Michael Palin - Sahara
by John-Paul Davidson
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DVD details
Actor: Michael PalinDirector: John-Paul Davidson
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Michael Palin
Cinematographer: Nigel Meakin
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 236 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Warner
Product features:
- Michael Palin's Sahara adventure is one of the great challenges in world travel. In this exhausting journey, Michael will pass through the rock of Gibraltar to Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and beyond. His route will take him across sand-seas, along treacherous rivers, through oases and over mountain ranges. The remote regions are characterized by ceaseless travel, from camel caravans to car rallies,
DVD Reviews of Michael Palin - Sahara
DVD Review: Sahara - bez piasku.
Summary: 3 Stars
Ten film powinien trwac 45 minut. Reszta to porozciagane sceny. Nic specjalnie ciekawego: podroze pociagiem, spacer po egzotycznym bazarze, podroz barka po rzece. To wszystko dookola Sahary. Calkiem jakby kosztowac cukierek bez rozwiniecia kolorowego celofanu.DVD Review: EXCELLENT ADVENTURE!
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Palin on his whirlwind trip through eight African countries is a blast! (literally for Mr. Palin when he stood too close to a flintlock rifle and suffered a slight injury) These DVD's are entertaining, informative, historical, exciting, educational, and memorable. At one point you feel you are on a camel trek across the desert with him. He uses every imaginable transportation in these four episodes that could so easily have been expanded to 6 episodes. He practically lives off camel and goat during the entire trip. These include Roman ruins, oil fields, cities, armed guards in Algiers and it was an eye opener to discover that the U.S. isn't the only country with immigration problems.
Illegal immigrants try to cross from the African continent to Gibraltar and many lives are lost in the attempt. Please watch the special features for additional footage and Mr. Palin's interview on disc 2.
DVD Review: Sahara
Summary: 5 Stars
Once again the superb ex-Monty Python turned globetrotting national British icon Michael Palin invites us all to join him on his journeys around the world. This time the destination is the biggest desert in the world, the Sahara, and its surrounding countries.
As usual the witty and insightful narration of Mr. Palin, as well as his encounters with local people and ex-pats from around the world makes for an interesting and inspiring series about this very inhospitable yet beautiful and little understood place. If nothing else, the series gives food for thought about how people live their lives in other parts of the world. At least it did for me.
I will admit that "Sahara" is not the best of Michael Palins travels. There is a quality or feel about it that just doesn't really make you feel the same elation you normally would, watching Palins programmes. This is not to say that "Sahara" is bad television. By no means. Not being the best doesn't mean that it's bad. Perhaps it has to do with the sameness of the places he travels to in this series. There is little but sand, which maybe in some way makes it less fascinating. I don't know.
As usual with the Palin travel DVDs there are a plethora of extra material in the form of clips that didn't make the final cut. a video diary, and of course an interview with Michael Palin.
Not the best, but still very, very good. Highly recommended.
DVD Review: Sahara
Summary: 4 Stars
An excellent series. I would have given it 5 stars, but it didn't quite measure up to the very high standard set by Around the World in 80 Days. I have already pre-ordered Michael Palin - Pole to Pole and am eagerly awaiting its delivery.DVD Review: Inspiration? Michael Palin
Summary: 5 Stars
Tragically, it is not easy to get access to BBC shows in the USA. There are some truly great series, for example all the travel series done by Michael Palin (some more amazing than others, but all very good). You might recognize him from his days as a star in Monty Python or from the film "A Fish Called Wanda." Part of what makes him a great travel series host is that he retains his humor while exploring extremely fascinating parts of the globe. His series are very balanced, informative, and entertaining all at the same time.
