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davidgarvoille
Reviews
Toto le héros (1991)
Worth buying!
If you loved this film, and most people do, please help get the word out that this movie should be released for Region 1 DVD (US). I was able to find this on Region 2 DVD on Amazon.fr (Amazon France) but it was out of stock. What to do when the movie you love is unavailable?!?
I also recommend getting yourself a Charles Trenet cd who's song "Boum!" is used for the dancing tulips. I believe that he was a traitor during Nazi occupation, siding with the puppet French government...but he did remake his name before his death.
And yes, what a pity this director hasn't made more films. What gives? If you like this film, you might also like The Hairdresser's Husband which came out around the same time.
On the Outs (2004)
Highly recommended.
I saw this film on its last night at the Film Forum in NYC. It was a special night as one of the producers, one of the actors, and a good crowd showed up. The producer spoke before the show and asked us to spread the word if we liked the film, and to keep it to ourselves if we didn't...I'm spreading the word.
Shot in grittier parts of Jersey City, which lies just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, with a cast of mostly unknown actors, this film does a fantastic job of peeling back the lid on urban ghetto life. It's not a documentary but has a cinéma-vérité quality that is truly remarkable for a fictional film. Being young and working in film is cool, but making a first film that is as incredibly powerful as this one is an extraordinary achievement for the cast, crew and writer/director, Lori Silverbush.
I enjoyed seeing a film set in the much maligned Jersey City. I lived there for several years and the locations used were well chosen (kudos to the location scouts). The montage of JC images (places and people) in the beginning of the film did an excellent job of establishing the setting for the viewer, and was well-queued with the throaty, resonating rendition of "Motherless Child" (kudos to the editors for that one). I was happy to see the beautiful Judy Marte, from Raising Victor Vargas, playing a super-tough drug dealing lesbian(?). If not always strong, the entire cast had an honesty to their performances that made it seem as if they were really playing themselves caught on film. The seduction scene with Tyrell (Don Parma), for instance, gives mothers in the audience a picture of the kind hustler boyfriend you don't want your daughter to have.
I was deeply moved, and I hope this film gets a lot of mileage. If I were still a public school teacher in the hard knock Bronx, I wouldn't hesitate to send those permission slips home (because of profanity and drug use) in order to show this to my students. I highly recommend anyone who works in urban education to see this film...and share it with their students.
Winter of the Witch (1969)
This movie has marked my life...in a way...
Hey all. I really want to get a copy of this movie ("Winter of the Witch"). I was in kindergarten or first grade in Madison, Wisconsin (1975 or 76) at Lowell Elementary, when the teachers showed it to a group of classes in the auditorium (I think it was around the holidays). I was young, but it left such an impression, I never forgot the film--only I never knew the title! What to do? How would I find this film that so marked my life?
In 1995, I finally found out the title! I was living in San Francisco and I told a friend of mine my fuzzy memory of this crazy, psychedelic movie I saw when I was a kid and he said, "Oh, that's 'Winter of the Witch.'" I wrote it down on a scrap of paper which I still have in storage in New Jersey (I found it the other day). Here I am almost 10 years later and I still have not found the movie (on DVD or VHS). Anyone have a copy to sell??? Come to Brooklyn and let's have a movie night! (I'll try Ebay...wish me luck!)