Monday 5 May 2014

1st Dress Rehearsal - Semi Final 1 (P4)

Portugal
We went from the most unimaginative picture to the once that could be considered the most (up to now). Suzy starts painting the Portuguese flag on a white wall of an art studio. She then puts her back to the wall and measures where the colours meet and starts painting herself (also dressed in white at this point). From head (including hair) to thigh she is paining herself within the flag, Coat of Arms and all. She then finds her spot on the wall and again a timed-photo is taken with her blending herself nearly completely in the flag, leaving only her outline to know she is actually there.

Performance wise, well, her costume is quite revealing. Not much being covered even though there is flesh-coloured material holding her in. Rapturous applause from the present audience. Another song which I might have to change my prediction on - could Portugal go thorough?!

Netherlands
The Dutch postcard can be found on YouTube. However, it is Ilse and Waylon on a canal boat which is transporting tulips. They start bringing the tulips to the bridge and place them in sections of red, white and blue. They alight the boat and go to a bridge. Once the boat is passing underneath them, they take a picture of the tulips forming the Dutch flag.

Another qualifier for the Netherlands. Works well on camera and is a non-pretentious well sung song.

Montenegro
Sergej has a big puzzle which he is putting together on the lid of a grand piano with his two kids. A piece seems to be missing but it turns out that one of the kids was hiding it - to which they laugh about (I don't remember laughter when losing bits of puzzles as a kid but to each their own...). The lid is opened slightly to get a better angle and the picture taken of the puzzle - which is naturally the Montenegrin flag.

The Balkan ballad doesn't fail - even with the ice-skater which again seems a bit too much. It has been noted however that the usual Balkan friends are missing this year and therefore could it be that even though this classic would normally never fail, this year could be the exception to the rule? I hope not since this is probably Montenegro's best chance at qualifying in the history of their taking part as an independent nation.

Hungary
András is playing with a Rubik Cube while walking in Budapest. He manages to get all colours done and then puts his bag down. He places the cube on the wall of the bridge and proceeds to take out other completed Rubik Cubes from his bag. He starts placing them carefully next to each other with the green side fronting us. On top of these comes white and capped with red. Snapshot of the flag.

Hungary kept the costume simple - a black t-shirt which nicely shows András' arms. The dancers are doing a good job of interpreting the song something which I may not have noticed so much in earlier runs. Sung well and a good ending to the show. Qualified.

Lise then tries to explain the Eurovision fans as two subgroups - the very dedicated fans and the extremely dedicated fans. Whichever one you feel you belong to, you should download the Eurovision app. Another bit of product-plugging in our international show.

Nikolaj and Pilou then explain to us the voting procedure and ask us to vote lest our favourite doesn't make it - again, news to many people I am sure. This leads us to the recap of the songs after which we have a dance interpretation of The Ugly Duckling.

Nikolaj and Pilou are back after the dance to remind us of the voting. In the second run we also see the acts leaving the stage which hopefully warms the audience a bit more to the artists to help tempt them to vote for them if they still haven't. Some of the performers need to try and remember this point since there has been a mix of extremely happy and thankful exits which make you think "oh, sweet, they enjoyed it", while others just had a face of thunder on them which would not make me want to vote for them any more than I haven't felt like doing up to now.

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