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Hello all,

Ian is back in the spotlight at last and for many reasons, one of which is garden state.
Now i was looking forward to this film so much but i always doubted it making its way over here but after its premiere at the sundance film festival i dont need to worry anymore. Here are some articles on the film. From what i can tell the films is going down a treat.....



abcnews.go.com/wire/Entertainment/ap20040119_73.html

PARK CITY, Utah Jan. 19 Distributors pulled out their checkbooks at the Sundance Film Festival, whose first weekend closed with deals on some of the event's hot movies.
Miramax and Fox Searchlight teamed to buy "Garden State," a romantic comedy that is one of 16 films in Sundance's dramatic competition.

Fox Searchlight bought a second dramatic-competition entry, the teen-geek tale "Napoleon Dynamite," while Lions Gate bought the ocean thriller "Open Water," based on a true story about married scuba divers mistakenly left behind in shark-infested waters by a careless boat crew.

Sony Pictures Classics picked up the festival's opening-night film, the surfing documentary "Riding Giants." Focus Features bought "The Motorcycle Diaries," chronicling Che Guevara's biker odyssey through South America with a friend in the early 1950s.

The Miramax and Fox Searchlight partnership is unusual, since distributors scouting film festivals generally go it alone when buying a movie. Studios often team up to minimize their risk by co-financing big-budget films, and the Miramax-Fox Searchlight deal was the indie equivalent.

20th Century Fox, the parent company of Fox Searchlight, and Miramax recently joined forces on "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World."

"We had worked with Fox at the bigger studio level, so it made sense to get involved at the independent level," said Miramax spokesman Paul Pflug.

"Garden State" was written and directed by Zach Braff of TV's "Scrubs." Braff also stars as a man who returns home for his mother's funeral and breaks free of a lifetime of medication-induced passivity, striking up a relationship with a quirky young woman (Natalie Portman). The film co-stars Peter Sarsgaard and Ian Holm.

"Napoleon Dynamite," an early crowd-pleaser at the festival which runs through Sunday, was directed by Jared Hess and follows the trials and triumphs of a high-school dork (Jon Heder) with bushy red hair.

"Open Water" stars Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis and was written and directed by Chris Kentis.

Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films, called "Open Water" a blend of "`Blair Witch' meets `Jaws.'"

Lions Gate plans to put the movie into wide release this summer


www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-01-19-braff-postcard_x.htm

Braff: 'Incredibly lucky' to sell a movie
By Zach Braff
Park City, Utah Zach Braff, star of NBC's Scrubs, took Garden State, a movie he wrote, directed and stars in, to the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend and promptly sold the distribution rights to Miramax and Fox Searchlight. That's unusual, to say the least, for a first-time director.
Garden State is about a young man who returns home for his mother's funeral in Los Angeles, where he confronts his controlling father (Ian Holm), connects with an old high school friend (Peter Sarsgaard) and meets a girl (Natalie Portman).

This was my first time at Sundance as a director, though I've been twice before as an actor for Getting to Know You and The Broken Hearts Club.

You have fantasies about what your Sundance experience will be like. I never could have imagined that audiences would have responded the way they did, and then to sell the movie to two companies!

People are wearing Garden State baseball caps. I thought the movie was good, but to have audiences really respond, I feel so lucky.

Pieces of Garden State are autobiographical. It's a collection of anecdotes of growing up in suburban New Jersey. The movie has you laughing, and it will have a touching moment where you feel something strong. Before it gets too emotional, it has you laughing again. At the end of the day, it's really a love story.

I just feel incredibly lucky. (The distribution deal) didn't end till 4 a.m. We drank a little champagne and passed out. We're all just grinning ear to ear.

We have three more screenings with Q&A's. I'd like to ski and see some other movies.

I came with my girlfriend, (actress) Bonnie Somerville, and the producers from Jersey Films and Camelot Pictures and about 25 members of my family. My parents are like celebrities; they're wearing their Garden State hats. People know they must be related.

I met Forest Whitaker and that was cool. I didn't meet (Sundance founder) Robert Redford, but I know he was at my movie. I met (Miramax head) Harvey Weinstein and that was pretty cool.

This is beyond anything I could ever have imagined. I'm just so grateful to Sundance.

