Any thoughts on Garden State?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Surprise there's not a thread on this yet. This movie just started its run in New York and Los Angeles yesterday, and will be hitting theatres nationwide in short order. It's a Fox Searchlight production and its trailer looked damn tasty, if not horrendously original. My assessment of the movie is about the same. It's a bildungsroman shot in suburban New Jersey which has of course been done before, but as an aimless 20-something from the wilds of that same state I can't help but feel a certain empathy with such stories. I was almost expecting something like the Rick Moody book "Garden State" and maybe it's a good thing they have nothing to do with one another. On one hand you have the good: lovely, clever little moments that are surprisingly well-captured for what I think is a directorial debut (the scene where he's standing in front of a bathroom wall wearing a shirt made out of the wallpaper, a sad and quizzical expression on his face as he blends in perfectly, is a particular triumph) and characters that are sweetly portrayed--if somewhat mildly cliched-- like the somewhat crazy girl with a heart of gold and the poor, slightly sleazy best friend who manages still to share deep insights into the cosmos. On the other hand, you have a series of self-consciously epiphanical moments set against a soundtrack of increasingly "thoughtful" and "sensitive" indie folk-pop. For God's sake, the protagonist stands screaming on the edge of an abyss. An actual abyss. A little heavy-handed, no? The movie worked for me, but I wasn't certain-- history will either consign this to the rubbish-bin of quarter-life crisis movies a la' Suburbia, Clerks, Reality Bites, and Kicking and Screaming, to place them in order of talent and originality; or it will receive the more pleasant fate of being placed alongside pretty thought-provokers like the Station Agent. Nothing fancy, nothing ground-breaking, but a nice way to spend 10 bucks all the same. I'm interested in what other people have to say about this movie-- and do forgive the rambling and tendency for over-long sentences on my part, please, I'm a long-time lurker who posts maybe once in a bright blue moon.

― justin s, Thursday, 29 July 2004 15:58 (twenty-one years ago)

par·a·graph

A distinct division of written or printed matter that begins on a new, usually indented line, consists of one or more sentences, and typically deals with a single thought or topic or
quotes one speaker's continuous words.

A mark ( ¶ ) used to indicate where a new paragraph should begin or to serve as a reference mark.

A brief article, notice, or announcement, as in a newspaper.

tr.v. par·a·graphed, par·a·graph·ing, par·a·graphs To divide or arrange into paragraphs.

― Huey (Huey), Thursday, 29 July 2004 16:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Incidentally, I can't wait to see this movie.

― Huey (Huey), Thursday, 29 July 2004 16:14 (twenty-one years ago)

The shot with the star in a paisley shirt that blends in perfectly to the wallpaper behind him bothers me a great deal.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, 29 July 2004 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

My girlfriend really wants to see this, so I suppose I will go. It looks interesting to me, too, but I've yet to understand how it rises above typical Sundance fare.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 29 July 2004 16:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Salon has an interesting article on the film and on Zach Braff. The opening paragraph intrigues:

Zach Braff's "Garden State" may not be the most confident debut picture: It moves forward, pokily at times, with the tentativeness of an injured spider, and in oddly sloping directions. But there's a moseying delicacy about it that sometimes catches you off-guard: For a first time out (Braff also stars in the picture, and he wrote the script), "Garden State" is for the most part surprisingly unself-conscious. You have to be ambitious to direct yourself in the first movie you've ever directed, especially one you've written yourself. But Braff (best known from TV's "Scrubs") never comes off as a blowhard -- not even a fashionably self-effacing blowhard. His motivation feels genuine, as if he wanted to make a movie because he actually had something to say, instead of just wanting to smear his name around as a career move.

― minori, Thursday, 29 July 2004 19:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'll probably end up seeing it and eating my words, but I agree with the tail end of Jaymc's post.

― AdamL :') (nordicskilla), Thursday, 29 July 2004 19:56 (twenty-one years ago)

the poster is so bad

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 29 July 2004 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

two weeks pass...

precious twee toothless horrible fucking movie. don't see it.