The most refreshing thing about his series is that they are not presented as "look at all these great touristic places I have been," but rather the camera is more of a silent witness to his adventures. It really just follows him as he sets out to do his carefully researched itineraries ("Around the World in 80 Days," "Pole to Pole," "Full Circle," "Sahara," "Himalaya") or themes ("Hemingway Adventure," "Palin's New Europe"). His style is both objective and subjective. Whilst retaining a journalistic like objectivity he also lets you know how he subjectively feels about the places he visits and about how he personally feels in regards to his personal health both physically and psychologically: he shares his apprehensions, feelings of triumph or defeat, relief or disparity, amazement and disappointments, mourning or elation or even neutrality, sickness and homesickness or feelings of health; in other words, his style is to bring the richness of a written travelogue to film. You get the feeling that you are watching his diary; for example, when he does his post trip/editing room voice-overs and other commentary, he adds his comments from it.
You see him get altitude sickness in the Himalayas ("Himalaya"), and you see him participate in a bizarre yet hilarious crossing-the-international-date-line ritual performed by the ship crew on his way from Japan to the USA (in "Around the World in 80 Days.") Moreover, the trips have quite large budgets so there really is no limit to what kind of itinerary he can dream up. In "Around the World in 80 Days" he set out to literally circumnavigate the globe, but not just in a ship, he uses any means of ground transportation he can find, which includes joining ship barges. The one stipulation is no air transportation. In other series his itineraries are equally as grand: in "Full Circle" he makes a trip around the Pacific Rim and has the unique privilege of hiring a helicopter to see some difficult to get to parts of far eastern Russia and after, true to Palin style, learns Russian drinking songs from the pilot while drinking vodka with him; in "Pole to Pole" he takes the only commercial plane that flies from South America to the South Pole, a ticket that is prohibitively expensive for your average traveller.
It was very easy for me to get addicted to Michael Palin's series and I had the fortune of living in China where bootlegs of anything are easy to come by when I did. In the USA, his shows are difficult to come by. I know that the complete box set of all the series he has done so far (he has at least one or two more left in him) is sold at a bargain price in the UK. But for people living in the USA who cannot stand the fact that those DVDs are (probably) regioned to the effect that they will not even work on our DVD players here even when legitimately purchased and imported to the USA, perhaps the best alternative is to turn to the internet (cough, torrents, cough).
FYI The BBC shop in the UK sells a 16 disc box set with all his travel series he has ever done for 40 pounds (about 80 dollars). It is so outrageous that DVDs are region coded so that they can price discriminate against the American audience.
Description of Michael Palin - Sahara
Michael Palin's Sahara adventure is one of the great challenges in world travel. In this exhausting journey, Michael will pass through the rock of Gibraltar to Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and beyond. His route will take him across sand-seas, along treacherous rivers, through oases and over mountain ranges. The remote regions are characterized by ceaseless travel, from camel caravans to car rallies, but Michael Palin's love of traveling takes you to places many people will never know.DVD Features:
Deleted Scenes
Interviews
Other
If the mere sight of Michael Palin striding purposefully towards the camera across some foreign terrain is enough to send you into fits of delight, then Sahara is just for you. Following his three pan-global expeditions, Palin is back on the exploration trail. This time it's traversing the Sahara desert; traveling from Gibraltar through Tangiers and the Arab world down through Africa and some of the most inhospitable conditions on the planet. The formula that Palin established in Around the World In Eighty Days has hardly been tampered with, but Sahara is proof that there are few better exponents of the travelogue. Palin is an engaging host, far more attractive than the extreme survival merchants, walking the fine line between experienced traveler and slightly eccentric Englishman abroad. The program also strikes a perfect balance between grand visual gestures (the camerawork is simply stunning) and focusing on the individual lives that characterize the region, all underpinned by Palin's unique brand of humor. This is one to return to again and again.
Sahara comes in at a mere four one-hour episodes and the producers were left with a huge amount of unused footage. Thus the DVD features a large selection of deleted scenes. The excellent set of extras also includes a collection of rough video diaries--mainly featuring Palin being pummeled by the elements--and an extensive interview with the presenter. The picture quality is fantastic (particularly compared to Palin's earlier series), as is the digital sound. The whole package is thoroughly recommended. --Phil Udell
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