Live the Dream or the slightly older man's Singapore Idol

I finally watched one of Live the Delusional Dream's competition episodes last night. They have been at this for a few weeks now but I have only seen a couple of result show episodes before.

The theme was great - Remix and Rematch. Blake Lewis from the latest American Idol season would have absolutely killed this. This was breathtakingly original for a Singapore talent show.

The singing was less great. I had expected better after seeing the audition episode that aired on National Day. After all, aren't there actual professional singers competing? People who sing in clubs, lounges, cruise ships etc? Not glamorous by any means, but at least competent enough to make a living from keeping in tune? I was not expecting "pitchiness" to be a problem with this show, unlike Idol and the Superstar competitions. I can only imagine that the decent singers did not get the votes and were eliminated before these final rounds. Or that Ken Lim the judges pulled out the old "X factor" chestnut to prop up questionably gifted contestants. Or probably both.

On the whole, the soloists were better than the average Singapore Idol finalist, but not by much. Certainly, nobody was quite as scarily inept as the teen-brigade in SI2. We can all be thankful for that much but less so for the continued presence of Victor Tang and Shauna Simon. Shauna is a decent enough singer but not a particularly impressive performer. I think she should have tried out for Idol, since she's patently young enough (then I had the thought that maybe she did try out and was unsuccessful) and she's just taking up a spot that could have gone to someone over 30 years old, who could not have qualified for Idol. Victor Tang is reportedly a musician and I am sure he is good at what he does for a living. He is just not a singer. Nothing to be ashamed of; plenty of brilliant musicians cannot sing if their lives depended on it. I wish he had friends who told him to just stick to song writing and playing music. It would have spared him the embarrassment of a particularly stinging Ken Lim put-down. It would have spared us from the alarming prospect of seeing him as one of the potential Grand Finalists (looking ominously possible now, after Robert Tsunga's unceremonious and undeserved elimination).

I liked all the bands, even the ones that made cacophonous noises! I think the sound mixing and balance on this show is generally quite bad and that may explain some of the less than melodious sounds that we hear. Not that I am making excuses for the bands; there were some harmonies that missed the mark by miles, and After the Rain's instrumentalists were out of sync with each other. I still thought they sounded better than many of the bands that were on Channel U's "Superband" competition (the Grand Finals of that show was musically a disaster. Milu Ping played instruments much better than they sang and Soul was a band of dancers who should really, really, really stick to dancing. The only musically sound band in the Top 4 was J3 who sang a superb jazz rendition of Xiao Wei in the Finals, but sadly did not pull the needed votes).

Dick Lee seems to have taken on the mantle of the "nice" judge with something positive to say about almost everyone. Is he getting soft in his (physically non apparent) old age?

Ken Lim seems meaner on this show than on Idol. Maybe I did not give him enough credit on Idol. He was stingy with praise, but at least he never seemed downright nasty. Perhaps he was truly making an effort to be nice and appropriately treating the Idol youngsters with kids' gloves. On this show, he seems to be in a perpetual bad mood and barely able to be minimally civil to the contestants or the screaming audience. Actually, I rather enjoy this version of Ken Lim who has no obvious partiality for any of the contestants. He seems to have no time for the whole lot of them (barring perhaps By Definition) and his critiques are consequently unhampered by the usual need for subtle audience manipulation. It makes a nice change.

Who's NOT Mourning for Mourinho?

ME!

I was never a great fan of the self-named Special One, and have never exactly taken pains to hide my dislike.

After news broke last week of his sudden departure by mutual consent from Chelsea, it has been tempting to play history revisionist and remember the man more fondly than I ever regarded him. Watching all those news reports of Chelsea fans eulogizing his achievements and football pundits roundly hailing his contribution to the Premier League, I was almost inclined to get a little misty-eyed over the end of the Mourinho era at Stamford Bridge.

