FRANCE 2011 - Sognu

I have to say one thing before anything else in this post: I LOVE the French entry this year. Seriously, I LOVE it. LOVE it!!! :-D It is FANTASTIC and I LOVE IT!!! :-D

OK, with that out of the way, I won't be at all surprised if this entry totally bombs and they end up with a really shitty result. Not that they don't have a chance of doing well ... there's always a chance, you never know. I will certainly be voting for them. IMO, they deserve to do very well with this song. But I can't in all honesty say that this really is an ESC song. This is more of a West End song. It sounds like it's out of Les Miserables or some other musical in that vein. It's a wonderful song, it's beautiful, but I can't help but thinking that the ESC really isn't the place for it.

It's also sure to draw some intimations of plagiarism, because, let's face it, it sounds almost exactly like Con te partirò. There is what is sometimes referred to as an eerie similarity. :-D That's not a plus. What is a plus, though, is that it's in Corsican. At least it's a plus to me. I like it. :-) The singer's voice is good and he's young and pretty. The song is quite striking and, as I've indicated, unusual for the ESC. Unusual may very well translate to inappropriate in this context. But I'm hoping for the best.

One thing that gives some legitimacy to that hope is that the UK did surprisingly well with the same type of song two years ago. Andrew Lloyd Webber came fifth with It's My Time. However, he's Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is quite probably a fluke. :-)

But don't let me keep you from enjoying this brilliant song any longer! This is Amaury Vassili performing Sognu by Daniel Moyne, Quentin Bachelet, Jean-Pierre Marcellesi and Julie Miller. This quartet will be competing for France on Saturday, May 14th - they will not have to go through a semi-final as France is one of the Big Five*. But that too will, alas, most likely be in this entry's disfavor. :-( The best of luck to France!!



Widescreen here.

Lyrics with translation here.

*Big Five, rather than Big Four, is in fact correct this year, because of a surprising but wonderful development - Italy is in the ESC again!! For the first time in 14 years!! Yay and hooray!! :-D

Mona Achache: Le hérisson

I was supposed to go to the Christmas market at the Folk Museum yesterday, but I didn't - it was just too cold, 15 below, I just couldn't force myself out in it knowing that I would be spending hours outside in that temperature. Brr. Anne Ida agreed, so we decided it'd be better to do something indoors instead and went to the movies. :-)

Good choice, because instead of freezing our noses off at the Museum, we got to see an absolutely wonderful movie. One that was even better than I'd hoped. :-) I've read the book this movie is based on - you can see my video review of it here; it's in Norwegian, I'm afraid - and I absolutely love it. So of course the movie was a potential disappointment ... especially as it's a very literary and cerebral novel, and it's a little hard to picture how it could make the transition to the screen with much ease. But it has!! Very impressively, Achache is a debuting director, and she also wrote the screenplay, based on the wonderful novel by Muriel Barbery. To be honest I can hardly believe that she hasn't made anything but two short films before this.

What I had read about the movie previously had made me think that it was only based on the book and would be likely to stray rather far from it. But that's not the case at all. We were both very pleasantly surprised (Anne Ida has read the book too and she loves it as well :-) by how faithful to the original story the movie is. The main alteration is that while one of the main characters in the novel keeps a diary, in the movie she is obsessed with filming everything around her. An obvious and necessary change. In other respects they have managed to preserve so much of the novel, I was very impressed. The tone, the wonderful characters, the fascinating microcosm of the setting, the humor ... pretty much everything. I loved it. :-)

In fact they have almost stayed too true to the book, because I had a small hope that they had changed the almost unbearably sad ending ... but no.

A low-key, slow-paced movie with fantastic characters SO beautifully portrayed. Hardly any action but still packed with impressions. One of the best movies I've seen all year. :-)

The book is available in English under the title The Elegance of the Hedgehog; in Norwegian it's called Pinnsvinets eleganse.

FRANCE 2010 - Allez olla olé

Ah, France ... another of the Big Four who's sent a quality entry this year. Wonders never cease. :-) This song has also been chosen as France's World Cup song, and I've got to say that it's absolutely perfect in that setting. Literally couldn't be better. I'm not sure about it here, though. It's a good song, it has a great beat and lots of energy. With the right presentation it could be really good on stage. It's just kind of outside the box as far as ESC entries go. Not that I could really say for sure where the box actually is any more, with all the different songs in the contest these days. :-) But I think this song may end up not doing very well - not as well as it deserves - because it's not the kind of song people expect to hear in the ESC.

