Brian Sewell's Grand Tour of Italy (2006) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)BRIAN SEWELL'S GRAND TOUR OF ITALY is grande indeed. TEN episodes show what the upper-teenage British nobility route that might have been taken plus the sights seen. This recreation of a "Grand Tour" trek (via car, not carriage) was researched from books and diaries left behind 300 years ago by the young men who set out to finish their education in Italy. The trip took months, a year, or more. It was designed for the gentlemen to see the best art (and purchase some), architecture, experience the Italian culture, learn the language, and experience the female "freedoms".
Over 24 cities and small towns are passed through and filmed. Beautiful. Local people open their hearts to the film viewers. Every stop is another historical moment in the lives of the Grand Tourists. Each displays paintings, architecture, and/or artifacts that can be seen up close as well as from a picturesque nearby hillside. IT IS AN ADVENTURE WITH ITALIAN PAINTING, ARCHITECTURE, RAPHAEL, TITIAN, MICHELANGELO, & an intense view of the cities of FLORENCE, ROME, AND VENICE (just to name 3).
Your filmed Grand Tour has as its guide, famous & controversial art critic, Brian Sewell. So why 4 stars, and not 5?
Sewell often rubbed me the wrong way. But he's won reviewing awards; I have not. At times I wished I could pay a few extra Euros and get a new tour guide. Perhaps one as knowledgeable as Sewell is tough finding. Honestly, there is a lot of intellectual wealth from Sewell.
What's wrong with Sewell? Often his personal taste, conservative to the n-th degree, has him putting down much Italian art, architecture, life, wine, food, etc. and using terms as "It's awful!", "Reduculous", "Awful". Sometimes he's wrong, I've been to Italy. Just outside of the Pompeii digs gate is the best pizza in the world (my opinion). Sewell refused to eat Italian pizza, and made fun of most of what he did eat on film. Italians will never buy this DVD set.
At a Renaissance church in Todi, (he nicknamed "Pepper Pot"), he stated upon exiting, "Well, dear, oh dear and lawks a mercy. that's a bit of a dog's dinner. Pedigree chum, but still a dog's dinner." When Sewell abounds in intellect, he fails in tact.
Perhaps Sewell wants to comically portray the manner and breadth of the Grand Tourist's educational aspect regarding the bird and the bees. It sounds more like he's hung up in some perverted way with classical nude painting and sculpture, fixing on "buttocks" and other personal body parts. "Gosh!" (his word). And then he's a bit over the top with his gestures, overly dramatic speech, and his white umbrella. Perhaps I'm just too picky nicky. "Gosh!" "Awful."
Aside from Sewell's quirks and humor bits, this is "bloody good" viewing.
The 4-DVD set is really very good, highly recommended. Educational, pleasant to the eye and ear, historically wonderful, and cheap. It costs less than the price of a pair of passport photos.
....Bonus Features add additional facts on Italian artists of the period, explanations of terms and tidbits like fancy dressed "macaroni", map, list of what the rich tourists packed, and more.
....THANKS ATHENA FOR THE SUBTITLES. Very helpful for names & places.
....And a Biography of Brian Sewell explaining why my opinion of him is certainly not acceptable to the British.
This is Italy like I've never seen it on film prior.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Brian Sewell's Grand Tour of Italy (2006)

Famed British art critic leads the ultimate Italian adventure
In the 18th century, well-bred English gentlemen would undertake a Grand Tour of the Continent for refinement--as well as for drinking, gambling, and sexual adventures--before assuming their place in society. Now, Brian Sewell follows the footsteps of those young aristocrats through Italy, exploring the art and architecture, manners and mores that shaped European civilization.

With unmatched erudition and understated wit, this distinguished British art critic lovingly examines Italy\'s grandest cultural treasures. His journey takes him through Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, Siena, and Milan, with plenty of stops along the way. More than a mere travelogue, this fascinating series showcases the country\'s dazzling cathedrals, palazzos, paintings, and sculptures while also giving insight into the travels and travails of tourists past.

Brian Sewell writes for the London Evening Standard and advises museums on three continents. His numerous awards include the Hawthornden Prize for Art Criticism and the George Orwell Prize for cultural commentary.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Julia McKenzie and Agatha Christie biography, Photo gallery, Cast filmographies

Get 54% OFF

Click here for more information about Brian Sewell's Grand Tour of Italy (2006)

Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2004) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This four-hour documentary on the Medici has all of the series' strengths (high production values, excellent cinematography) and its great weakness of substituting simple conflict for historical analysis. You might get weary, as I did, of the implicit comparisons of the Renaissance banking family with the Coreleones, but that's relieved by a truly diverse selection of talking heads and viewpoints.

There are other problems, though. Nearly every entry in the "Empires" series has had difficulties with characterization, and "The Medici" is no different. Lorenzo de Medici, for example, is portrayed as an enlightened ruler, a public-minded human being and an art patron whose career was sabotaged by religious fundamentalism. You'd never know he covered his debts by stealing from the public treasury. Savonarola is accurately depicted as a puritanical maniac, but his appeal to Florence is never fully explained. One minute the Florentines are sipping grapa and discussing Platonic forms, the next they're tossing their copies of "The Republic" on a bonfire. For "The Medici," it's enough to show Lorenzo as a patron of learning, and Savonarola as a fundamentalist, creating a black and white conflict that dehumanizes both and makes a mockery of the competing and often contradicting strains of piety and humanism found in many Renaissance figures. It also makes ordinary Florentines look like dupes: Savonarola was a fanatic, but his Puritanical, anti-Medici sermons had resonance with a city that was tiring of Lorenzo's abuses.

The third episode on the Medici popes moves in a similar direction. This is the weakest of the bunch. The narrative is little more than a society-page list of parties and paintings, mixed with random acts of violence and a barebones timeline of the two pontiffs' lives. Intervals with Michelangelo are enjoyable, but brief. And the series again simplifies the protagonists. Leo and Clement were wastrels whose excesses helped spark the Reformation. They lived large and often led their armies into impious war. That's all correct. But if Leo X lived it up, he was also sincerely religious. He wasn't unique, either: Many medieval and early Renaissance rulers saw no conflict between hedonism and piety. Given the chance to explore this odd trait, "Empires" shies away and opts for scenes of Leo killing off his enemies.

The documentary is worth a purchase, though. The first episode on Cosimo de Medici is one of the best explorations of Renaissance politics I've seen on television, and Brunelleschi is given his due in both raising his dome and inventing perspective. If Cosimo's failings are passed over, the overall assessment of his rule is fair. One wishes the film would point out that common families like the Medici rose to power because the Florentines abolished feudalism in 1290, but that's a minor nit to pick.

To be fair to the filmmakers, you can't fit everything about the family in a four-hour documentary, and "The Medici," at least, hits the basics and doesn't get anything wrong (unlike Empires' "Martin Luther," which told us the faith is a Freudian rejection of father figures). This is probably the best treatment of Renaissance politics television will ever come up with, so you might as well seek it out, and hope the next "Empires" film fixes the flaws of its predecessors.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2004)

From a small Italian community in 15th-century Florence, the Medici family would rise to rule Europe in many ways. Using charm, patronage, skill, duplicity and ruthlessness, they would amass unparalleled wealth and unprecedented power. They would also ignite the most important cultural and artistic revolution in Western history--the European Renaissance. But the forces of change the Medici helped unleash would one day topple their ordered world. An epic drama played out in the courts, cathedrals and palaces of Europe, this series is both the tale of one family's powerful ambition and of Europe's tortured struggle to emerge from the ravages of the dark ages.

Get 10% OFF

Click here for more information about Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2004)