|
| Brian Sewell's Grand Tour | 
 enlarge | Director: Christopher Bruce
Studio: Wag TV
Category: DVD
List Price: £24.99
Buy New: £14.32
You Save: £10.67 (43%)
New (15) from £14.32
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 10826
Format: Box Set, Pal, Widescreen
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language)
Rating: Exempt
Running Time: 390 minutes
Number Of Items: 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5060081370008
ASIN: B000GYHU6W
Release Date: September 4, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: IN STOCK. USUALLY DISPATCHED SAME OR NEXT WORKING DAY (MON - FRI). PLEASE ALLOW 3 - 6 DAYS FOR DELIVERY. BRAND NEW AND FULLY GUARANTEED BY A WELL ESTABLISHED TRUSTED LTD COMPANY. EMAIL DISPATCH CONFIRMATIONS SENT. TRACK PROGRESS 24/7
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 elucidating virtual time spent in Italy June 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I can only say that this is an excellent travel series, as good as Francesco's Italy or any other similar series. Thank you Brian Sewell for showing me around Turin and some sites I didn't visit when I was in Turin. You didn't do the most predictable sight-seeing. No mention of the egyptology museum but instead San Lorenzo's church. Never heard of it before. You've helped me understand Turin's history and everything about the grand tourists from our country to theirs, 300 years ago, and it's amazing how things have developed. From people scrabbling up snowy mountains if they couldn't handle being carried on a stretcher thing by peasants, to the cable car. From playing footsie and flirting to the point of "rolling around on the floor together" at the opera, to obvious and available "sex", today. So much has changed. Turin used to be the most modern city in Europe. Very revelatory. Buildings were knocked down to make wider roads which is amazing! I am looking forward to discovering other parts that I thought I knew, too! All from the comfort of my chair! It is a very modern luxury. Thanks Brian!
Excellent art history and travel - marred by a bad transfer May 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I would have given this 5 stars, but have to take one away for the poor DVD transfer. The video has been compressed so much in order to fit 10 episodes on 2 discs that sometimes it's like watching a YouTube video: blurry pixellated artefacts all over.
Get over that though and the series is excellent. Sewell mixes the sacred and the profane in the right measure, and his final, tearful farewell to Italy is heartbreaking.
 A plain good travel story January 9, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
An intelligent, perceptive and at times mischievous look at the paintings and architecture as seen by 18th century Grand Tourists. Brian Sewell is witty and fastidious in his treatment of the subject matter, an eloquent and slow-paced delivery making every work of art seem all the more fascinating. At times emotional but never patronising, I can't think of a nicer way to experience Italian culture from the comfort of your sofa.
Classic Sewell November 17, 2006
29 out of 29 found this review helpful
As much as many people find Brian Sewell to be insufferably pompous, he comes into his own when the subject matter fires his imagination, and for all Italophiles this should be on their Christmas list. Brian takes the viewer on a splendid tour of the peninsula aboard his left-hand-drive Mercedes, stopping to ruminate on the worthy artistic, cultural and architectural aspects of the country, while frequently underlining the more base motives of 18th-century Grand Tourists - sex, drink, and gambling.
Added to the marvellous recollections, interpreted with impish vigour by Brian, are his own observations on the body beautiful, and how Italian art's seemingly pious veneer conceals a perennial obsession with the flesh. Italian history has never seemed such fun.
Entertaining and Educational September 11, 2006
30 out of 30 found this review helpful
Unashamedly elitist as ever, Sewell in the last programme of the series refuses to participate in the frivolities of a recreated 'masked ball'. This is no aristocratic romp but a party open to the masses, the only requirement needed to go through the doors being the right number of Euros. He longs for the real thing - he imagines aristocrats flirting, perhaps guffaws of drunken laughter, the fondling of breasts, the rubbing of knees under the table. But none of this is to be found - just fakes, people dressing up in costumes and not knowing how to behave. Then we find him in a Venetian cafe, tearfully recounting his thoughts about the present, his past and their past, as he elegantly sips on his 'Italian style' hot chocolate. In another scene he is at the dinner table in a restaurant, so bored with Italian food that he finds it hard to find something on the menu that he fanices, that isn't 'that round thing' (pizza). He orders the salad of pork fat, and expresses concerns about what it might do to his already strained arteries. He sips the red wine and then pulls a funny face of vague disgust. He is indeed an interesting character, and is of course, in Italy, right on his home turf. A lifetime spent studying the great Italian Masters lends a very considerable intellectual weight to the series. He teaches us calmly and with great expertise about Correggio, Michaelangelo, Raphael and the rest of the gang. Sewell is someone we don't find on television 'anymore' - he is both too intellectual, too stuck-up and yet too perverted, too much fun for our safe, santitized modern world. And yet, here he is.
|
|
|
Learn how to have your own
Amazon Shop
Travel Maps and Guides
zeugma
| | Holiday Travel |
alpharooms.com for cheap holiday deals in spain and worldwide
Disneyland Paris for a great family holiday or short break.
Holday Cottages throughout Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and France with Cottages4you
Hilton - need we say more, you will find Hilton Hotels in most areas throughout Britain, in cities and in the countryside.
Don't forget Travel Insurance
Airport Parking
|
|
|
|