― g--ff (gcannon), Sunday, 15 August 2004 03:45 (twenty-one years ago)

n. portman at one point says "it's the shins. have you heard of them? this song will change your life."

― g--ff (gcannon), Sunday, 15 August 2004 03:46 (twenty-one years ago)

I stand by my outrageous claim that Natalie Portman will win an Oscar for this movie.

― Jimmy Mod, Man About Towne (ModJ), Sunday, 15 August 2004 03:48 (twenty-one years ago)

dude that's bonkers.

― g--ff (gcannon), Sunday, 15 August 2004 03:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Whoever wrote that line should have been drowned at birth.

― Leon Czolgosz (Nicole), Sunday, 15 August 2004 03:53 (twenty-one years ago)

well zach braff wrote that line.

― g--ff (gcannon), Sunday, 15 August 2004 04:00 (twenty-one years ago)

So there you go.

― Jimmy Mod, Man About Towne (ModJ), Sunday, 15 August 2004 04:01 (twenty-one years ago)

It figures.

― Leon Czolgosz (Nicole), Sunday, 15 August 2004 04:04 (twenty-one years ago)

jesus christ!!! they shoulda just called this movie "straw man"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 15 August 2004 14:02 (twenty-one years ago)

n. portman at one point says "it's the shins. have you heard of them? this song will change your life."

A friend of mine around here who has pretty good taste was raving about this movie. But this one line alone has killed my incipient interest stone dead.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 15 August 2004 16:17 (twenty-one years ago)

i was in the apple store yesterday and they were playing the shins.

i saw the new "esqire" next door while getting some cigarettes at walgreens and natalie portman is hot, by god. but still a mediocre actress.

― |//\\| (amateurist), Sunday, 15 August 2004 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Just saw it. It does indeed suffer from this ongoing blurring of the lines between "independent movie" and "Death Cab for Cutie video." On the plus side, it's funny and charming for good stretches of time, not to mention surprisingly well-directed; the performances are solid, and it's visually quite nice; and after every twenty or so minutes of feeling roughly like that about it, it suddenly steps in a big surprising pile of all-wrong, such as this unearned screaming-into-the-abyss thing. Biggest pile: the ending. I haven't seen The Village, but, umm, yeah. I will compliment the ending on its being extremely, laughably short, but it seems like the ending to an entirely different and much worse movie. Actually more like a TV show. Whatever, it lasts like three minutes, and to its credit it does get you 100% prepared to leave the theater.

Anyway, whatever, cute enjoyable Shins-fan movie. It's mostly about Natalie Portman's right ear, which gets more screen time than anything else except Braff.

― nabiscothingy, Sunday, 15 August 2004 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

It does indeed suffer from this ongoing blurring of the lines between "independent movie" and "Death Cab for Cutie video."

Quote of the year.

― Jimmy Mod, Man About Towne (ModJ), Sunday, 15 August 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

You know what's weird about the Shins? I myself was foisting them on my friends about a year and a half back, but realise now that I have not the slightest clue where I first heard about them. Perhaps it's all a nefarious mind control plot.

― Kim (Kim), Sunday, 15 August 2004 18:46 (twenty-one years ago)

The only possible excuse for the Shins thing is that -- if I remember right -- this film was done shooting like two whole years ago. That and it was sort of worth it to hear her say "The Shins" and then hear selected people around the theater choke up their popcorn / squirt Coke out of their noses / snort cuncontrollably.

― nabiscothingy, Monday, 16 August 2004 13:50 (twenty-one years ago)

That's right, "cuncontrollably." It's a word, look it up.

― nabiscothingy, Monday, 16 August 2004 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Sounds like a combination of fantasy story, lullaby and porn.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 16 August 2004 14:31 (twenty-one years ago)

just like my life then.

i need to think abt this some more. it reeeally rubbed me the wrong way but it did have some charms, peter saarsgaaaard (sp) chief among them.

― g--ff (gcannon), Monday, 16 August 2004 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

both saarsgaard and his g.f. have last name that are difficult to spell. hmm.

