I don’t think there is enough interest to have a weekly thread, but we can just compile this season into one thread (I didn’t want to bump the one previous since it had been a couple of weeks)
So this week… Boy Shakira was horrid…
The piano guy with the American outfit looked exactly like a younger, thinner Alan Hale Jr. (Skipper from Gilligan’s Island).
The stilt guys were cool.
I’m still watching, may post again.
The Pakistani guy’s dance made me cringe and cover my eyes a few times. Eek.
I thought Boy Shakira was actually pretty good. Great energy and dance moves. I wouldn’t pick him to win, but he’s the Leonid of this year.
My favorite so far is Cas Haley. Great musician.
The ventriloquist is also really good. I had a look at his web site, and he’s astoundingly good. He’s the best ventriloquist I’ve ever seen, and he’s got a full act full of characters. He’s a funny guy, too. He does mostly dinner theater and corporate gigs, it looks like. But I’ll bet that now that he’s been seen, he’ll be in Vegas before you can blink.
I like Sharon Osborne. She brings way more personality than Brandy had.
One thing I dislike is that they are clearly ramping up the meanness and conflict between the judges. It’s also annoying that they’ll show bad act after bad act in their entirety, then show only a few seconds of winning acts in a montage. I’d rather watch good, entertaining people than a train wreck any day, but clearly the producers feel differently. American Inventor is doing the same thing.
I disagree… my favorite part of the show is the early stages, where it’s kind of like a modern-day version of the Gong Show.
I couldn’t stop laughing at Boy Shakira… he looked like Herve’ Villechaise in a blonde wig!
I think what they try to do is highlight the most entertainingly bad and good acts in their entirety, and then montage the more middle of the road ones.
I liked Cas, but I think my favorite actually is the Rock-a-billy punk band made up of fifteen year olds from a few weeks ago. The ventriliquist was also pretty amazing.
I agree, he kicked ass.
Interesting note about a previous episode: remember the guy with the trained cats? Well on one of the juggling lists I’m on they were talking about him. Apparently he’s also a very good juggler. I guess he figured David Hasselhoff might like cats more than jugglers after watching the show last year.
But…does he juggle cats?? :eek:
I noticed something very interesting at the end of last night’s show. The million dollars is paid out as an annuity over 40 years or a one time lump sum present value payment. It is $25,000/yr before taxes. At a 10% discount rate that works out to be a little less than $250,000 in present value, certainly nothing to cry about. However, given the eye-grabbing value of $1,000,000 it seems pretty small. Especially once taxes are taken out.
I was glad to see my favorites, Johnny Come Lately go through despite giving a bad performance. I also really liked Cas again and I really liked the girl who beat-boxed on the piano. The non-musical acts don’t grab me, except for the magician who chainsawed the guy in half.
I can’t belive they didn’t take the baton twirling guy but they took Boy Shakira and the Bollywood dancing guy!
In that Cas Haley link, check out The Hoff struggling to keep the beat.
I noticed that too about the payout. $250,000 is a far cry from 1 million. Actually, I’m surprised that they’d wimp out on it-I’m sure the show has a big enough budget and plenty of advertising to pay out an actual million.
The guy who cut the man in half. How in the hell did he do that? I was only half watching because I was pretty bored with the show by then and so I missed the first part of his act. All I saw was the sword go through, the guy fall foward and then them lifting his top half and carrying it around. :eek:
I thought I’d missed something on the Bollywood dancer too but obviously not. He really and truly sucked. I thought it was a joke edit when they showed him getting through.
I replayed the half-man thing several times- that was extremely well done. I thought the water magician was also pretty good, but the half-man thing blew me away.
Bollywood dancer and Shak-him-ra going through- what a disgrace to the talented acts that got bumped.
