naturally they don’t want “content” videos to be submitted. But this rule makes little sense when a “YouTube Original” would count. When someone could self-distribute their film on Amazon Prime and it would count. It basically only penalizes independent / non-dependent filmmakers wh do not want to list their film on AVOD (ad-supported) or SVOD (subscription-supported) platforms.

So we started a petition to try to convince the decision makers that LISTERS is the exception-to-their-rule that should be considered more seriously. If we’re truly going to be non-dependent on any given platform, we need platforms like Letterboxd to not enforce dependency, and allow users/film fans to help them spot and determine the worthy considerations.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO HELP US HELP LISTERS FANS!

Possibly the most heartening thing you can do in this modern world is make shit happen. As we learned with getting Substack to finally give us our “Film and TV” category, it’s entirely possible. But it takes a community.

You all are the best.

The Wines

E. Guigal Cote du Rhone Rouge 2022

Avi had to select his “Aha!” wine, or eureka wine, which is what we call that first wine that a person suddenly takes notice of and realizes “oh shit, I think I like this!”

And E. Guigal’s Cote du Rhone Rouge was Avi’s Aha! wine back in the day. And what better to pair with a docementary all about falling into lifelong obsession with a thing / hobby / activity. In Listers, it’s birdwatching. For all of us here reading a Subsatck like Vintertainment, it’s wine and movies.

What was your own Aha! wine? For the more filmic among us, what was your Aha! movie?

2017 FE Trimbach Pinot Noir Reserve from Alsace

Hailing from the region of Alsace which has a dedicated, fervent birdwatching community! Dallas let the place lead the way, matching the wine with a country that’s all about them birds. (We believe it’s storks in particular in Alsace.)

Known for thier Gewurtztraminers, Rieslings, Pinot Noirs and Pinot Gris, you don’t have to do Noir if you don’t want to, but Dallas found this Pinot smooth and velvety, only slightly tart, just like the movie.

2023 Planet Mouraz "Palhete" Nina (50/50 Red and Orange Wine)

OR

Find a "Palhete" (pahl-YET) of any kind! A field blend of red and white grapes co-fermented together.

I had to pair a film about seeing as many birds as possible in a single year with a wine that’s all about co-fermenting as many grapes as possible in a single wine in a single year!

A “field blend” is when you pick a whole vineyard / “field” and make a single wine with all the grapes therein. And a “palhete” is the Portuguese term for when that includes both red and white grapes!

This Planet Mouraz “Nina” (named after the kitty in the picture, who is sadly no longeer with us, but her legacy lives on with this wine!) is a 50/50 blend of red and white grapes, over 20 different varieties, all crushed together and co-fermented together on the skins, so essentially a 50% red 50% orange wine. It’s chillable, and “crushable” (chuggable) and low in ABV (12.5%) so you can sip this freely through the whole 2 hour documentary.

The “Nina” is avilable in Portugal, other parts of Europe, and California, though you can also just search for a “field blend” or “palhete” wherever you’re located. Drinkk a wine that as much a potpourri of grapes as this doc is a potpourri of birds in exquisite HD nature shots.

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Yet despite encouragement from the studio, as well as from of such landmark talents as Tsui Hark and Sammo Hung, Lam turned down opportunities to become a director until actor Danny Lee - mega-star of John woo’s THE KILLER and Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE - invited Lam to co-direct One Way Only in 1981, which became the first directorial work for both of them.

Lam’s first film as solo director was the crime drama Brothers from the Walled City in 1982 which he followed with an even more refined and progressive urban thriller Men from the Gutter in 1983, both produced by Shaw Brothers. Even though Lam is not considered part of the Hong Kong New Wave of the turn of the 70’s and 80’s, these two films display an identical approach to the films of Dennis Yu or Johnny Mak, the core difference being that Lam was not an auteur in the classical sense, meaning he was the director and cinematographer of the films, but not the author of the script.

Nevertheless, Brothers from the Walled City and Men from the Gutter, just like the contemporary HK New Wave films, combined popular genres with personal drama, their characters and conflicts grounded in the everyday social reality of Hong Kong and they were filmed on actual locations, not just studio sets. (As was the norm prior to.)

