Post by Inside Australian Idol on Jan 30, 2004 23:40:58 GMT 10
Tuneless torture
January 31, 2004
So many wannabes, but plenty of time to mock them for wanting what everyone does, writes Ruth Ritchie.
On Sunday night we watched two hours of America's top-rated TV show. A cruel yet fascinating work of torture for everyone involved, American Idol (Ten) hurtled through hundreds of singers from towns all over America in search of somebody to make famous.
In the early episodes most of the singers are terrible, and that's why we watch. Of course, after a while, the really terrible ones are weeded out and the mostly mediocre compete for weeks with each other, in front of the judges and for our affections. We get attached to them, like hamsters or hermit crabs, and they are quickly forgotten once they've left the arena.
American Idol is great because the aspiring stars appear to be even worse than our own local hopefuls. Desperate youngsters here have a fairly reasonable RSL expectation of fame. In America they expect to be, and often are, the focus of Entertainment Tonight for weeks.
If you're on Entertainment Tonight you're a gold-plated, bona fide superstar. So what if one of Idol's judges, the washed-up pop star Paula Abdul, is an ET reporter.
We saw terrible deeds done in the name of fame, and mostly terrific calls from the mean judge, Simon Cowell. This man is now an A-list platinum megastar, just for being totally vile to people who should be working in a coldroom or pet shop in Stuffyou, Idaho.
So we watched for two hours, and only a few of them could sing a bit, but it was great television. In a sad deed of cruel programming juxtaposition, what followed was two hours of totally mediocre singing, and it was excruciating.
Celebrate Australia Live (Sunday, Ten) was full of people who have arrived . . . in Canberra. Their drive for fame has reached such dizzying heights, they must lie awake at night rigid with adrenaline. Nobody on the stage in front of Parliament House on Sunday evening has ever appeared on Entertainment Tonight. Not even Nikki Webster. And that little poppet was the show's headliner. Or was it Guy Sebastian, or was it Shannon Noll, or some girl who'd won a competition on JJJ and sounded like a cat being strangled in a well? She was a highlight.
Poor Gretel Killeen, the show's very brave host, bluffed her way through introductions of notable nobodies, but just in case we didn't get it, described the act we were about see. I still don't get Mercury 4. Explain to me the existence of a boy band if the boys aren't good looking.
I feel sorry for Killeen. She's a bright girl and a hard worker. She's done well to smirk through years of nobodies on Big Brother, and now Ten is forcing her to do it with the barely famous. She could introduce my drycleaner to thunderous applause in front of a packed teenage crowd. It's a real gift.
That made four long hours of mostly talentless singers, arrogantly peddling their wares on primetime TV. Nikki Webster even treated us to costume changes, like Kylie, but oh, so different.
Four hours. That's only a smidgen longer than the Golden Globes. What, no pay TV? You missed the best part of a day's devotion from Showtime to the complete nonsense awards (including red carpets and repeats).
It's a snazzy night. It's a Jack and Al and Meryl kind of night. And if we leave the cleavage of Nicole Kidman's ill-fitting gown for a whole different column, the frocks were mostly terrific.
All the actors know the awards are a joke, so they drink a lot of Moet, and do a stupendous job of making being famous look like fun. Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas behaved like old-fashioned rat packers "I've known Michael Douglas longer than some men's wives have been alive," DeVito said. Jack Nicholson hooted and hollered as if he was watching a Knicks game.
There were some fine thank you speeches: Diane Keaton's genuine gratitude to Nancy Myers for writing "a romantic comedy between two people whose combined ages are 125". Bill Murray's was an anti-thanks: "There are so many people trying to take credit for this I wouldn't know where to begin."
And Mary-Louise Parker, for a bet, thanked her newborn baby for making her boobs look so good in her dress.
Some really talented and worthy recipients got up: Sofia Coppola, Sean Penn, Peter Jackson, Tim Robbins, Diane Keaton. I don't care if those judges are a bunch of unemployable Estonian nutters. Any group brave enough to give Ricky Gervais and The Office two awards over a barrage of American favourites can ply me with gallons of Moet any time.
The Golden Globes fan the fire of celebrity desperation. Tin-eared kids will humiliate themselves on national television for the opportunity to be shiny and special, to thank parents and agents, and rub shoulders with Nicholson. Or perhaps sing with Nikki Webster, in Canberra, on Australia Day.
www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/30/1075340831050.html
January 31, 2004
So many wannabes, but plenty of time to mock them for wanting what everyone does, writes Ruth Ritchie.
