DRINKING AND DRIVING.(Movie Review)

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Early on in the wonderful new movie "Sideways," the hero, Miles (Paul Giamatti), does the Times crossword puzzle while driving his Saab on the San Diego Freeway. Sharp details are not enough in themselves to make a movie great; still, when Miles props his paper up on the steering wheel, it's clear that the filmmakers--Alexander Payne, the director and screenwriter, and Jim Taylor, his co-writer--know what they are up to. Miles, a wine-loving failed novelist in his early forties, is, we quickly discover, the kind of guy who seizes every opportunity for trivial bravura (he does the crossword in ink). Two years earlier, his ...