In 1984, Lam directed the comedy Three Stooges Go Undercover, which was written by the legendary Wong Jing, who is also credited as the author of the original story of Lam’s previous comedy, One Way Only. Lam’s cooperation with Wong - who later became one of the most influential writers and producers in Hong Kong cinema - continued with lensing Wong’s two directorial projects Prince Charming (1984) and The Flying Mr. B (1985). In 1985 both Lam and Wong left Shaw Brothers for Golden Harvest - the studio where Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung now resided - where they continued their collaboration with Ghost Snatchers in 1986 and The Seventh Curse in 1986. Both films were written by Wong Jing, the first one with him in a starring role and the second produced by him. And these films marked a new direction in Lam’s career.

The Seventh Curse in particular was the first in a series of gonzo adaptations of the “Wisely” novels. (Also sometimes called the “Wesely” novels, which I think was the intended name, though “Wisely” for some reason became the more common translation!) Or actually, Seventh Cursse was an adaptation of author Ni Kuang’s Dr. Yuen series of which Wisely was a supporting character. Then Wisely began to star in his own novels, an insane 161 stories in 156 novels, to be exact! In the movie, Chin Siu-Ho plays Dr. Yuen, while Chow Yun-Fat plays Wisely. The film is part Indiana Jones adventure, part horror, part martial arts action spectacle, and would cement Lam as the go-to director for films heavy with mechanical and optical special effects.

In 1987 Lam directed Killer’s Nocturne, an epic revenge drama set in the gambling milieu of old Shanghai and written by Manfred Wong, the later writer and producer behind the immensely popular Young and Dangerous series. The film is infamous for the INSANELY NOT-P.E.T.A. APPRROVED scene where a man actually boxes a kangaroo. He gets his ass handed to him, handily, but it’s still an unfomfortable sceen to watch.

In 1988 Lam paved the ground for the infamous CAT III - or “Category III” - exploitation boom with his rape and revenge movie Her Vengeance. Another milestone in his filmography is the historical erotic comedy with fantasy elements Erotic Ghost Story in 1990, which kick-started the whole stream of copycat erotic films with historical/fantasy settings starting as the Sex and Zen series in 1991. At the same time Lam directed two spectacular adaptations of Makoto Ogino’s manga series Spirit Warrior – Peacock King in 1988 and, at least partially, though he was fired part way through, Saga of the Phoenix in 1990, both starring Yuen Biao and Gloria Yip.

Lam’s most notorious film, however, is them movie we’re here to talk about today: his 1991 over-the-top gorefest RIKI-OH The Story of Ricky. Meticulously true to its source manga material - so much so that the original trailer for the movie has shots of the film lined up with panels from the comic!

This adaptation of the violent manga Riki-Oh by Masahiko Takajo and Tetsuya Saruwatari combines both then-current trends in Lam’s filmography: 1) high concept adaptations of Japanese comics, and 2) hyper-violent exploitation films abundant with bodily fluids. And the film spotlighted the anxieties of the early 90’s: foreign capitalist modalities forced upon a people, the loss of freedoms, the need to fight - violently so - to push back against such inhumanities.

Even though the film later gained cult status in botht he East and West, it did not perform well in local cinemas. It was the first film to receive a CAT III rating due to violence alone, and local adult audiences shunned it. It grossed only HK$2.M, whereas Lam’s previous films for Golden Harvest usually grossed around HK$8 to 10 million.

Then RIKI-OH found its audience when it hit home video: kids that couldn’t see it in theaters!

Yet despite this late success, Lam’s last film to date was The Cat aka THE THOUSAND YEAR CAT in 1992, just one year after RIKI-OH, an hallucinatory mixture of action, horror, comedy and science fiction that was another adaptation of a Wisely story. And this one, more than any other, was fully preoccupied with the handover - the year 1997 is spoken of prominently, with an alien force invading the very beings of the HK people. And as with all Lam Nai-Kai movies, the effects and storytelling are absolutely over the top and gonzo.

Sadly, after THE CAT, Lam Nai-Kai disappeared from the film scene, for reasons that are still undocumented, and has yet to return. Even though his films are currently undergoing a significant Renaissance on blu ray and 4K, finding whole new generations of fans across the globe.

So with that said, strap in, grab a glass of wine or your beverage of choice, and let’s talk about the first film of Lam Nai-Kai’s that landed with Western audiences and helped open the door to his films receiving the wider recognition they’re appreciating today.

Bonus Clips Cut From the Main Episode

Once Upon a Time We Remebered Phone Numbers

How to Curse Without Offending. (Maybe.)

Now I Want Actual Wine Peeps (Plus: Fermenting Peeps)

Did you know I actually did a Wine and Peeps Pairing a couple of Easters back? Well, I did:

The Wines We Paired With RIKI-OH

DALLAS: This is a film of fever dreams. It feels like something I would have written, especially act three, if someone had come to me and asked me to write a third act that leaves the audience scratching their heads wondering, “I don’t know what the hell i just watched but I’ll take another glass please?”

