Look at the state of your garden...

Fhina doesn't know where she was going with this today, mes loves...

I was watching a great film for the second time the other weekend...

It's called Garden State, and it has such a cool and edgy soundtrack... It was written and directed by this mysterious man, Zach Braff, who was one of my first friends on Myspace incidentally...

Zach Braff blogs big-stylee, particularly on his Myspace...

Then I wibbled around the lawn at Crawford Mansions, with a 'song as earworm' Grizz had been playing on his laptop on that day... Jose Gonzalez's 'Crosses...', with its lyrics, telling me:

'Don't you know that I'll be around to guide you
Through your weakest moments to leave them behind you
Returning nightmares only shadows
We'll cast some light and you'll be alright for now
Crosses all over, heavy on your shoulders
The sirens inside you waiting to step forward
Disturbing silence darkens your sight
We'll cast some light and you'll be alright for now'



And I thought of Nick Drake, whose songs keep re-emerging as background to some TV adverts these days... And I wondered what he'd think about that... He who failed to find fame and good fortune in his lifetime, but whose music has become more successful over the past twenty or so years?

'Crosses all over the boulevard
The streets outside your window overflooded
People staring they know you've been broken
Repeatedly reminded by the looks on their faces
Ignore them tonight and you'll be alright'




"Garden State is a 2004 film written, directed by and starring Zach Braff, with Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard and co-starring Sir Ian Holm.

The film centres on Andrew Largeman (Braff), a 26-year-old actor/waiter who returns to his hometown in New Jersey after his mother dies.

The title alludes both to the nickname for New Jersey, and to lines from Andrew Marvell's poem "The Garden":

"Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:"

"It was filmed over 25 days in April and May 2003 and released on July 28, 2004. The main setting and primary shooting location was New Jersey.

It was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival. The film won Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards.

The film contains many allusions to the similar coming of age film The Graduate (1967), most notably the opening airplane scene that both pictures share.



Garden State was well received, and is considered a major success for Braff as it was his feature film debut as a director. Lacking the publicity machine of most mainstream Hollywood films, it generated a devoted fan base from people who read and responded to Braff's blog on the film's official site.

Fans drove hours to see the film and saw it repeatedly in theatres. The film also spawned a popular soundtrack for which Braff, who picked the music himself, won a Grammy award".

And one of the songs in the film, I think, is The Only Living Boy In New York...

La Wiki has come out of her seasonal, and possibly also menopausal, mega-huff to tell me:

"Simon wrote this as a thinly-veiled message to Art Garfunkel, referring to a specific incident where Garfunkel went to Mexico to act in the film Catch-22. Simon was left alone in New York writing songs for Bridge over Troubled Water, hence the lonely feelings of "The Only Living Boy In New York."

Simon refers to Garfunkel in the song as Tom, referring to their early days when they were called Tom and Jerry.

The background vocals feature both Garfunkel and Simon recorded together in an echo chamber, multi-tracked around eight times".

About Garden State, Braff describes the themes of the movie as, “love, for lack of a better term. And it’s a movie about awakening. It’s a movie about taking action.

It’s a movie about how life is short, go for it now...

“[Andrew] is dealing with issues that you are going through all the time going into your thirties,” he says of his character.

“He’s lost and lonesome, which is something I definitely felt in my twenties”.

...And la Fhina says, 'Wait until he gets to his forties' ;)

Are you ready to scream into the abyss, mes bloggy yellow legal-pads?!

Fhina is...