― amateur!!!st, Monday, 16 August 2004 14:58 (twenty-one years ago)

HMMMMM

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 16 August 2004 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

how rockin' was peter sarsgaard in shattered glass

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 16 August 2004 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I enjoyed it, but it depressed the hell out of me, mainly because I haven't had a similar epiphany yet. The selection of music felt like an ILMer from last year had just hit shuffle on his collection.

― 57 7th (calstars), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Which Shins song is she talking about? My god they suck.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

This is really picky, but I thought it was kind of awkward how when she makes him listen to "New Slang" on the headphones, he says something that indicates he's never heard of the Shins before, but there had been a Shins song on the soundtrack earlier in the movie. Obviously, just because it's on the soundtrack doesn't mean his character is familiar with the band, but it just seemed like lazy filmmaking or something to me.

― n.a. (Nick A.), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:36 (twenty-one years ago)

precious twee toothless horrible fucking movie. don't see it.
-- g--ff (gffcnn...) (webmail), August 15th, 2004 9:45 PM. (gcannon) (link)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

n. portman at one point says "it's the shins. have you heard of them? this song will change your life."
-- g--ff (gffcnn...) (webmail), August 15th, 2004 9:46 PM. (gcannon) (link)

SO OTM.

Which Shins song is she talking about? My god they suck.
-- AaronHz (aaronh...) (webmail), August 23rd, 2004 2:34 PM. (AaronHz) (link)

The scene in question is about "New Slang" which is playing on her headphones at the time. The scene is really awkward too since it serves no function except to establish that they are both douchebags. (xp)

― dean? (deangulberry), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:37 (twenty-one years ago)

"I've never heard these guys before."
"Dude, this song was wafting through the air three scenes ago, keep up."

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:38 (twenty-one years ago)

dean you'll be happy to know i like the shins! :)

― amateur!!st, Monday, 23 August 2004 20:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I knew it had to be "New Slang".

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:46 (twenty-one years ago)

dear amateurist, i like the shins as well but i hate pointless indie band name dropping scenes in movies.

― dean? (deangulberry), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Seriously, though, THE ENDING. What the hell was that?

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:48 (twenty-one years ago)

If this song changes you're life, you're a schmuck:
Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth.
Only, i don't know how they got out, dear.
Turn me back into the pet that i was when we met.
I was happier then with no mind-set.
And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
And i'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries.
Hope it's right when you die, old and bony.
Dawn breaks like a bull through the hall,
Never should have called
But my head's to the wall and i'm lonely.
And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
And i'd a danced like the kind of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
God speed all the bakers at dawn may they all cut their thumbs,
And bleed into their buns 'till they melt away.

I'm looking in on the good life i might be doomed never to find.
Without a trust or flaming fields am i too dumb to refine?
And if you'd 'a took to me like
Well i'd a danced like the queen of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)

yes well i like "new slang," too...

but it wasn't pointless! it was to say, "this girl here, she is a shins fan! she is damaged but also strong DO YOU SEE?!?"

― g--ff (gcannon), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)

i feel like this will set the shins' career forward, but hurt their standing among ilxors.

note i have not seen the movie.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 23 August 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

that's a great song, but you have to be sheltered if it changed your life. maybe that's the point? I haven't seen the film.

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

i guess it wasn't pointless, as it taught me something. "get ready for more things like this to be included in the dialogue that would've been better communicated by hiring better actors."

― dean? (deangulberry), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

At least it's the one good Shins song.

This kind of sucked. The funny parts were all nice, but other than that it was like a mish-mash of Wes Anderson and David Gordon Green but not as good as either.

The previews were for the new Alexander Payne, Anderson and David O. Russell films, plus the Kirsten Dunst tennis movie. I liked the four previes (in and of themselves) better than Garden State

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

that song changed the Shins' life, wasn't it the one they let McDonalds or someone use in an ad?

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

tho to up the ick factor, imagine z braff and n portman bonding over that song during preproduction, urrr it's giving me lemonade face.

― g--ff (gcannon), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Can we not talk about the Shins and talk about the uber-crap ENDING?

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:53 (twenty-one years ago)

x-post
what if it was a Death Cab song?

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:53 (twenty-one years ago)

What was wrong with the ending?