He will be missed. He did bring his own inimitable style to the Premiership. He was at all times, newsworthy and media-friendly (if not exactly, friendly to the media). He was a charismatic character in a stable of Premiership managers that are collectively somewhat lacking in that quality. For his fashion sense alone, he deserved a Manager of the Month award, totally in keeping with Chelsea's reputation as the up-market London team. Above all, he achieved spectacular results on the football field for his club - that unbeaten home streak is some sort of a miracle.

Yes, he will be missed and has more than earned his place among the greatest and most celebrated of Chelsea legends.

But let us not forget that he was also often arrogant, an atrociously sore loser, an even more ungracious winner, something of a bully, petulant, childish, rude, supercilious and altogether too pleased with himself. So much so that I had begun to find him laughable and almost clownish in his dogged display of bad behaviour. He seemed to have offered up rudeness as proof of his "special" ability to march to the beat of his own drum; a badge of honour against authority and establishment. Goodness knows that football authorities deserve as much dissent as any other body in power, but Mourinho's accusations of bias and other misdeeds have been firmly barking up the wrong tree, reflecting not a deep concern for the governance of football but a much more self-centred, and less admirable, need to always deflect blame away from himself.

I don't know, perhaps he got out of Chelsea just in time, before the shine wore off. As it is, he leaves with a glowing reputation and as ever has been his way, the media eating out of his hands. It is almost like a masterfully staged personal PR coup; whatever Mourinho goes on to do next, he will attract attention and interest. I did not much admire the man, but I have to give him this much - I can admire his style.

Another Champions League season underway

Apart from bitching about drawing Chelsea for yet another knock-out tie, I managed to not once blog about Liverpool's road to the runners-up spot in last year's Champions League competition. Maybe I jinxed them. In 2005, these pages conscientiously followed Liverpool's progress all the way to the title on that mad, glorious night in Istanbul. Maybe such devotion to documentation is needed again.

So, a 1-1 draw away to Porto to start with. I can live with that, so can Benitez and the team, most likely. At any rate, a draw at Porto is a heck of a lot better than drawing at home to Rosenborg. At least Porto is a former Champions League winning team, and quite recently too. Rosenborg is perfectly respectable, but have never progressed beyond the group stages of the Champions League. It's early in the season, but I get my digs into Chelsea whenever I can!

Early season predictions for the CL:

• AC Milan will get at least as far as the semi-finals.
• Arsenal will go further than Chelsea (!)
• At least one English team in the semi-finals.
  
• Top scorer for an English team in the group stages will be a Manchester United player
• At least 2 of the ties in the round of 16 will be settled by penalties.
• Real Madrid to outlast Barcelona
  

Things I learnt from the 2007 Emmy Awards

Nigel Barker is a wimp.
Just before they cut to the last commercial break during the red-carpet show, they said that Nigel Barker would be doing a fashion round-up, sharing with us his best and worst dressed lists. We got the best-dressed alright, but he did not say anything bad about one single celebrity. They briefly showed someone with a ruffly rouched thing around the decolletage of her otherwise quite plain short dress, and there was nary a snark in sight. Pah! Not sure why they could not get Tim Gunn (maybe he has not yet recovered by NY Fashion Week). He would have made a better fashion commentator than Nigel, who tends to revert to "ANTM judge" mode rather too easily.

Steve Carell is my favourite person in America.
Just LOVE him. Possibly my favourite moment of the night was when he bounded onto the stage and started cavorting with his pals Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, after losing in his category to Rick Gervais. What a good sport he showed himself to be and above all, an intrinsic entertainer. One day, the people who vote for these things will recognise him for what he is - the greatest American comedic actor of his generation. I think Michael Scott will be remembered in the annals of American television history - right up there with Archie Bunker and the likes - on the strength of Carell's genius. I think it's great that he's getting so much employment now, both on The Office and in movies; sometimes nice guys can finish ahead.

