Miles Raymond - to pinot him is to love him

Paul Giamatti has come a long way from when he took a serious back seat to Howard Stern in Private Parts as "Pig Vomit" (and of course he stole the film, as he always did, in all his pre-starring-role character parts). But yes, Virginia, there is a God, and now he's finally being allowed to come into his own, as one of the most unconventional leading men in the history of the cinema, much to my unabashed and thoroughly supreme delight.

He ruled in Duets, he stole the show as a one-person blue man group in Big Fat Liar, and he successfully carried American Splendor, as underground comic writer Harvey Pekar, and he does it again, to even more brilliant effect, in Sideways, where he plays the disgruntled, depressed Miles one-whiff-away-from-being-a-wino Raymond, and nobody working in films today is better at this kind of characterization - a person who's gradually being pushed to his limit, from within and without, slowly but surely pressed to the breaking point, and you know that the moment when he finally snaps is going to be a payoff-and-a-half. We are treated to such a payoff scene in Sideways - we're treated to that scene and much, much more, thanks to a near-perfect script and beautiful direction, from a director who truly understand Giamatti's most extraordinary gifts.

His co-stars shine as well - Thomas Haden Church (as his desperate soon-to-be-married actor friend, Jack), Sandra Oh (as the woman Jack chooses to have his last-week-as-a-bachelor fling with), and the wonderful Virginia Madsen, glowingly radiant as she's ever been as the soulful Maya. I would say Giamatti's performance is good enough to warrant an Oscar nomination here, but then again, I'm pronouncedly biased when it comes to the man.