NEW YORK — “Bottle Shock,” the true story of a California winery family, will be distributed in North America by Freestyle Releasing.

Randall Miller’s feature starring Chris Pine, Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Freddy Rodriguez premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival. It revolves around a vineyard owner (Pullman) and his slacker son (Pine) who join forces with a British winemaker (Rickman) to launch the 1976 Paris Tastings, which put the California wine industry on the map.

The film will be released this year in more than 250 theaters nationwide. Odd Lot International will handle foreign sales on the project at next month’s Festival de Cannes, part of a two-picture rep deal with Freestyle.

Miller co-wrote the film with Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz. He also produced the film with Savin, J. Todd Harris, Brenda Lhormer, Marc Lhormer and Marc Toberoff.

Freestyle also is distributing Miller’s darkly comic thriller “Nobel Son,” which also stars Rickman and Pullman.

HollywoodReporter.com

Source: In a very brief interview for Hollywood Today included in the current issue of Star Trek Magazine. Star Trek Movie Actor Chris Pine who portrays the role of Captain James T. Kirk, which was originated by William Shatner, seemed very upbeat about the new movie and compared it to ‘Batman Begins’.

You get the birth, the childhood and beginning of the main characters before the five – year mission. That’s going to be great. You get a sense of where they came from and how they began. Plus anyone who is a lover of big action films is going to love this.

Pine revealed that he has much confidence in the new films ability to attract new fans and the actor feels that the movie has the right balance of action and humor to draw back fans as well as attract newer fans too boot.

by Kaleem Aftab, IGN UK
March 10, 2008 – Chris Pine who is playing Captain James T. Kirk in Lost creator J.J Abrams upcoming Star Trek movie has a rather surprising method of trying to fill in the black hole left by the iconic performances of William Shatner. Pine says that in seeking inspiration for his Kirk, he has not looked to Shatner but another famous intergalactic space hero – Han Solo.

When asked who he would like his incarnation of the Starship Enterprise captain to most resemble, Pine responded, “I would definitely say Harrison Ford in either Indiana Jones or Star Wars. What Harrison Ford is so great at doing is bringing that quality to his characters that if they could be anywhere else in the world they would be there, but he is not, he just is in the middle of s*** and he has to figure out a way of dealing with it so that he can go back to doing whatever the hell he was doing before the film started.

“I’ve always loved that quality about him in Star Wars, this sense of absolute grumpy manner; the accidental hero. Not to say that I modeled my version of James T Kirk on anything in particular but I think I definitely have wanted to bring that kind of Harrison Ford humour to Kirk.”

Any resemblance to Han Solo?

Star Trek is currently filming in L.A and is scheduled for released in May 2009, when we’ll find out if the 27 year-old actor has managed to fulfill his own lofty ambition.

I just ran across this video of Chris from this year’s Sundance Festival as he took the time to sit down with Variety. In the interview you hear Chris discuss his role as Bo Barret in “Bottle Shock” and the history behind the Napa Valley Winery’s which the movie is based on. It’s nice to see something recent of him 🙂

For those interested in seeing Chris’s small role as “Levine” in the medical drama known as ER. The episode is called “A Thousand Cranes” which originally aired in 2003 on NBC. You can catch this episode when it airs on TNT on February 22nd, 2008 at 11AM Eastern time. You can expect video and captures soon after 😉

By Missy Schwartz
In the based-on-a-true story Sundance movie Bottle Shock, Chris Pine stars opposite Bill Pullman as one half of a California wine-making duo whose ”perfect” Chardonnay impressed the merde out of the French at a 1976 blind tasting. The day after the film’s premiere, we cornered young Mr. Pine in the EW photo lounge to chat about his first Sundance experience, as well as some other movie he’s in whose title rhymes with ”Far Schmeck.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Are you enjoying Sundance?
CHRIS PINE: I’m only here for a very short time, so I’m going to cram in as much fun as possible. I have to hop on a plane tonight and go back home, unfortunately.

Because you’re shooting some small movie, right?
Yes, it’s a small independent back in Los Angeles. It’s kind of like Star Wars and Spaceballs combined. I think they’re calling it Star Trek. It’s going very well. We’re having a lot of fun. It comes out later this year, sometime near Christmas time. I think people will really enjoy it.