Back from the farm

Kates and I spent the holiday weekend at the family farm …

Which means a lazy weekend spent reading, hiking, good eating, doing puzzles, playing with the dog, playing Phase 10, sleeping and watching movies …

On Saturday night, we caught “Must Love Dogs” … Your standard chick flick, featuring the beautiful Diane Lane as the recently-divorced preschool teacher Sarah and the charming John Cusack, the recently-divorced Jake, a boat builder who finds Sarah’s profile on a dating Web site.

Mostly, it’s a predictable -- Sarah initially starts to fall for a father of one of her students and then gets her heart broken when she discovers he was sleeping with another teacher -- and forgettable film, with a few good chuckles and fun scenes mixed it -- like Sarah and Jake racing all over the city to find an open drug store so they can purchase a condom to, you know; or Sarah’s father’s girlfriend (Stockard Channing) who says, while showing Sarah the ways of online dating profiles, “I love this Internet. It’s part fantasy, part community and you get to pay your bills naked.”

Expectations were understandably higher on Sunday night when we popped in “Sideways,” considering it was an Oscar contender a couple years ago … A pretty good movie for sure, but I’m not so sure I’d want to see it again.

With a strong cast -- Paul Giamatti as Miles, Thomas Haden Church as Jack, Virginia Madsen as Maya and Sandra Oh as Stephanie -- to boot, the movie is about two middle-aged men (Miles and Jack) who take a road trip across California wine country, a week before Jack is set to be married. Along the way they meet up with Maya, a waitress at a restaurant that Miles frequents, and Stephanie, a friend of Maya’s who works at a vineyard. Jack, looking for one last fling before he has to settle down, doesn’t waist anytime swooning Stephanie. Miles and Maya, meanwhile take things a little slower, but end up better off (or so you’re led to believe … ) when the credits start rolling …

Giamatti steals just about every scene he's in. Virginia Madsen always impresses me. And Sandra Oh showed me that she can do much more than just play Christina on "Grey's Anatomy." Thomas Haden Church's character was just a dweeb.

Still, almost every conversation in this film revolves around Miles’ and Maya’s obsessions with wine …

If only I liked wine. I don’t.