Award show tears can be sincere.
A few years ago, the New Yorker had an article on the struggles of Hollywood's non A (or B or C) list actors, focusing on one Jaime Pressly. I remember the article mentioning Brittany Murphy or Kate Hudson as actresses that were getting the kinds of gigs that could go to Pressly, but for whatever reasons, did not. When she teared up during her acceptance speech and whispered about "the little engine that could, that finally did", I remembered the Jaime Pressly of that New Yorker article and I completely bought the tears and the emotions behind them.

I do sometimes dislike people because they are beautiful.
Not entirely or just because they are beautiful, but it makes it easier to add to already extant acrimony. Case in point, Katherine Heigl winning Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. I don't really give much thought to Katherine Heigl one way or the other, apart from thinking her the 2nd best looking female on Grey's Anatomy (behind the drop-dead gorgeous Kate Walsh). Then she wins in this category, when she is not even the Best Supporting Actress in her own show! Not only fellow nominees Sandra Oh and Chandra Wilson, but castmates Sara Ramirez and Kate Walsh, have shown themselves during the course of the last 2 seasons to be better dramatic actresses. Heigl's fine, and has improved by leaps and bounds since her Rosewell days, but that she should win over Oh and Wilson is laughable. Then she stands there in all her glowing blonde perfection (the white dress was sublime) talking about how hard and long she has worked at this because she counts her years as a child actress, and I think, "Imagine how much harder and longer you would have had to work if you did not look the way you do". And almost irrationally, I dislike her for the moment.

Everything they said about America Ferrera is true.
She has been called America's sweetheart in more than one newspaper article. Her Ugly Betty castmates fall over themselves to praise her and bestow upon her every compliment of kindness, sweetness and humility. In an ensemble show with flamboyant characters and outlandish storylines and in which she plays one of the most normal people, she is the breakout star who has garnered the most media attention. And yet you sense that everyone on the show is SO genuinely pleased for this young lady. I really liked her line about how the real award is "waking up tomorrow and seeing all your faces". It's an improved version of "sharing" the award with cast and crew; this is saying that the award is nice and all, but she's just happy to work with these people, and she does not need any award to validate that. Which I think is really neat.

It might be time for Tony Bennett to retire.
It pains me to say this. I love Tony Bennett. I love the American Songbook and the standards that Tony Bennett sings. The man still has that innate sense of swing so needed by standards singers (Michael Buble needs to take a few more lessons from the master before he gets there totally), and he has more than enough performing experience to cover for the deficiencies in technique that are almost necessarily a byproduct of age. But do we need to continue seeing him being so much less than what he has been? The number with Christina Aguilera was almost painful to watch. She was almost overdoing the slinking and piano-top posing to counterpoint (or compensate for?) his inactivity. He seems capable now of only being "cool" and "swinging", with the purposefully clipped delivery and artfully truncated notes. He used to be capable of romance, tenderness, slyness, cheekiness, irony and a whole lot more.

Wayne Brady could be a rather good Emmy Awards host.
Ryan Seacrest did a professional enough job to move things along, but people expect comedy from an Awards show host. If not a stand-up routine, then a clever topical song and dance. Seacrest left the stand-up comedy intro to Ray Romano (errr, why??) and the song and dance was performed by two animated characters (nice enough singing voices, but the lyrics were only passably funny). Partway through the show, they had Wayne Brady come on to rather transparently shill for his new series on Fox (well, it IS Fox we are talking about). He did what he had to do with his trademark good-natured charm and humour. I have only ever seen Wayne Brady on Whose Line is it Anyway, so this was my first time seeing him work off a script. He (and Kanye West and Rainn Wilson) made it look very spontaneous and unrehearsed. The whole segment was actually a very fun bit and it got me to thinking about Wayne Brady as an Emmy host - he sings and dances like nobody's business (in many, many styles as he showed on Whose Line), he does improv and stand-up and he's pretty darn quick on his feet.