What's next? I optioned a children's book called Andrew Henry's Meadow my brother Adam is a writer, and he and I are going to find a home for it and adapt it into a big summer kids' movie.



this one says the most about ians charecter

www.cleveland.com/entertainment/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/107450829864460.xml


'Garden State' is a favorite at Sundance

01/19/04

Joanna Connors
Plain Dealer Film Critic


Park City, Utah- Last year, the Sundance Film Festival turned into the HBO film festival, with the Cleveland-bred "American Splendor" heading up an impressive slate of HBO documentaries and features that ended up dominating the festival.

This year, the festival has a little bit of a Must-See TV vibe. Two of the stars of NBC's Thursday night lineup have films in the 16-film Dramatic Competition (the category that "American Splendor" won last year).

"Friends" star Courtney Cox heads up the cast of "November," a psychological drama directed by Greg Harrison that's generating some respectable buzz.

But it is Zach Braff, who stars in the sitcom "Scrubs," who is really feeling the Sundance love this year. Braff wrote, directed and stars in "Garden State," a romantic comedy that looks to be a contender for the Audience Award, Sundance's version of the People's Choice Award.

The 28-year-old Braff, who studied film at Northwestern University, wrote himself a role not unlike his goofy, charming "Scrubs" character, J.D. - if J.D. had a serious case of overmedicated numbness and a dark secret in his past.

He's Andrew Largeman, a struggling actor in Los Angeles who comes home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral. It's his first time home in 10 years, and it's clear he left a lot of baggage in New Jersey when he left, chief among them his relationship with his psychiatrist father (Ian Holm), who has been prescribing him lithium and antidepressants since he was 10 years old.

Braff crams the movie with odd, off-hand comic moments - observational humor that, he told the audience after the premiere, he has jotted down in his journals over the years. "Seventy-five percent of the things in the movie came from true stories or anecdotes or things that happened to me and my friends," he said.

Braff, one of many first-time directors at the festival this year, has some problems maintaining tone and narrative drive.

The movie feels scattershot much of the time, caroming between comedy and drama, without a clear through-line or a fully developed idea of dramatic conflict.

But Braff's performance, backed by an impressive supporting cast that includes, besides Holm, Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard, overcomes the flaws. At the midway point in the festival, it looks as though "Garden State" is the film that will get sprinkled by the Sundance magic fairy dust.

The documentary slate is, as always, very strong. Sundance gives documentaries the kind of exposure and respect they don't usually get in the theatrical marketplace (though last year's winner, "Capturing the Friedmans," went on to fairly wide release).

This year, the documentary making its way to the top of most critics' must-see lists is "The Control Room," a look inside the Al-Jazeera network, the Arab news channel that is the Bush administration's media enemy number one.

The film, directed by Jehane Noujaim, is showing in the noncompetition American Spectrum section of the festival. Judging by audience reaction, though, it should be in competition. Noujaim's dissection of the war of propaganda, shot on location at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar and in Iraq, is as riveting as it is revelatory.

"The Control Room" challenges the Bush administration's conventional wisdom that Al-Jazeera is hopelessly biased, for instance, and proposes that unbiased coverage of a war by any news organization is a mirage.

It follows several Al-Jazeera journalists as they cover the war, and shows the sort of brutal footage of Iraqi and American casualties that is common on Al-Jazeera but largely absent from American newscasts.

Noujaim, who directed the documentary "Startup.com," manages to show multiple points of view in this wide-ranging look at media coverage of a highly controlled media war. The film is by no means anti-American - one of the most admirable subjects is a Marine lieutenant attached to the media center who is studying Arabic and is determined to see all points of view.

At one point, this Lt. Rushing notes that he felt absolute revulsion at Al-Jazeera's footage of wounded and dead American soldiers, but on reflection realized that he did not feel the same intensity of emotion when he saw similar footage of Iraqi civilian casualties. This difference, he said, made him "hate war."

But while it is not anti-American, "The Control Room" also does not hesitate to take issue with the Bush administration's demonization of Al-Jazeera as "the mouthpiece of Osama bin Laden."

The film's cool observation makes it clear that Al-Jazeera is neither the propaganda machine that the administration would have us believe, nor is it the totally unbiased journalistic institution that Al-Jazeera itself would have us believe.

In its warts-and-all portrayal of the first independent Arab news network, watched by more than 40 million viewers, "The Control Room" offers Americans a neutral look at an organization whose influence will only grow stronger in the coming years.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jconnors@plaind.com, 216-999-4307






So what are your thoughts on the film???

Hey mate!!!
I saw you on imdb.com...i think. Anyway could you ask what it was like working with ian and what type of role does he have. I know he only has a cameo but is it a funnny,sad etc....