I thought last night’s show was horrible. The bright spot was AscenDance who I think are amazing. Grimm will go through and I think Restivo will go through, but everyone else deserved to go home.
I haven’t watched the whole episode yet, but of those I have seen:
Cheer SF - Gotta go, they are boring, don’t do anything particularly exciting and don’t even seem to be that good a cheer squad.
Iron Horse - Bar band, exactly right. That guy cannot sing.
Mona Sampath Dance - I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think I would pay to see a Vegas Bollywood show.
Alice Tan Ridley - She can sure sing and has a great presence. I just really don’t want a singer to win.
I do think he has a strong and pleasant singing voice, but not for a Vegas style show. If he was the soloist at my church I think I’d enjoy it.
The hats are great, but they don’e make a guy standing on a platform singing into an “act”.
My early favorite was Fighting Gravity, but now I’m leaning towards AscenDance because they did find a way to change it since the last show. If they go to the next round and can do a routine to a different style of song I think they have a shot.
I don’t get the judges saying that Whosit Grimm has a unique voice. He has a voice that hasn’t been on the front burner for a while, but it’s hardly unique. If I ruled the world, or the show, a solo singer wouldn’t win just singing covers.
Ronith is truly horrible. I don’t believe for a minute that he is trying to be funny by being terrible. With Chips Cooney, the bad magician, he is definitely being funny and Piers has no sense of humor not to see that. Ronith, OTOH, is just bad. Howie is off-base there.
From last night, these are my predictions:
- Alice Tan Ridley
- Grimm
- Hannibal Means
- Wreckless
4b. Ascendance
Ridley NAILED Midnight Train To Georgia. She made Gladys Knight look like an amateur. She’s pretty well kicked ass on everything she’s done, though.
Hannibal Means is one weird duck. His hats were pretty impressive, though, and he turned in an interesting performance. I’m starting to like the guy, but he is probably certifiably insane.
Maybe not the best, but Fighting Gravity and AscenDance are the only two acts who would have a serious shot at creating a show here in Las Vegas. The others, at best, might be able to be part of the Jubilee! show in Bally’s, where they have variety acts mixed in with the show.
(BTW - should anyone go to Vegas, be sure to see Jubilee! - the last of the topless, big shows in Las Vegas and when/if it closes, that will be the last of that kind of show in town. And it is really quite good!)
Then again - I think they should nix the whole “Be A Star In Vegas!” claim and just give them their $1 million and be done with it. They are making it seem like Vegas has no shows and are desperate to have some kids tap dance, or another mediocre magician or whatever. As mentioned in earlier post, it is cutthroat to get a show in Vegas and chances of breaking into the market are slim at best.
Am I the only one is was very unimpressed with Alice Tan last night? As a big black woman you have one giant (heh) asset (heh) when it comes to singing: A very strong voice. She barely used that. She was singing well, but with all the small breaks in her singing there was barely any flow, and she dressed it up so much it was distracting, not to mention she only really let loose once. Use that voice woman! Find the happy median between how you sang, and over-the-top voice that Hannibal is using.
Other than than Michael Bolt…I mean Grimm was great as always. The fire guy was cool and I think did a great show. Acendance is totally blowing me away…they are doing wonderfully for what they do!
My four:
Ascendance (guaranteed)
Grimm (guaranteed)
Fire magic guy (could change)
Wreckless (they are my biggest maybe…but I’m goin out on a limb)
I felt kind of bad for Howie trying to save face when he thought that Ronith was being bad on purpose only for Ronith to state that he thought his impressions were great. At that point Howie could either admit he was wrong and made a big mistake, or do what he did and try to convince Ronith to agree with him. Either way I’m sure America will vote him off.
And one thing about Alice. Even though I think she’s great, and as I stated will probably get a contract or record deal one way or another, did anybody else notice that a couple of times it sounded like her voice was going out so she belted out the next part of the song to try and cover it up?