And for me, the experience of Shiraz is like a kick of black pepper coming through a refined jam. And that’s what this film is. The filmmakers are obviously seasoned and refined but the brutal, assaulting kick of the gore and stunts just slaps you around or punches you through the face, to reference one of the greatest action sequences in history which is in this movie.

So for that, I went with the 2020 Paringa Estates Mornington Peninsula Shiraz. (A cool play on words as the full name of the area is “Mornington Peninsula Shire” so turn “Shire” into “Shiraz”!) It’s wonderfully Jammy, cool climate expression of a Shiraz with a fairly subtle peppery note. It’s not very heavy. And at 5 years old it feels elegant. There’s also this faint note of forest floor that’s kind of reminiscent of that earthy smell you find in blood.

DAVE: Speaking of blood, let’s talk about Touriga Nacional from Portugal! The 2018 Kelman Touriga Nacional, Dao, Portugal to be precise.

The primary grape used in Port production, and considered by many to be Portugal’s finest grape. Thick skinned, with dark pigments, resistant to humidity and disease, it’s perfect for the hot humid climates of the Douro (where Port is made) and the Dao - where this particular wine is made.

Touriga makes a very deep colored, almost black red wine, but with silky tannnis, especially when there’s 8 years of age on it, like with this 2018. Black plum and prune, tobacco leaf and wet wood, damp earth and a raw meat tang on the finish. It’s bloody and raw, yet silky smooth, like this movie.

And like this movie’s protagonist, Ricky, Touriga Nacional is working hard to free itself from its current confines and break free into the wider world. DINIZ CELLARS sells this wine in California, and can ship to many States in the USA!

Th-th-that’s all for this week!

Join us and next week, when we cover a NonDe / indie documentary that needs a lot more attention than it’s getting - LISTERS.

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And that’s not even his most notable accomplishment! Oliveira directed 31 feature films and an almost equal number of short movies and documentaries...and nearly all of them were made after the man turned SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD.

In case you thought it was ever too late to start.

Now, Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira - his full Catholic name - his circumstances were a bit unusual. Being Portuguese in the 1930’s, there was precious little cinematic infrastructure in his home country at the time. And to make matters worse, the authoritarian regime of a different Oliveira - António de Oliveira Salazar - began in 1932 and continued unabated until 1974, when it was finally toppled by a military coup and then followed by The Carnation Revolution - a civil revolt where hardly a single shot was fired, but instead civilians put carnation flowers in the rifles of military personnel. I’m not making this up.

Manoel’s ability to make movies had been almost completely curbed during the Salazar regime, as Oliveira was known to be a criitc of the governnment. He was able to make precisely three feature films before the Revolution, and one of them was after Salazar had already had a stroke, and the regime was already beginning to attempt reforms in 1972. Then, starting in 1975, at sixty-seven years of age, Oliveira’s career exploded and hardly ever slowed.

But let’s rewind, because we aren’t here to cover his entire 31 title filmography. We’re here to begin where Portuguese cinema truly began:

In 1931, Manoel saw Walther Ruttmann’s documentary Berlin: Symphony of a City. Ruttman’s film is the most famous of a small, short lived silent documentary film genre, called “city-symphony film”. These films portray the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city’s daily life. Oliveira said that Ruttman’s film was his “most useful lesson in film technique”, but that he also found it “cold, mechanical and lacking humanity.”

This led to Oliveira directing his first 21-minute short documentary: Douro, Faina Fluvial, a portrait of his hometown of Porto. He was invited to show the film at the International Congress of Film Critics in Lisbon, where the majority of the Portuguese audience booed. This would prove an ongoing reaction to Manoel’s early films from his own people.

Just in case you ever thought you should quit because you’re consistently booed by the audience that means the most to you.

Nevertheless, critics praised the film; but for all the good it did. Oliveira struggled to make another film for over 10 years. His family were wealthy industrialists and agricultural landowners. His father owned a dry-goods factory, produced the first electric light bulbs in Portugal and built an electric energy plant before he died in 1932. At 17, Manoel joined his brothers as an executive in his father’s factories, where he remained for the majority of his adult life when not making films. In a 1981 Sight and Sound article, John Gillett describes Oliveira as having “spent most of his life in business...making films only when circumstances allowed.”