― n.a. (Nick A.), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:54 (twenty-one years ago)

it was obvious ... but really, was there any other way for that movie to have ended? tweemo movie. tweemo ending.

― dean? (deangulberry), Monday, 23 August 2004 20:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Skipping 118 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

If Ray Romano had half the charisma of Zach Braff I would be able to tolerate him.

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I just like the 'you will never be home again' message
I thought the movie was pretty good

nothing amazing or spectacular, but good entertainment

hella better than a lot of the shit hollywood rolls out on a regular basis

― LORD OF ALL THINGS HOMOELECTRONIC (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:58 (twenty-one years ago)

ha. i'm doing a website for this right now. (or should be. i'm actually on ilx right now). i haven't seen it tho. i'm always curious about the way anti-depressants are portrayed in movies. or pop culture. like they're a crutch to make people numb and/or superficially happy and part of some modern indie (is that the new word for gen x?) dystopia myth. how was it used here?

― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:09 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a twist on that; fully explaining what's going on kind of ruins a critical portion of the movie but the end result is unnecessary numbing of the Zach Braff character via antidepressants by the Ian Holm character.

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:12 (twenty-one years ago)

the way antidepressants were treated so casually in this movie was one of the many things that made this the worst movie of the year. zach braff clearly neither has any experience with medication nor does he know anyone who does. either that or he assumes no-one in the audience knows the difference. I do like him on Scrubs though.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:18 (twenty-one years ago)

(Point of order: There was a period of time in the early 90s at least when people I was at school with were receiving unnecessary amounts of Prozac like it was candy.)

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I am going to see this and enjoy it (if it ever bloody shows down here) because Zach Braff can park his arse in my bed any time he likes and that is a good enough reason to watch it fer me. If I spend the whole film perving and dont pay attention I still got my $10 worth.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:23 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah I know, Dan, me too; but the way he simply went off it and was jim dandy and didn't seem to have any problems was dumb and unrealisitic. Anyone who has allegedly been medicated for that long who suddenly stops taking them is likely in for a world of weird.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know, he didn't really strike me as being jim dandy, given the irrational things he was doing (the scream scene, the whole ending bit, etc).

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:28 (twenty-one years ago)

it's on already down 'ere, Trayce! I saw it on Tuesday.

― haitch the carnivore (haitch), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:30 (twenty-one years ago)

three weeks pass...

For a second I thought the plane might crash like his dream at the beginning and I was starting to feel a bit angry. So, I'm glad that didn't happen. Now THAT would have been predictable.

That should totally have happened!

I did get a weird sense of lurking foreboding from this for most of it.

― Ferg, Ah (Ferg), Tuesday, 28 December 2004 02:49 (twenty-one years ago)

If I'd remembered that this thread wasn't on the New Answers page I probably wouldn't have revived it with such a shitty observation. Ah well.

― Ferg, Ah (Ferg), Tuesday, 28 December 2004 02:50 (twenty-one years ago)

if it makes you feel better, i'll repost the pointless thing i did during the great ilx timewarp black hole:

"i was afraid i might like this film, but it really sucked hurrah!"

― m. (mitchlnw), Tuesday, 28 December 2004 11:27 (twenty-one years ago)

four weeks pass...

Saw it tonight. My thoughts

cliche ridden (post) teen emoting + "quirkiness" + "emotional depth" x (US indie rock pop + pretty pictures) =

Live Journal: The Movie

― elwisty (elwisty), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 02:09 (twenty-one years ago)

haha otm

― mayahee, mayahoo, mayaha, mayahaha (deangulberry), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 02:33 (twenty-one years ago)

one month passes...

Forgive me if this has been answered already, but I just saw this recently -- and was largely underwhelmed -- but riddle me this, Batman -- why does the protagonist's gravedigger friend need to go see Method Man who, in turn, sends the trio to the bottom of the quary to see the eccentric junk shop family to retrieve a piece of jewelry that, I presume, had been wrapped around the neck of the protagonist's recently dead mother? Was there grave-disturbing involved? Why did the quarry family have it? And why was Method Man involved?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 14 March 2005 17:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Some of this thread is good, some of it a little hard to understand. I don't get all of the references, to actors and other things.

