9/01/2007

Eurovision Dance Contest - Stupid TV show and idiotic camera work

I've just been watching some utter drivel served up by the BBC called "The Eurovision Dance Contest" which I would urge you to avoid.

In the first instance, who on earth believes that what the viewing public really want is another "Eurovision" event, marred by countries voting for their allies, friends and neighbours rather than the "best" act. the Song contest is ruined as a spectacle because of the voting, and I would suspect the same of this show too.

Secondly, which even sort of idiot is directing the cameras. In what is a dance competition, the director seems to be cutting from camera to camera every five seconds, they have a stunt camera on than appears to be able to fly around the dancers too, but what we really want from a camera angle is a still shot so we can see the dancers feet. Unfortunately the man in charge keeps getting the cameras to zoom in on the dancers' faces in close up. Quite how we are able to judge the dancers' footwork from this, god alone knows.

Finally, all the dancers appear to be doing different styles of dance. how can a Rumba by compared to a Cha Cha Cha or a Waltz ? It's like having an international sauce contest, and comparing a Brown Sauce with a Curry Sauce or Tomato Sauce.

No, put simply, if you were a fan of dance, which i am not, this show would be spoilt by the camera angles. If you are a fan or competitive shows on TV, then your fun would be spoilt by the Eurovision voting and if you are a fan of Graham Norton who is presenting it, then you wouldn't like the show because he hardly appears. What a load of old rubbish !

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Well I didnt watch but I do watch the voting from the Eurovision song contest. Its a great opportunity to "predict" the votes. Minsk gives 12 points to .... Russia. Tallin gives 12 points to Lithuania.

Shock horror ....

Nich Starling said...

I didn't realy atch it, it was just on in the background when we had family round. but the fact that the UK came second from last and the East European countries all voted for each other says it all.

The UK was represented by World Champion ballroom dancers who, when judged by experts, are judged to be the very best in the world. But by viewers who know nothing and vote for countrise they like, they come bottom.

What a waste of money.

Anonymous said...

This talk about political voting after every British zero points seems rather pathetic from the outside. Just face it. Rule Britannia is history. No country is an island.

Nich Starling said...

Brave Mr Anonymous (why are the anonymous ones unable to spell their names). I wrte the original story before the votes were even announced, check the times. Doh !!!!

Anonymous said...

I didn't expect the UK to win as they weren't that special and one was Danish and the other a New Zealander - where was the British bit? Of course the voting was the usual farce - but how could it not be when the voting opened before the first dance and closed within a few seconds of the last? Countries might not have been allowed to vote for themselves - but the UK vote strangely managed to give 3rd and 4th positions to the Irish and the Poles who didn't dance very well at all. Now why could that be?

Rachel

Anonymous said...

I agree that the programme was absolute rubbish. However I have to correct you Norfolk Blogger (and Strictly Come Dancing has a lot to answer for here). Brendan Cole and Camilla Dallerup are NOT the very best in the World in Ballroom/Latin American Dancing - in fact they are not even close ! When they were competing, they were ranked somewhere between 12th and 24th in the World and would never in a million years have been even close to the final of a major event. Most of the couples who beat them were simply better - and their naff James Bond routine was just like the old days of Come Dancing. in fact last night's hideous programme was exactly why we all hated Come Dancing in it's first incarnation !

dobson said...

I spent much of the weekend setting up the various components of a home-cinema system. As I channel hopped, I happened to catch a glimpse of Graham Norton's MCing of this spectacularly banal event.

I remember that 15 years ago, the various government ministers assured us that the new Digital channel allocation would usher a world of greater choice in which the wide variety of broadcast channels would guarantee high-quality entertainment for all.

What has actually happened is precisely what the many critics predicted: TV just got dumber. Now we have 30 digital channels instead of 5 analogue ones, all this space has been filled with more reality shows, repeats and celebrity dance shows such as the one that you have brought to my attention.

I think this sort of thing might just be the beginning of the end of the BBC's exclusive hold on the license fee. I've no objection to public-subsidized public-service broadcasting, on the other hand I've got a big objection to this sort of thing being snuck under the banner of "public service".

Anonymous said...

You don't have to be from a country to represent that country in Eurovision, Witness Gina G (Australian) and Katrina and the Waves (US) representing the UK and Celine Dion representing Switzerland.

Tristan said...

'tis all a bit of fun.

I agree its a waste of tax payer's money, but then again, the whole BBC is...

I rather enjoyed it, although the camera work was a bit dodgey and some of the dancers were downright strange...

The real travesty was Ireland did as well as it did with frankly a bad ballroom/latin part done in a 'irish style' and not that great freestyle (modern irish) I've seen far better...

At least the best two countries did come top - Finland (best dancers - they were fantastic) and Ukraine (most entertaining) although Lithuania (my 3rd choice) were disappointingly placed...

Anonymous said...

I had a wisdom tooth pulled out the other week and it was far less painful than this drivel. Still, with Graham Norton co-hosting, my hopes weren't high. The only good thing about the entire show was that it had me reaching for a thesaurus to look up new words with which to register my contempt for the idiot who thought this would be a good idea in the first place.

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