Although of course if a lot of football fans happen to be watching, it ought to rake in the votes. ;-)

Another thing this song has against it, and I'm sorry to say this, is the fact that the singer is black. Unfortunately there is quite a bit of racism percolating around Europe - not going to point any fingers, but you know what I mean - and this entry will in all likelihood lose potential votes from certain countries because of that. Which is too bad, it's a good song, and I applaud France for sending a black singer, the contest should have as much diversity as possible. But they'll probably to some extent be tripping themselves up with it. :-( Good luck to them, though, they deserve it this year. :-)

This is Jessy Matador performing Allez olla olé by Hugues Ducamin and Jacques Ballue. They will be competing for France on Saturday, May 29th - as one of the four main contributors to the EBU they have an automatic place in the final. Good luck. :-)



Lyrics with translation here.

Carcassonne 2009: London Zoo, part 2

More pictures from my visit to London Zoo, on my way to Carcassonne, France. August 6th.

A couple of butterflies, Lepidoptera, in the rather ... inflatable-looking butterfly house.

Look at this one, its wings are hardly even there. Weirdness. :-)

The otters, Lutra lutra, were of course adorable. Squee. :-)

A couple of green iguanas, Iguana iguana, in the rainforest house where I sought shelter from the rain.

Aww. I so agree, we can't imagine what it must have been like. But I almost wish we could. :-)

A sloth, Folivora, still in the rainforest house. In Norwegian these animals are called dovendyr, which means lazy animal. V. appropriate. :-)

After the rain let up, I left the rainforest house and made my way towards the African section. Where so many fascinating animals were on display!! Warthogs, giraffes! Zebras and hunting dogs! Okapis and toilets! Wheee!!!

An African warthog, Phacochoerus africanus. A face only a mother could love.

One of the giraffes, Giraffa camelopardalis, really wanted to go outside, but for some reason they weren't allowed to. Maybe it was too cold ... but on the other hand the door was partly open, letting the temperature in, so I'm not sure that makes sense. o_O

Oh, for the great outdoors ... !!

Oh, all the things I've seen ... !!

I'm back home, although not for long. I'll get to that. Just let me say that I've had a wonderful trip and I'm so happy that we didn't just talk about this, but actually made it happen. :-) Anne Ida, thanks for sharing this great experience with me. :-)

It's only been a week, but I've seen so much ... !!!

I've seen my first ever pancake tortoise in real life. It looked fascinating, even more so - unsurprisingly, of course - than in the pictures that I've seen.

I've seen an animal I never knew existed, the Himalayan newt. These little critters were just too adorable. I wanted to break the glass down and take them with me. This picture doesn't even do them justice. I have a video coming up that will show what I mean much better. Just too cute for words. :-)

We've seen the Canal du Midi, a marvel of engineering which nine days ago neither one of us (ie, Anne Ida and me ;-) even knew existed.

We've seen strange and wonderful flowers and plants. :-)

We've seen kangaroos!! :-D

We've seen not one, not two, but three amazing cemeteries, whole little cities of the dead. As un-Norwegian as it can possibly get.

And of course, we've seen the gorgeous, beautiful, amazing, astonishing old town of Carcassonne - la Cité.

This was our first glimpse of it. I had the great good luck to be able to take this shot through the window of our plane, even though I wasn't sure when I would see it or even if I would, and I only had a moment in which to take a picture. What a sight from so far away.

And even more impressive up close. We've seen it!! :-D

And of course, we have played Carcassonne in Carcassonne ... !

The trip home was kind of exhausting ... it took so long, even though the distance isn't that great. We had to change planes at Stansted, that awful, awful place, and our stopover was about four hours. (Actually more like five, but we got delayed in France, big surprise.) So, not long enough to leave the airport and actually do anything, but long enough to get soundly bored. And since they constantly changed the gates on us we didn't really get to settle down to wait anywhere either. Plus of course we had to wait in long lines lots of times. What fun. We left our hotel at 11:45am, yet by the time we touched down in Sandefjord the time was nearing 10:30pm. Whew. Fortunately Anne Ida's parents were waiting for us with their car ready to whisk us off to their cabin just outside of town. It was great to get to stay the night with them and not have to go all the way to Oslo ... we wouldn't have gotten there till past midnight. So it was good to put that off till today. We took the train back to the city and I got home at about 4pm. Whew, again. The turtles were fine, the little guys were happy to see me and Raphael quite skeptical (although he did come out into the living room to look for his dinner eventually ;-). I'm kind of sad to have to leave them again so soon. They may not miss me, but I miss them. :-)

My vacation isn't over, though - I'm leaving tomorrow for another week, or thereabouts. I will be spending it at our cabin in the mountains ... so I've got my fingers crossed for nice weather. I'm sure it won't be anything like what we had in the south of France, of course, but I'm hoping for a few sunny days at least. :-)

A few blog posts will probably pop up, but apart from that I really will be incommunicado this time. Kind of a relief. And as picturesque as that landscape is, I don't think I will be taking more than 2,500 pictures and videos in a week ... o_O

When I get back I will finally have time to check out everybody's blogs and whatnot. Thanks for stopping by here. I hope you're all enjoying your summer. :-)

We're here!!