Broadway and The Sopranos is not a comfortable fit.
There is probably some hidden joke here about unfortunate cross-overs in opera (sopranos, get it?) and musical theatre, but I am not going there. The mismatch we were treated subjected to during the "Jersey Boys does The Sopranos" segment was at once so obvious and so mystifying that I wondered if there was indeed a hidden joke that I was missing. There are some elements of the Jersey Boys book that bear similarity to several The Sopranos plots and I could understand the concept as an intellectual conceit. But the execution was really weird and there was no context for either the musical or the series. It came across as random songs from the musical being performed while random scenes from the series were enacted in the background. "You're just too good to be true" being crooned while scenes of violence were shown - what??

British accents are really the best.
The Brits were less of a presence in the Emmys than they were at the Golden Globes earlier this year, but Hugh Laurie and the Prime Suspects gang ably represented the old country in the "Our accent is sexier than yours" stakes. They won, as they usually do. The producers even chose Helen Mirren to give out the final award of the night, giving due recognition not only to a current Oscar winner and a multiple Emmy winner, but also a great classical actress and a Dame of the British Empire with the requisite cut-glass RP accent.

Those Desperate Housewives have pretty darn good agents.
The show itself was not nominated for Best Comedy Series. In the acting categories, only Felicity Huffman was nominated, but we saw the other three Housewives presenting on stage (poor Nicolette Sheridan - Edie has apparently never quite made it to full Housewife status and it might be too late now that she could be dead). Terri Hatcher also got a embarrassing self-deprecating shout-out from Ryan Seacrest in his opening spiel and Eva Longoria got what amounted to a full-page fashion editorial during both the red-carpet show and Seacrest's intro.

Those Heroes need to get themselves better agents.
Heroes was nominated as Best Drama Series. For all that, only Hayden Panettiere was on stage as a presenter. Heroes' only acting nominee, Masi Oka, was stuck behind a MacBook and had the unenviable task of explaining interactive online TV. To rub salt into the wound, he did not even get to say 'and the Emmy goes to ...". He got to introduce the guy who would announce the winner. Well, at least Ryan Seacrest told the world how smart he was as a 12 year old. His agent must have really pulled out all the stops for that.

Roots is the only memorable mini-series the Academy can call to mind.
How else to explain that Roots is brought up and showcased yet again as the production that exemplifies the "power" of the mini-series? I remember watching Roots as a kid and waiting with bated breath for each following episode. It did leave a powerful impression on me, as a non-American pre-teen learning a little about the not always savoury history of the world's most powerful nation. It was gripping and moving. But it is not the only mini-series that I have found affective as a viewer, and it is by no means the one that I found to have the strongest or most profound effect. That accolade belongs to Band of Brothers which I love because of its ideals of nobility, kinship and courage; or perhaps Angels in America for its sheer breadth of ideas and its achievement as a piece of televisual art. Other mini-series that are as memorable as Roots include The Thorn Birds and the two Anne of Green Gables series. Outside of North America, it is a veritable embarassment of riches. From Australia, there is the adaptation of the classic For the Terms of his Natural Life which I still remember almost 20 years since first seeing it, and the truly wonderful Brides of Christ. As for the British, they have elevated the mini-series into an art-form, showing their special mastery in producing period adaptations of classic novels - Brideshead Revisited, Pride and Prejudice 1995, A Dance to the Music of Time, the Poldark series, and a couple of recent gems - Bleak House (2005) and North & South (2004) (an adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's classic, and not to be mistaken with the identically named American mini-series based on John Jake's Civil War epic). Seriously, Roots is great and all that, but if the Academy had paid a little more attention to what airs on HBO and PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, it would not need to keep trotting out Roots as the epitome of mini-series perfection.

30 Rock will run more seasons than Arrested Development
Okay, this is not something I learnt from the Emmys, nor something I can claim with any certainty. I just hope that this will happen. The loss of Arrested Development after only 3 seasons, and the final one a truncated one at that, was distressing. 30 Rock, similarly hilarious, clever, subversive, unconventional and watched by too few, deserves at least the six seasons that Tina Fey asked for in her acceptance speech. I hope American tunes in to its second season - please!