At the Santa Barbara Film Festival last Sunday I asked Sideways star Paul Giamatti why he didn’t get nominated for Best Actor. In so doing I aired my pet theory, which is that Academy voters of a certain age resented his Miles character stealing money from his mother’s bedroom bureau. Since then New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis has floated a better explanation, to wit: “While film critics embraced [Giamatti] and the performance, because they relate to both, actors are terrified of the specter that each presents. Actors sell themselves as being completely together, manicured, extraordinary physical specimens; they are not (or so they think and hope) losers. In this sense, both Mr. Giamatti, whose physical appearance is a rebuke to the buff and gloss of Hollywood’s plastic people, and the sad-sack character he plays in Sideways represent twinned nightmares for these professional narcissists. Then there’s the fact that actors can also be pretty damn stupid.”