Alive and well but having trouble with this damn French keyboard. :-D

Big thanks to KAS and trilltrall for feeding the turtles!!

Anne Ida says hi to whoever. :-)

I've taken SO MANY PICTURES... !! o_O

By the time you read this ...

... I'll be here:

OK, so, obviously, not here, but here. :-) Anne Ida and I will be there - here - for a week, till Friday the 14th. We'll be playing Carcassonne in Carcassonne. That's pretty much all the plans we have. But I'm sure we'll think of something. :-)

There will be a few updates while I'm gone, not sure how interesting they'll be, but, well, everything slows down when it's vacation time. :-) I can't promise I'll manage to post anything while I'm in France, but we'll see. I certainly have plans for a very silly post when I get back. ;-)

Lithuania, Israel, France

Yup, here's Dima. And he got stuck ... !!! LOL!!! :-D

O.M.G. o_O

This opening perfectly showcases the one major problem Russia has, and always has had: They never know when enough is enough.

Lithuania:
Boring song and boring presentation.
This kid has watched way too much MTV.
Does he have a black eye??
Anne Ida's wondering does he know enough English to understand what he's singing ... ? :-D
Boring, no chance.

Israel:
Boring.
And it's so obvious ... !! Do they think we're idiots? >:-(
Oh, and the drums ... That is soo four years ago ...
Boring, no chance.

France:
Ooh, Patricia Kaas ... !!
KAS is being so negative, she says this song is boring too. No, it isn't, it's cool!! And the presentation is wonderful too.
Oh, how she suffers ... !! See her soul just pour out onto the stage ... ! :-D
I really like this, but I don't think a lot of people will remember this in 90 minutes.
Alas.

FRANCE 2009: Patricia Kaas – Et s’il fallait le faire

This is my last ESC review this year. (I think I know someone who will be pretty happy about that. ;-) Just think, in two weeks from now it'll all be over ... :-(

But at least as far as my reviews are concerned, we're leaving on a high note. Vive la France!! As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing wrong with this song. Nothing. It's a wonderful song and everything is wonderful. :-) Patricia Kaas of course performs it beautifully. *joy!!*

Of course this song may not necessarily do well. Because it's a slow ballad, people will only hear it once (since France is one of the Big Four) and they have a shitty slot, #2. But it ought to go through the roof. It's a quality entry, and that's even totally understating it. Patricia Kaas is just wonderful ... and they're sure to get lots and lots of votes just because of that, just because it is Patricia Kaas. :-) She has a lot of fans and hopefully a bunch of them will be tuning in on the 16th. Fingers crossed. France had a great song last year, but they bombed ... it was just too weird, I think. This one though is not weird, just great. Kudos to France. In French. :-)

This is Patricia Kaas performing Et s'il fallait le faire, a lovely French chanson by Fred Blondin and Anse Lazio. They will be competing for France on May 16th. The best of luck to them. :-)

Lyrics here.

Georgia, Ukraine, France

Georgia:
This song is either very catchy or very repetitive.
Not one of my personal favorites, but it's probably going to do pretty well.
The presentation would have been better if it hadn't been so obvious.

Ukraine:
The song is almost the same as Sweden's, so since it has much more charm and spirit I hope it will steal all of Sweden's votes. >:-)
The presentation is almost the same as Armenia's ... for my money the Armenian song is better. But this will do very well. Another potential winner.

France:
ROTFL!!! OMG, fantastic!!!!
12 points for humor!! Brilliant!!
One of the best presentations of the night. Certainly the cleverest. :-)
France deserves to do so well this year. I so hope they will.
But they would have benefited from being heard more than once.
France should do better this year than they have for a long time.

FRANCE 2008: Sebastién Tellier - Divine

Gasp ... !! The French, competing in English!! What IS the world coming to?!? :-D

The video for this song is brilliant, fantastic. I dig it. Probably the best video this year, hands down. Unfortunately there is no way they'll be able to reproduce it on stage. It'll be very interesting to see what they'll do with this.

I like this song. It's a new style for the contest, it's original, the guy's obviously a professional. I don't think it'll do well though. Unfortunately. It's too, what's the word, experimental? Too low-key, certainly. One must look in vain for a real chorus.

This is quality music for my money, but I'm not sure it'll have the chance to attract a lot of votes. Although I wish it would.

It's probably actually not a good thing for the Big Four that they don't have to compete for their places in the final. Because this is a song that would benefit a lot from being heard by the audience more than once.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz58Hw9hldw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh_b8Q39Bj0