I saw the film itself on an aeroplane to Washington DC. An odd thing was, it starts with footage of people on a plane that's going to crash -- just the sort of thing they always used to say would never get shown *on a plane*.

I thought the film really bad, really disappointing. The basic set-up, place, time, seems to offer promise and possibility, romance and reflection; it delivers almost nothing. It falls back too often on OUCH! lines like 'This is the part of the movie where I'm supposed to kiss you, right?'. It was kind of like a mediocre US TV programme. It contained few good lines. Also too many drugs, etc.

Nabisco has said a lot very well.

I don't know about the Shins problem that people are having, ie. 'it's 2 years out of date'. In England, really only JtN knows about the band the Shins. I am not sure they are good, myself.

― the bluefox, Monday, 14 March 2005 18:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Alex, gravedigger guy was shown taking jewelry from a casket about to go under, and Zach gives him a look and GG returns a "dude, I make minimum wage in this god-forsaken town and I need drugs" look. So it is assumed GG took the pendant and fenced it, and therefore knew how to get it back.

― nickn (nickn), Monday, 14 March 2005 19:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh man, I had actually written "this album could kinda change your life" about Oh, Inverted World for a popmatters thing on the art of the album during the summer, and then I see this goddamm movie and the fact that Natalie Portman has my schtick a little bit and it was awful. I hate Zach Braff. I hate my writing. I meant that The Shins will change your life in an My First Awesome Indie Album kind of way, and not in a This Shit Is Super Deep kind of way. Then I started dating a boy who just got off his meds. This movie is not about my generation. There's a better movie out there, somewhere about that kind of malaise.

― Maggie O'Connor (unmitigatedhilarity), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Sugarpants is the most OTM on this thread.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Method Man was in this movie because Zach Braff needs "street" "cred."

― sugarpants (sugarpants), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:28 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe you can steal natalie portman's looks in exchange for her stealing your schtick

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:33 (twenty-one years ago)

My friend edited the DVD extras. I didn't know this and I trashed, trashed, trashed the movie in her presence. Whoops!

― Remy (null) (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Inane \In*ane"\, a. [L. inanis.]
Without contents; empty; void of sense or intelligence;
purposeless; pointless; characterless; useless. ``Vague and
inane instincts.'' --I. Taylor. -- In*ane"ly, adv.

Inane \In*ane"\, n.
That which is void or empty. [R.]

The undistinguishable inane of infinite space. --Locke.

― latebloomer: damn cheapskate satanists (latebloomer), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I still haven't seen this. All the teenyfangirl/boi emo love for Braff has made me ill. And I love him. But ugh fankids, step off fammit.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:50 (twenty-one years ago)

uh. dammit, not fammit.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 00:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I saw this a few weeks ago. i had read this thread previously, and the movie was worse than i expected.

― Kim (Kim), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 02:56 (twenty-one years ago)

a friend had forgotten GS had been on her netflix queue for a while and it showed up, so we decided to watch it for the hell of it. 10 KINDS OF PAINFUL. UGH. a real cringefest. and there kept being all these "real" details he'd make sure you noticed in all the set designs. for effect or whatever. like, "cut. we need to cut a few more holes in these curtains in this dingy pott smoker's apartment so when the light shines through 'em it shoots beams through and stuff." or the way the dirty fingerprints were arranged on the tv set when they're watching portman's alligator ice skating performance. ridiculous all the way through.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 18 March 2005 20:09 (twenty-one years ago)

The only thing that stands out for me now is Sarsgaard at the breakfast table 'speaking Klingon' and then translating it back to 'Get the fuck out of my house!' All the rest has evaporated.

― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 18 March 2005 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

man, doesn't their local knight/jousting themed joint have a place for their employees to change into their damn armor costumes on site? sheesh.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 18 March 2005 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Not a terrible film, but a very very bad one nonetheless.

― VIC MACKEY (nordicskilla), Friday, 18 March 2005 20:52 (twenty-one years ago)

"cut. we need to cut a few more holes in these curtains in this dingy pott smoker's apartment so when the light shines through 'em it shoots beams through and stuff."