Ironically, while I couldn’t stand any of the singers last week, this week, they were the only ones who impressed me. I don’t know if that means the singers this week were better, or the other acts weaker.
Yes, I even liked Hannibal over AscenDance. That might just be a personal problem, though, since I liked the song he sang better than the one the rock-climbers used.
I’m hoping the magician goes through, though. I hate that only 4 acts move to the next round, there are going to be way too many singers.
A lot of the other acts would be better, if they weren’t so focused on getting things right technically, and learned how to connect with an audience (yanno, be “entertaining”). Someone needs to take these people to the side and explain that it’s more about the audience’s emotions than it is how talented they are.
Three outta four ain’t bad.
I feel bad for Wreckless cuz I think they lost A LOT of who they are once AGT gave them a coreographer. They danced from the heart and from the streets…not from a guy who thinks stuff up.
Yeah, but at least he’s the happy, smiley, crochet funny hats type insane and not the stalky, stabby, keeps your face in a jar insane. As far as we know.
I would totally watch a reality show built around Hannibal just trying to interact with normal folks in ordinary situations.
I have no clue what would happen the first time his drive-through order is wrong over at the corner Taco Bell, but I’m fairly sure it would be more entertaining than, say, the AGT results shows themselves.
Not sure if he can run a show in Vegas (Branson maybe), but I LOVE the spirit of Harmonica Pierre and of the first three acts, he’s really the only one worthy to go on so far. Amazing talent and I want him to be my uncle.
Damn. Missed tonight. Anything outstanding?
The last act tonight, the dance group, was really terrific, as was Haspop. My predictions:
-
Young Beast Society
-
Debra Romer
-
Haspop
-
CJ Dippa or Strange Familiar.
Here on the West Coast it started 45 minutes ago. The Vikings were OK, I agreed with Howie that the harmonica player’s choice of music sounded like something that you’d hear at a doctor’s office, but over-all I think he’s a great harmonica player, I missed most of the rap kid’s performance, and even though I’m not that fond of rap, I think he’s a pretty good rapper, especially for being 11. And I agreed with Piers about the Russian ballerina being boring.
Last week’s show was boring to me. This week’s had so many good acts that I’m having trouble narrowing my favorites down to only four. The things that stood out to me:
-The last dance group was far better than the first, but I don’t think the first was that bad.
-I’ve never watched a full season of AMG before, but is Piers usually that buzz-happy? I really think he just wanted to buzz people because he said he would buzz alot at the beginning of the show.
-While I understood where Chipps was going with the new direction, you’re not going to get far in show business if your excuse for coming up with a new act is “I ran out of ideas,” or however he put it. He needed to defend his act, or do what Howie said and fill the time with setting something up.
-On NBC’s AMG homepage, the biography for Haspop says that he has worked as a dancer in one of Cirque du Soleil’s Vegas shows. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him being a professional performer, it does take away from the story they are trying to build on the show, which is that he works only on the street.
I don’t even pretend to judge how ‘talented’ the acts are. Instead I just give each act a ‘rating’ from ‘-’ to ‘0’ to ‘+’ based on whether I hope never to see the act again, don’t care if I see the act again, or would like to see the act again.
For me, this was a dud week.
The only two I’d like to see more of are Haspop and the Young Beast dance group. I would change the channel to avoid four of them (the gymnast, Strange Familiar, Luigi and Chips) and I am perfectly indifferent to all the rest. <shrug>
I wish they would create an age minimum for this show. I fucking hated that fucking little pseudorapper fucker.
I hate how he puts on this awful Black inner city street accent when just speaking. When rapping, fine OK maybe that cadence works better, but when speaking to the judges? He’s a white kid from Texas. It’s so stupid. I’m guessing he’ll be one of the two the judges will choose between.
Only if we can get a maximum, too.
Just think: we wouldn’t have to listen to that horrible red-haired screecher, the hand whistler, the dreadful magician/stripper,…