baldheadracing
Very Active Member
Registered: January 2008
Location: .
Posts: 640
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Review Date: Fri February 15, 2008
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Would you recommend this to someone? Yes |
Price you paid? In US$: $15.00
| Rating: 7
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Pros:
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Interviews with Robaina, the French distributor, good production values
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Cons:
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Not available in French, only Spanish and English.
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Please note that the price on the Palm Pictures website is under $15.
This hour-long documentary appears to have been a French production. The English narrator definitely has a CBC accent, probably from Montreal. The only obvious anomaly is that the Cuban word (pronounced "cape") is used instead of "wrapper."
The over-dubbing is not that great - but if you switch to Spanish, the original voices come through. The Spanish narrator is not that good, I think.
There is the usual Cuban music as a soundtrack.
The documentary - as a documentary film - isn't super. It is competently done, better than the typical Cable channel documentary. It is not a "Connections" or "Nova," but there are some highlights:
What I found most interesting was:
The differences
The expected seed through cigar footage showed many subtle differences from what I've seen on the web covering similar steps, e.g., the footage on CA, Stogie review, and on CigarLive. The Cubans are highly inefficient - e.g., packing tobacco for a long ocean voyage when it is just going to Havana. However, I guess maybe doing so changes the taste ...
Jaw-dropping cigar footage
The bit on "classification of cigars by colour showing packing of cabinets" shows more cigars than I've ever seen in any pic. Just the desk the guy is packing cabs on has thousands of cigars on it. The sorting room ... OMFG.
Gerard is a French B&M, and M. Gerard covers his desk with bundles of 50 cigars pulled from cabs - he is doing this to show cigar sizes - he doesn't show 1 corona, he pulls out a cab of them. Ditto panatella, robusto, etc. Then he opens his (box) aging vault. You see some bales of tobacco at the end of a hallway. Then you realize those aren't hallway walls - they are floor to (very high) ceiling, front to back, boxes and cabs of cigars, all carefully stacked to allow airflow. (M. Gerard speaks in French, but is over-dubbed in both Spanish and English. I would've preferred to turn off the overdub.)
Mr. Robaina
Watch him today (Suckling's blog at the CA website) and I wonder - has this man made a pact with the devil to grow tobacco and get better looking 15 years later? Robaina rolling a cigar on his thigh and then smoking it is just awe-inspiring. Robaina playing with tobacco at the end of the show is the picture that I will have of the man in my mind for the rest of my life. I wanted more Robaina, but what was there was quality. In the video, just the look at the man when he describes the types of tobacco leaves - this man has a love for the leaf that we mortals will never fully understand.
What I didn't care for
There's a section on "Afro-cubans," which isn't what you might think. It is two minutes of some kind of religious sect.
Overall, I think the 15 minutes you won't see elsewhere are worth more than a buck a minute.
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