Well, I’ve been told – not for the first time – that I’ve got to do some work, on pain of not being allowed to sign any petitions for the homeless people of Europe. Well, how can I refuse in the circumstances?
What I’m realizing, after being away from the fray more than usual this year, is that it’s not an inspiring year for the contest. I’d normally be all like “OMG Iceugal should have started rehearsing 30 seconds ago must press F5 every second until someone uploads some blurry video”, or possibly just made sure that I was in the press centre 2 hours before rehearsals started just in case they started early.
Not feeling the loss this time. So I will, instead, try to remark on the few things that have attracted my attention from the Esprit over the last few days.
For starters, the stage. I still need to see it on TV, but it looks disappointing to me – almost nobody has created a backdrop for themselves that stands out and is visually interesting and complementary to their performance without overwhelming it. A shout out to Greece, particularly, who have managed to get it absolutely right. The song I’m not so sure about, but the stagecraft is excellent.
Another interesting thing is that I’m looking out for the unheralded songs that seem to be igniting in the shut-off confines of Eurovisionia proper, and there aren’t so many of them. Cyprus looked very good on Tuesday from arena footage, but reports reach us that Christos may be doing that whole Cypriot thing of not connecting to the audience through the TV camera. Suspect that it may be igniting all the way up to 12th/13th in the semi, a la Tyolki Ellaa last year.
Similar things apply to Ukraine – the sand art thing is, of course, a stroke of quiet genius. However, it’s NOT Europe’s Got Talent, and the sand artist is not technically NTU’s representative, and it would worry me if a dull song got carried further along the beach than it has any right to go because of it.
I’ve been wanting Iceland to ignite – I diametrically oppose Phil by thinking that they’ve got a well-composed, nicely performed, smashing little song there which has far more going for it than the human interest story – but I’m unconvinced that it’s going to take off as I’d hoped. It seems a bit, I don’t know, lost in the crowd.
As for possible winners… it’s a real stretch to find even one among the semi-finalists so far. Russia, Bosnia, Azerbaijan will surely all have their hopes if the final draw gives them a shove; an Estonia or Hungary or Sweden could accelerate away from a difficult start to the fortnight, or one of the quiet little slow songs could find itself in a perfect spotlight late on Saturday night. But there’s nothing that screams “winner” at me, taking into account the goodies we still have to come from the direct qualifiers.
OK, that’s all a bit pensive. Care to recharge my batteries with some thoughts on the excellence that’s caught YOUR attention this week?