I mostly enjoy watching the performers, but I have a real gripe about the show itself. What kind of morons are the producers and/or editors? Why do they spend so damned much time showing us what’s coming up, introducing the judges, recapping what’s gone before, telling us how the show works, telling us how the judging will work, recapping what they already told us about how the show and the judging will work, recapping a performer’s previous appearance, showing us the performers standing and sitting around backstage, showing us a performer warming up, showing a performer talking about why they’re there, recapping a performer talking about why they’re there, Springer talking about the recap of the performer talking about why they’re there . . . and on and on, so much that we barely get to see any of the actual performances!!
I mean, I didn’t time it, but I’d bet a lot that out of the show time last night (not including commercials), way less than half was spent on the actual performances. When they all came out to get told if they were in or out, I was just amazed at how many of them we hadn’t even seen perform!
The show is called “America’s Got Talent”, not “America’s Got a Good Backstage Story”. Show us the talent, not that other crap!
It has been years since a magician has made me go “Wow…”
Take an old “sawing an assistant in half” trick and spice it up a little. Wow.
(Seriously, I know this stuff and I will be damned if I know quite how he managed that illusion.)
I loved Cas also.
But my guilty pleasure of the night was definitely the Glamazons. Uhhhh… I can’t think of anything more to say that won’t get me flamed or beaten with a PC stick, so I’ll just stop there.
J.
Boy Shakira made it through?!
I admit he can belly dance but still…
I’m upset the guys who did the acapella “Everything She Does Is Magic” did not make it through. I thought they really owned that song.
I’m also upset the teacher who had the flu but sung anyway didn’t make it.
I could not agree more. I actually screamed at the tv a couple times during this stuff. And why do they have to show us Springer commenting back stage while someone’s performing? He doesn’t have anything useful to say, show the damn performer! Springer is also pretty bland and inept as a host. I guess he doesn’t know what to do if people aren’t attacking each other around him.
I also agree with McNew, that Boy Shakira and Bollywood Dancer guy (who couldn’t even bother with a costume this time) do not deserve to be on the shortlist when other more interesting and talented performers were sent home. I think one of the comments about the baton guy was that he was interesting but who’s going to want to watch that for more than 5 minutes. Well, I’d much rather watch the baton guy than those other two. It seems like the producers wanted to keep those guys and it had nothing to do with talent.
I think I’ll be checking out what’s on the other stations after this but it’s summer and there’s not much else to choose from.
That’s Kevin James! He’s been doing his act for quite awhile. It goes by the name, “The Wizard of Odd”.
Kevin was spot on if you ask me. I’ve been studying his stuff for quite awhile and I still don’t know how he does it.
I am routing for him all the way and hope he wins in the end. I think it would help legitimize magic as an entertainment venue. I say this because I have found, as a performing magician myself, that most people think, “He’s a magician so lets get him to entertain the kids.” His winning the whole thing would show everyone that magicians are not just kids’ entertainers.
The guy who fell, was NOT hurt, or unconscious. He did a perfect head stand before landing on his face. His arms were at his sides, his legs were perfectly straight and together. Unconscious people land like ragdolls. I don’t know if he played it, or if the whole trip was staged. Personally, I’m bettin’ an staged.
I’m going to watch reruns tonight.
It did seem like a really strange fall. Watch it again and you’ll see he crashes through the chairs, falls down and then tries to roll through it back up on his head and then falls flat. Was he instinctually attempting to disappate the fall? Was he vainly trying to continue on with his performance even after the monumental screwup? Either way, I didn’t see him do anything that would have necessarily knocked him out for that length of time.
That said, I cannot believe it could be fake. What possible motivation would there be to stage a fall like that at that point in the competition? He’s made it to Las Vegas and then takes a dive (literally!) in the first round cuts without even an audience to watch it? He’d give up 1 million dollars for a publicity stunt that makes him look foolish? I can’t believe it.
Was I confused on Tuesday night, or was that Leonid (that loon who got tangled up in his costume and told them to go to hell this year, not to mention last year) with normal-ish hair who made it through to the 3rd round?