Sweden's New Waterloo

Sweden sent a funny song to the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Brighton in 1974. The song was about falling in love the same way Napoleon fell at Waterloo.

The simile was strained but the lyrics written by Björn Ulvaeus were otherwise good. Most of what Ulvaeus wrote over the years was excellent. He and Benny Andersson went on to work with Tim Rice on the West End musical Chess. They've since had their runaway success Mamma Mia! turned into a movie with Meryl Streep. No one's ever doubted the abilities of Sweden's ABBA to craft clever, intelligent, and often emotionally deep lyrics even though none of them have English as a mother tongue.

The ESC rules changed after 1974. No more singing in English. Singing in English automatically favoured some countries over others.

The rules changed again recently and now contestants can sing in any language they choose.

ABBA used the ESC as a springboard for their career. They never took the contest seriously. But they knew it would give them a lot of publicity. They were never from the same mould as the traditional contestants.

1974 was Sweden's first victory in the ESC. They've won three further times since then. And each of those victories has been eminently forgettable if not embarrassing. ESC music is the lowest of the low. Things don't get much worse than the ESC.

Sweden's been bombing out of the ESC for several years now. This is the country that gave the world ABBA, Roxette, Max Martin, the Cardigans, The Hives, and more. A Swedish journalist described Sweden's dilemma as a country bumpkin coming to a world event where the rules have changed. The whole selection process is flawed and Swedes prove time and again they don't really have a clue.

ABBA lost their first time around too. They lost to a weird duo who sang a song with a gimmick line about a woman's breasts. The astute Swedish juries - ordinary but overly paid apparatchiks with the state television company - chose this stupid song over the competition. No one cares about that song. Everyone remembers ABBA.

There are some good lyricists in Sweden. Max Martin cowrote 'It's My Life' for Bon Jovi. Nina Persson's lyrics for the Cardigans have been cute if not always excellent. There are no great English lyrics coming from Swedes but some of them are OK.

But in the ESC? Most of the contestants can hardly pronounce it, much less understand it, and their lyricists are downright dumb. The lyrics to Elena Paparizou's 2005 winning song were written by Christos Dadis and Natalia Germanou.

You're delicious, so capricious
If I find out you don't want me I'll be vicious

Things don't get more embarrassing than that. But Paparizou won. That's important to keep in mind. But she won not by having the best number but by her record company and the Greek government investing one million euros in promoting her song in the months leading up to the ESC final. Paparizou was shuttled all over the place. Several publicity events of whatever type they could arrange for weeks and weeks on end. The voting occurred way before the actual televised final.

Last year's lyrics were even worse. The lyrics to the winning song are so cringeworthy they won't be printed here. Look them up yourself if you dare - but think twice about it.

Sweden's current predicament with the ESC is twofold. They don't understand what works and what doesn't and what's needed to win these days. But they've consequently performed so poorly of late that they don't even qualify for the final unless they can really impress everyone in the qualification rounds the week before the show. One needs something extra special to make that jump back into the top 24. And a further clue: ballads never give the necessary boost. As one Swedish journalist put it last night: 'this succession of boring banal ballads is threatening to put the studio and television audiences in a permanent coma'.

But what do Swedes like?

Swedes had a potential winner in a girl group called 'Timoteij'. 'Timoteij' is an herb called 'timothy' in English. It's also the name of a popular shampoo in Sweden. Its distinctive bottle was used as a prop in the movie Gorky Park. It's a cute name. Perhaps not particularly international but still the same.

The girls are all young students in a special music/entertainment school in Sweden. In a screamingly boring place called Skara. They're 18 years old and have been performing together for the past two years. They're already signed to Universal and their first full length CD is already completed and will be released in April. They too like ABBA are using the ESC as a springboard. They too lost to someone really really bad first time out.

The winning song this year is - ironically - 'This is My Life'. It's reminiscent not only of the Bon Jovi hit but also of the cringeworthy 2009 entry written by no better than Dame Andy Webber and Diane Warren with the unfortunately unforgettable:

It's my life, it's my life, my moment
I'm not going to let go of it

Watching the eminently talented but eminently misunderstood Jade Ewen wince her way through those two lines every time was a torture no Brit wants to remember. But maybe they've now found something that overshadows their own gaffe last year.

