Brava Italia (Travel/Special Interest/2008/Acorn Media DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C
Main Program: B
After so
much commercial and critical success with the Visions journey series to countries all over Europe,
et al, a new series may be on the horizon and Brava Italia may be the first of that series. This time, instead of the constantly terrific
images of endless mountains, towns, architecture and other offerings form the
given country offered, the new program has more (literally, of course) grounded
footage as we see more building interiors, locations, how they function and
much more. The three hour-long episodes
offered are:
The Proud Tradition
The Beautiful Life
The Eternal Country
Paul
Sorvino narrates the great program and we get more interviews, including no
less than Francis Ford Coppola appearing in the first episode. By moving inward to the locales, the makers
have found a way to expand their series and while the great HD shoots of the
original series helped sell HDTV and offered some very impressive shots at the
time when HD was new, it was time to shift gears if these productions were to
continue. Now, such HD shots are of
course, more common. Yet, by taking a
new approach, the HD continues to be impressive and impressively visual.
If you
like travel and leisure, or have a big thing for Italy, you’ll want to see this!
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is another nice, clean High Definition
shoot, but this downtrade to DVD has some aliasing errors and slight motion
blur here and there. Still, color is
good and the style it is shot in works well.
The food looks very edible too.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no serious surround information, but
Sorvino’s voice is well-recorded, as are the interviews and music is mixed in
without being intrusive.
The only
extra is a 14+ minutes clip of Visions
Of Italy, a very impressive installment from the original series. For more on Visions Of Italy, try these links for the two formatted versions
released:
Blu-ray
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8937/Visions+Of+Italy+++Visions+Of+Britai
DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1751/Visions+Of+Italy+set
- Nicholas Sheffo