On Sunday night we watched two hours of America's top-rated TV show. A cruel yet fascinating work of torture for everyone involved, American Idol (Ten) hurtled through hundreds of singers from towns all over America in search of somebody to make famous.
In the early episodes most of the singers are terrible, and that's why we watch. Of course, after a while, the really terrible ones are weeded out and the mostly mediocre compete for weeks with each other, in front of the judges and for our affections. We get attached to them, like hamsters or hermit crabs, and they are quickly forgotten once they've left the arena.
American Idol is great because the aspiring stars appear to be even worse than our own local hopefuls. Desperate youngsters here have a fairly reasonable RSL expectation of fame. In America they expect to be, and often are, the focus of Entertainment Tonight for weeks.
If you're on Entertainment Tonight you're a gold-plated, bona fide superstar. So what if one of Idol's judges, the washed-up pop star Paula Abdul, is an ET reporter.
We saw terrible deeds done in the name of fame, and mostly terrific calls from the mean judge, Simon Cowell. This man is now an A-list platinum megastar, just for being totally vile to people who should be working in a coldroom or pet shop in Stuffyou, Idaho.
So we watched for two hours, and only a few of them could sing a bit, but it was great television. In a sad deed of cruel programming juxtaposition, what followed was two hours of totally mediocre singing, and it was excruciating.
Celebrate Australia Live (Sunday, Ten) was full of people who have arrived . . . in Canberra. Their drive for fame has reached such dizzying heights, they must lie awake at night rigid with adrenaline. Nobody on the stage in front of Parliament House on Sunday evening has ever appeared on Entertainment Tonight. Not even Nikki Webster. And that little poppet was the show's headliner. Or was it Guy Sebastian, or was it Shannon Noll, or some girl who'd won a competition on JJJ and sounded like a cat being strangled in a well? She was a highlight.
Poor Gretel Killeen, the show's very brave host, bluffed her way through introductions of notable nobodies, but just in case we didn't get it, described the act we were about see. I still don't get Mercury 4. Explain to me the existence of a boy band if the boys aren't good looking.
I feel sorry for Killeen. She's a bright girl and a hard worker. She's done well to smirk through years of nobodies on Big Brother, and now Ten is forcing her to do it with the barely famous. She could introduce my drycleaner to thunderous applause in front of a packed teenage crowd. It's a real gift.
That made four long hours of mostly talentless singers, arrogantly peddling their wares on primetime TV. Nikki Webster even treated us to costume changes, like Kylie, but oh, so different.
Four hours. That's only a smidgen longer than the Golden Globes. What, no pay TV? You missed the best part of a day's devotion from Showtime to the complete nonsense awards (including red carpets and repeats).
It's a snazzy night. It's a Jack and Al and Meryl kind of night. And if we leave the cleavage of Nicole Kidman's ill-fitting gown for a whole different column, the frocks were mostly terrific.
All the actors know the awards are a joke, so they drink a lot of Moet, and do a stupendous job of making being famous look like fun. Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas behaved like old-fashioned rat packers "I've known Michael Douglas longer than some men's wives have been alive," DeVito said. Jack Nicholson hooted and hollered as if he was watching a Knicks game.
There were some fine thank you speeches: Diane Keaton's genuine gratitude to Nancy Myers for writing "a romantic comedy between two people whose combined ages are 125". Bill Murray's was an anti-thanks: "There are so many people trying to take credit for this I wouldn't know where to begin."
And Mary-Louise Parker, for a bet, thanked her newborn baby for making her boobs look so good in her dress.
Some really talented and worthy recipients got up: Sofia Coppola, Sean Penn, Peter Jackson, Tim Robbins, Diane Keaton. I don't care if those judges are a bunch of unemployable Estonian nutters. Any group brave enough to give Ricky Gervais and The Office two awards over a barrage of American favourites can ply me with gallons of Moet any time.
The Golden Globes fan the fire of celebrity desperation. Tin-eared kids will humiliate themselves on national television for the opportunity to be shiny and special, to thank parents and agents, and rub shoulders with Nicholson. Or perhaps sing with Nikki Webster, in Canberra, on Australia Day.
www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/30/1075340831050.html
