Cinebites: #1

Cinebites

Welcome to my new mini movie review series. I watch a lot of movies and I thought it’d be fun to share a few thoughts on some of the things I’ve watched. Since I’ve watched nearly a film a day all year I’ve decide to take the first few entries as catch up but only on selected films and once I catch up I might go more in depth. I won’t go too overboard so here are ten films I’ve watch this year and short reviews / thoughts on them

These are all SPOILER FREE reviews so you can enjoy these films at your leisure.

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Eurovision 2019: United Kingdom

Eurovision, Eurovision 2019

Hello welcome to my series of quick takes designed to get you ready for Eurovision 2019. Just some quick thoughts / my take on each of the 41 songs this year. The countries are in alphabetical order so without further ado: United Kingdom.

https://youtu.be/-3nIUKVp75U

Country: United Kingdom
Singer: Michael Rice
Song: Bigger Than Us
Personal Score: 34 out of 41
My Prediction: Auto Qualifier

I have to say that Michael is a wonderful singer and I hope he continues to nurture his talents for years to come. That being said, this song is bland. The fun fact about this song is that its written by the performer from Sweden which is neat and everything but this is kind of the problem with all of the UKs songs in the past few years – all of which have been sourced from other countries. The good people of the UK actually speak English and have many talented composers among their ranks but all we get are these absolutely disconnected songfest songs from people outside the UK. They remain, as Bigger Than Us does, completely void of emotion or meaning. Michael tries to pour his absolute most into this song and his vocal performance but with lyrics like “Hear these words that I sing to you” and ” I will make it clear, it’s me and you” there’s nowhere to go. About 50% of the lyrics in this song are just the word “bigger”. There are all sorts of conspiracy theories about what this song might be about (Brexit! May! How the UK doesn’t want to be in Eurovision!) because this song is, at the end of the day, meaningless.

It’s not even bigger than that so I don’t see how it’ll do anything but scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Eurovision 2019: The Netherlands

Eurovision, Eurovision 2019

Hello welcome to my series of quick takes designed to get you ready for Eurovision 2019. Just some quick thoughts / my take on each of the 41 songs this year. The countries are in alphabetical order so without further ado: The Netherlands.

https://youtu.be/Eztx7Wr8PtE

Country: The Netherlands
Singer: Duncan Laurence
Song: Arcade
Personal Score: 3 out of 41
My Prediction: Q

Gun to my head: This is the Eurovision 2019 winner. I’m sure I’ll eat those words in no time but as of this moment, having heard all the songs and having heard most of them live, this is it.

There are a lot of ways to pick a winner at Eurovision but the pattern has been clear: if a girl wins then a boy wins the next year, if a happy song wins, a sad song wins the next year, absolutely memorable personality on and off stage, and personal connection, personal connection, personal connection!

We’ve had a really strong streak of winners with this criteria and this song and Italy’s song are the only two that really seem to fit the patterns and if I had to bet money: the jury is going to eat this song up with a spoon because Duncan Laurence’s vocals are spot on.

It’s hard to describe how his live performance of this song completely turned me around from “oh this is a song” to “HELL YES GO NETHERLANDS! MAKE THAT SAD BOY CRY!”

There is something powerful and beautiful about how his soft, lilting falsetto transitions into this extremely powerful orchestral moment and it makes me live orchestras at Eurovsion just a little. I think this song has the potential to really worm its way into peoples hearts and so I expect it to easily hit the top 5 at the very worst with a tentative “see you in Amsterdam next year” tacked on for good measure.