THIS sounds good!! i mgiht see this movie. probably will. probably won't like it. but that sounds good.

― natlie potman heh, heh, Friday, 18 March 2005 21:05 (twenty-one years ago)

three months pass...

why would you cast natalie portman as a shikse?!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 14 July 2005 20:16 (twenty years ago)

Why would you cast Natalie Portman in anything other than a snuff film?

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 14 July 2005 20:20 (twenty years ago)

HEY WATCH IT.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 14 July 2005 20:20 (twenty years ago)

my thoughts: it's shit!

― Homosexual II (Homosexual II), Thursday, 14 July 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

Saw it tonight. My thoughts
cliche ridden (post) teen emoting + "quirkiness" + "emotional depth" x (US indie rock pop + pretty pictures) =
Live Journal: The Movie

-- elwisty (kowalski9...), January 26th, 2005.

OTFM

― latebloomer: occasionally OTM (latebloomer), Thursday, 14 July 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

four months pass...

Well, I was right on that score; Zach perving a plenty. But I was suprisingly disapointed in the film overall. It was like watching a long Scrubs episode, and it had some really wonderful and funny moments, and visually I liked it a lot, but yeah too many clumsy bits. Tho I did comment to the boy at one point that I actually liked the clumsy bad dialogue (eg in the after party scene) cos thats how people Really Talk. Problem with that is, as Remy would concur, you shouldn't do this in films, I think. Not too much anyhow.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 2 December 2005 00:55 (twenty years ago)

The ending was really, REALLY stupid, though.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 2 December 2005 00:56 (twenty years ago)

now that i know n/a hates garden state i may have revise my feelings about him

― dabnis coleman's ghost (dubplatestyle), Friday, 2 December 2005 01:04 (twenty years ago)

The previews were for the new Alexander Payne, Anderson and David O. Russell films, plus the Kirsten Dunst tennis movie. I liked the four previes (in and of themselves) better than Garden State

2004-early 2005 was a horribly disappointing time for movies.

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Friday, 2 December 2005 01:06 (twenty years ago)

did you like "Thumbsucker"?

― kingfish hobo juckie (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 2 December 2005 01:07 (twenty years ago)

the Kirsten Dunst tennis movie

Wimbledon was so much better than Garden State

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 2 December 2005 03:55 (twenty years ago)

I still haven't seen this. I feel so out of it.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 2 December 2005 15:56 (twenty years ago)

dont worry, it was crap.

― sunny successor (he hates my guts, we had a fight) (katharine), Friday, 2 December 2005 15:57 (twenty years ago)

i LOVE this film! screw the hataz...

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Friday, 2 December 2005 16:32 (twenty years ago)

now that i know n/a hates garden state i may have revise my feelings about him

n/a is so not the protypical "indie kid" that ilx has made him out to be.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 2 December 2005 16:39 (twenty years ago)

http://traditio.com/comment/com0505za.jpg

― dabnis coleman's ghost (dubplatestyle), Friday, 2 December 2005 16:40 (twenty years ago)

nine months pass...

Hi dere,

Watched this the other day and, opportunistic pop references asides I really enjoyed it - well, up until the end where Nabisco is totally OTM about it just imploding in on itself and coming out as a tawdry rom-com cliche with added tweemo guff. Up until then, I lapped up the whole "coming home and it's not home" thing and the excellently observed smalltown weirdness. Despite it being set in Jersey, it very much reminds me of Letchworth Garden City where my parents live. Portman's situation with the doting mother and the house full of animals and the unfortunate medical history ring true with someone I know very well too. So yeh, I was feeling it.

The ending should have shown Braff's character coming off the drugs and going totally apeshit crazy with a chainsaw. Yeh, it started going wrong about the time he started banging on about "I just want to be able to feel something again" and trying to cry, it's like a Bright Eyes advert or something and managed to damage what started as a very solid, well thought out movie about mid-20s soulsearching.

― wogan lenin (dog latin), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 08:58 (nineteen years ago)

was the twist that he pushed his mum out of a bath? i didn't get that.

― pscott (elwisty), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 11:29 (nineteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.