Just in case you thought not being able to make films for 15 year stretches at a time while you worked menial jobs meant you should quit or in itself constituted a crisis. I mean, it does. But tomorrow always comes.

Fifteen years after his first attempt at filmmaking, Oliveira made his feature film debut in 1942. Aniki-Bóbó is a portrait of Porto’s street children and based on a short story by Rodrigo de Freitas. Non-professional actors were cast to portray the children, an Oliveira hoped to captuure the energy and ambiance that he loved about his city. The film was alrgely ignored upon release, and it’s poor reception forced Oliveira to abandon other film projects he was involved in at the time, after which he dedicated himself to work in a vineyard that his wife had inherited.

In case you thought it was ever safe to quit your day job when you’re living through an authoritarian regime. Americans, I’m looking at you.

But time has been kind to Aniki-Bóbó, which today is considered:

And ANIKI-BOBO, the 1942 debut feature of Manoel de Oliveira is what we discuss in today’s episode folks. I just took my first trip to Portugal, and to celebrate, we had to watch our very first Portuguese movie, which is also pretty close to being the first narrative Portuguese feature film of note in the country’s history.

So please give it a listen! Either above or on your podcast platform of choice.

The Liqueurs

Licor Beirão, simply known as Beirão (Bay-rao), is a Portuguese liqueur from the Beira region of Portugal. Originating in the 19th century, it is the most consumed alcoholic spirit in Portugal. And it is phenomenally good.

I tried it for the first time in Portugal, annd brought a bottle home. Dallas tried it and immediately declared it “a problem”. There are stores that will ship in America, and/or see if you can find some for yourself wherever you are!

Production of Beirao began in the 19th century in \Lousã, in the Beira region, from where it got its name (Beirão means “from Beira”). It is made from a double distillation of seeds and herbs, including mint, cinnamon, cardamom and lavender, from all over the world, including former Portuguese colonies of Brazil, Sri Lanka, and India.

Much like other “aromatic” licqueurs steeped in roots, seeds, herbs, and spices such as Vermouth, Beirao was originally produced in the 19th century as a medicinal product for stomach aches. In the late 19th century alcoholic beverages were no longer qualified as medicinal but the liqueur was kept in production in a small factory owned by the son-in-law of the original producer. In 1929 the liqueur entered a contest on the 2nd Beirão Congress where it earned a gold medal and its name of Beirão.

The liqueur is still produced and bottled at Quinta do Meiral, according to the original secret recipe, by double distillation of 13 different aromatic seeds, herbs and spices. After being weighed out and mixed, the plants and herbs are mixed with alcohol, and remain in maceration for a minimum of about twenty to twenty five days. The resulting contents are then twice distilled in copper alembics.

The use of natural plants and herbs is one of this liqueur’s main distinctive factors, since it doesn’t make use of essences and artificial aromas — rather, the aroma used is produced locally, an alcoholate made from the base ingredients. Once the alcoholate is ready, it is then added into a mixture of alcohol, sugar and water. This mixture is then tested to ensure it fits the secret recipe’s parameters.

A punch line used in its advertising in the 1960’s, O Beirão que todos gostam (”The one from Beira which everybody likes”), had a subtle reference to their authoritariian ruler, António de Oliveira Salazar, who was “the one from Beira which not everybody likes”.

The ideal way to drink Beirao is over ice (one medium to large ice cube, if possible) and a twist of lemon, squeezed to add its oils to the liquid. It’s sweet (but not too sweet!), and bursting with Sasparilla-like flavors, then the lemon twist will add a zip of brightness. It perfectly matches the energy of the children and the film itself, while remaining complex in total flavor profile, easy yet deep, immensely pleasing, just like ANIKI-BOBO.

Dallas selected another Portuguese liqueur, this one traditional to the region of Obidos, made from that tart/sour Ginja cherry indigenous to Portugal. Typically referred to as “ginginja” (get it? GIN-Ginja!) this is a deep, luscious cherry liqueur, sweet yet tart, and once again “a problem” / “dangerous” in Dallas’ estimation. Listen to the episode where we downs a third of the bottle while we’re recording!

And there is also a third Portuguese liqueur that could fit ANIKI-BOBO - their almond “Amarguinha” (Am-are-gween-ya). Similar to Amaretto but more balanced, not quite as sweet, and a deeper pure almond flavor. Do yourself a favor and search for any/all of these!

And yes, I know it’s wild we didn’t pair a single Portuguese wine with this first Portuguese film! But my next TWO pairings in the next two episodes will both feature Portuguese wines, so those recommendations are coming!

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