Wednesday, August 29, 2012

AGT: 8/28 Semi-finals Part 1


And we’re back with another night full of talent.  Unfortunately for us, only three acts are moving on, instead of the expected four or five, but it’ll make the final be epic, I think.  This does, though, make the decisions very difficult tonight. 

But now, on with the show!

We started out with Andrew DeLeon. He went with the classic Ava Maria, and did not do a very good job.  He has no stage presence, the background music washed him out, and worst of all, he was terribly screechy.  And that’s not even mentioning his crazy outfit, with the feathers and odd shoulder pads. He of course brought out the sob story, but it’s getting old.  If I had my way, he’d be out tonight.

Todd Oliver came next, and he did a great job.  He kept the jokes mostly topical again, but he did flag a bit in the last third of the act.  I like that he mixes it up every time, this time he was on a faux talk show, and the setting worked really well for the quick fire question/answer session that went on.

We then saw Donovan and Rebecca, who I love.  They have such awesome strength and control, it’s amazing.  They went back to basics to start, with basic strength moves, and then moved to a hanging bar for more holds.    Unfortunately for them, their act seemed really sparse, with not a lot going on.  I think the 90 second limit hinders their performance especially, because the bigger moves take time to develop.  What they did was great, but there just wasn’t enough time to showcase the needed material to move on.

Effin singers, man.  Edon came next, and attempted to suck people in with an ‘oh, look how proud of me my dad is now,’ as if he wasn’t before, and Edon didn’t know about it.  Whatever.  So he sings One Direction’s hit, with a ballady arrangement, and manages to get completely washed out by the backing vocals.  Luckily for him, the original is of such a low quality that reaching and exceeding that bar was very easy.  Too bad for him, though, that shining a piece of crap still leaves you with crap, so his performance was bland, dull, and not nearly enough to move him on.

The Scott Brothers tried their hand, and did their thing.  We’ve seen this thing, though, three times already, it’s kind of getting old.  They went for the robot-like outfits, and that had been done a million times before as well, so all in all, not a good showing for them.  It’s really too bad, because this is another act that I really enjoy, and they didn’t step up like they should have, and needed to, to move on to the finals.

Next, we had my favorite magician, Dittelman, as the cool kids call him, Eric if you’re nasty.  He did a mind manipulation trick with the audience that is not terribly impressive.  When you think of geometric shapes, really only three come to mind immediately, and he eliminated one from contention right away, so clearly the two remaining would be the ones nestled together, or flipped around.  Anyway, his art trick was cool if you weren’t paying attention, but if you caught how it was done, not so much.  It didn’t help that Dittelman gave it away, either.

Effin dancers, man.  Turf was next, and just about everything I said about Edon could be applied to Turf.  He was boring, dull, and the stage washed him out.   In addition, his act is really too small for this stage, and his act is getting repetitive as well.  Hopefully, this is the last we’ll see of him.

Bria Kelly was next, and she sang Pink’s Perfect competently.  However, that was about the end of her competency.  She didn’t move around the stage nearly as well as she did in her quarterfinal, and the song itself didn’t show off her vocal abilities beyond being able to sing the same note over and over again.  Sharon was totally wrong in this, it was a terrible song choice, so unless she gets the country contingent, she’s gone.

After her, we had Joe Castillo, who tried to convince us he was going to tell an epic story with his act tonight.  ‘Just wait!” he said, “It’s going to be an epic story that anyone can understand .”  Or something like that, I suppose.  In any case, he was bragging about his story telling skills.  Then, we got to the act itself.  I hate to break it to Joe, but an eagle, hands, and a little girl being hugged by not!Jesus does not a story make.  He keeps on using that word, epic.  I do not think it means what he thinks it means.  

Then, we had an actual epic act, William Close and the Earth Harp.  I still love this act, and their performance was great.  They brought in new instruments, dancers, and William’s not!pregnant fiancĂ©.  The female singer they had was not strong, and the male singer was practically chomping on the stage, but overall, the act was incredibly effective, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Tom Cotter came next, and in an attempt to shake things up a bit, had Howie chose his monologue topic.  He clearly had a plan set for each one, as when Howard called him to give a joke from one of the topics, he had one ready, and even warned them it would be long.  The jokes themselves were great, he went back to the wordplay he used in his audition(I studied abroad…named Tina, etc)  and he had the crowd eating out of his hands.  It’s really too bad the competition is so strong, and so few acts are going through, because he certainly is a contender.

Lastly, Academy of Villains came back.  They, of course, went for a cutesy story in their package, about the main guy and his girlfriend, but it wasn’t really that affecting, so they then went the injury route instead, and had one of the girls break(!) her kneecap.  “We had to switch all of our choreography around” nameless, faceless person whined, but they made it out, and started their dance in more different crazy costumes.  They did a similar thing as last week with interesting POV shots and using themselves and props to makes different things.  But even though the music and the actual dance moves were different, it really felt like the same thing as two weeks ago, so not strong enough to move on.

And that was the show!  So any good acts to choose from, I am sure I am going to do poorly on my guesses.

Shoulds                                                 Wills
William Close                                     William Close
Todd Oliver                                         Andrew DeLeon
Eric Dittelman                                    Donovan & Rebecca

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