These are the lyrics to the Swedish entry in the ESC 2010, written by who must be the most self-delusional waste of space lyricist ever: Kristian Lagerström. Read them and weep.

I go down the beaten track, along the river with an empty bag
At the end she said to me: why are you here with the autumn leaves?

Cause this is my life, my friend, and this is my time to stand
Cause this is my life, my friend, and I can't be no one else

I'm done tipping on my toes, strike an iron and attack my soul
Misty moon, you're gonna see, I've got your blues to get on my feet

Cause this is my life, my friend, and this is my time to stand
Cause this is my life, my friend, and I can't be no one else

I don't wanna run, I don't wanna fight
I don't wanna hide, I just wanna stay free, to be me
I don't wanna win, I don't wanna lose
I don't wanna play, I just wanna remember, oh my name

Cause this is my life, my friend, and this is my time to stand
Oh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh

(Cause this is my life, my friend, and this is my time to stand)
Cause this is my life, my friend, and I can't be no one else
Cause this is my life, my friend, and I can't be no one else
Cause this is my life, my friend

Cheesy Cleese

John Cleese who never stops coming up with great new inventive ideas has now arranged a 15-stop tour of Scandinavia where he will - get this - be alone on stage and talk about his fantastic career for two hours.

He will also have clips of some of his famous films and television shows which will be shown on a big screen. The same clips most people have bought several times over on VHS and DVD and have instant access to on YouTube.

Tickets start at over $100 and Cleese is predicted to make over $100,000 per gig.

People really liked Fawlty Towers - what there was of it. Twelve episodes made over a six year period. Contrast that with Friends that ran in realtime for ten years with 238 (count 'em) episodes all filmed before a live audience after a full week's rehearsals. 238 times.

People liked Wanda too. But it was just another film.

People generally don't like most of the other crap Cleese has come out with. And most importantly: Cleese only did Fawlty Towers in the 1970s and Wanda a few years later. That's it. That's really all.

Ever since then Cleese has been granting interviews where he tells people how amazed he is at his own talent.

Cleese had a cowriter (and for a while there a wife) on Fawlty Towers. But she's not seen anywhere, nor is she ever interviewed on one of these nauseatingly endless recycled editions of Cleese's Greatest Hits.

It's time to put Cleese in the rain barrel where he belongs. It's time to boycott his delusional tour of Scandinavia. It's time to tell him to his face: 'John, you were never that funny or talented but your wife was and the few times you were really funny are so few and so long ago SO WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP AND GO AWAY?'

It's Tough to be a Chicken

Today is Denny's 'Grand Slam' day in the US. This follows on Super Bowls: from 06:00 to 14:00 they offer free breakfasts around the country. The breakfasts are two eggs, two rashers of bacon, two sausages, and two pancakes. It's free.

Sounds like a bit of charity. Which is timely considering in the US there's really no social system (or any ambition for such a system) to take care of the unfortunate. If there's one thing they're still #1 at, it's homeless people. And do they ever excel at that!

Now check this link out.
http://dennys.com/superbowl/splash2.html



Yeah it's tough to be a chicken alright. It's also pretty tough to be anyone in the Americas if you're not in the US. 910,000,000 people and only 307,000,000 million of them are entitled to call themselves 'American'.

It's chickens, it's turkeys, it's Nicaraguans, it's Chileans, it's Argentinians, it's Ecuadorians, it's Guatemalans, it's Cubans, it's Bolivians, it's Peruvians - the list goes on and on.

They stage coups. They murder elected leaders. Heck - they murder period. They assassinate Salvador Allende and then push in a dictator to replace him, they stand behind persecutions and imprisonments and torture and more and more murders. That's OK. We're AMERICAN!

And we like our chickens and we like our turkeys and WE LIKE OUR OIL! And we like our BANANAS! And we'd really like some good Cuban cigars goddammit but we have to support freedom around the globe right now. We're famous for that, right?

Right.

Then there's @stevez33 (Steve Zebrowski) formerly of Connecticut and now of Florida who is really incensed that the homeless are queueing outside Denny's for a good free meal for the first time in who knows how long. And he asks how they can even know when they don't have houses to live in and probably can't have televisions either?

Then someone suggests they might have found out on Twitter and @stevez33 goes ballistic. They have computers too now? Ugg!

Let's hope he's joking. Let's close our eyes and hope Denny's were also joking. And that the imperialism was also a joke. That rendition was a joke. That all the millions of deaths and ruined lives these people have caused - that it was all just a joke. So we can open our eyes and nobody's ever heard of that gross place called the US.

Nikitas

UK satellite channel CBS Action started recently. And they're showing the television series La Femme Nikita. To fans of either the original or the US Badhman remake, this might be a bit much.

It's very high tech and actually plays like a soap opera rather than a drama.

The Besson original established the story; the US Badham remake faithfully reenacted the story and added a bit of pizzazz to it.

The story is what it's all about. Those who prefer the Besson original are firmly entrenched in their camp. Those who've seen the Besson original first are more likely to prefer it. Those who by chance encounter saw the US Badham version first are likely to prefer it.

Besson wrote the story. He gets credit for coming up with the stark plot. But John Badham who was tasked with directing the remake took the original to new heights.

All through his version you can see how a bit of reflection improved the original. The scenes are more precise, the music is infinitely superior, and there's an accent on acting not found in the original. Badham's motto has always been 'character, character, character' and it shows here. Moreau was excellent in the original but Bancroft literally jumps out at you in the remake. Parillaud was screechy in the original (and probably got the part because she was Besson's squeeze at the time) but Fonda is punky and sexy and imbues her role with the kind of stuff they taught her at the Lee Strasberg school.

There are scenes in the remake that are absolutely amazing. That when you look at them and freeze-frame them show you what filmmaking is really all about. Watch for the restaurant scene in the beginning where Fonda's character jumps off a stair handrail with one hand for leverage, lands firmly on a dinner table on the level below, then jumps again to the floor all the while she turns around to check on her pursuers. Besson had no balcony and his followup on the scene, whilst dramatic and a good shot, was easily implemented.

There are some really dumb things in the original too. Besson could have done with a proofread and a rewrite. The waiter bringing the bottle of champagne says for no reason: 'Taittinger - the king of champagnes'. Why would he do that? Was Besson getting paid for product placement? It just looks and sounds stupid.

The kitchen chase is also very abrupt and lacks the 'dripping off the walls' tension and pathos of the remake's version. And so forth.

Besson seems to have learned his lesson after Badham remade his classic: he took his crew to New York City for half a year, scouted for good locations for six months, and then brought in Jean Reno and Natalie Portman for the iconic Leon. He even wrote the story to fit around Reno who doesn't speak English too well. It was brilliant. And in this movie the music of Eric Serra actually works. Sort of.

But in Nikita? It's all a pale washout actually. Purists who believe the original is better because 1) it's the original; and 2) it's FRENCH will never get it. Hans Zimmer wrote one of his most memorable scores; the plot is taught and never lets up; Fonda and all the rest are spot on throughout; and some hundred minutes later you realise you witnessed perfectionist movie making.

And it's all about 'character, character, character'. It's not enough to tell actors 'sit here, do this, say that' - you have to get into the characters yourself as a director. You have to make the actors feel secure enough so they don't mind if they fail; you have to discuss their characters with them and get them to bring it all out. For all the action of Badham's Point of No Return, it's actually a movie about character- much more three dimensional than Besson's original.

But of course Besson wrote the story.

And as for the television series currently transmitted on CBS Action? Try Gone with the Wind. It's a soap opera too but it almost has a point.

The Google Hop, The Microsoft Sidestep

What's wrong with our world when leading computer security experts cannot say publicly how much they detest Microsoft products but only reveal their true feelings when communicating in private?

Up!

It's inspired. Just go see it.

Haiti

There are some people on Twitter who are concerned with Haiti. Like Alyssa Milano. She mobilises people like mad. Then there are people who post things like I just got back from the hairdresser, I had a wonderful time.

There's been a terrible catastrophe on Haiti, you dipshits. How the fuck can you think people are interested in or have time for reading about your stupid fucking two hours at the hairdresser?

It really gets good people how so many arseholes are impervious to what's going on around them. As if they don't care at all.

These people need to be removed from the gene pool.