DORA 2005 REVIEW

Thursday, 3 March

Once upon a time, Dora was infamous for opening-act extravaganzas, trapeze artists and dancers galumphing around with an effigy of the Dora logo, but HRT has got better things to do with its money all of a sudden, and so two of our hosts, Zlatko Turkalj Turki and Mirko Fodor, have dressed up as Abba and are doing it themselves.  According to yet more hosts, this is going to be the thirteenth Dora, so I hope they've been avoiding ladders and steering clear of black cats.

One or two things have changed since the first time around: noticeably, HRT's production values, which even a few years ago looked like the end result of a particularly ambitious Blue Peter challenge.  Another is that Dora now has to compete against talent shows such as Hrvatski Idol, Coca Cola Music Stars and Story Super Nova Music Talents, which offer rather more in the way of identikit young blondes who want to be Alicia Keys and rather less in the way of washed-up ballad singers called Mladen.  This may explain why Dora supremo Aleksandar Kostadinov has deemed it necessary to hold two semi-finals for 18 songs but to send all but four through to the final at the weekend.

Of tonight's unlucky two, Ricardo Luque comes from Venezuela, and used to belong to a rather well-thought-of group called "Cubismo".  (Fans of UK comedy should note that, despite appearances, he is not in fact an alter ego of  Patrick from Coupling.)  The thought of Croatia's Eurovision honour being defended by a mambo song about kiwis and mangos is evidently too much for the more excitable members of the jury, and Ricardo fails to get through the semi.  Which is perhaps just as well, because as far as the rest of Europe is concerned, Marie N is already So Over, and we saw quite enough of her mangos last time around.

Neno Belan and "Fiumens" come from Rijeka, and as such will have hoped to benefit from that annual Dora phenomenon, the Istria-Kvarner Vote, which is annually bestowed on a song which would never have troubled the scoreboard and is guaranteed to upset whichever song I would most like to have an outside chance of winning the thing.  This year, however, the votes aren't going to be broken down by region, and so Belan hasn't a hope.  Hey might have done better in a Scandinavian final, and there'd be more than a little Osten med Resten about this if Neno could have been persuaded into a silly hat. For one nostalgic moment I hope that the introduction might be heralding a Croatian knock-off of Blur's Country House, but nothing of the sort.

Friday, 4 March

This time, Turki and Fodor perform Rock me, baby in full Riva get-up, which, according to Duško Curlic and Robert Ferlin, is the only time Croatia has actually won this thing.  Listening to it again ought to encourage anybody who makes it through this semi-final.  It's not a good night for the A-list, particularly not for Ivana Kindl and Giuliano, who are both finding out the hard way that just because you've been on the front cover of Gloria magazine it doesn't mean that you can sing like it's the sound check and get away with it.  

Last year, Ivana Kindl came on stage in a sedan chair with a song that could have slipped into a Greek, Turkish or Serbian final without anyone batting an eyelid.  She's gone Spanish for Tvoja ljubav meni pripada, but her voice lets her down.  Giuliano, meanwhile, has been to the gym since his last Dora effort, and now looks like he ought to be running up and down the touchline at a Chelsea game making cryptic gestures at Frank Lampard.

Saturday, 5 March

In place of an opening act, Turki and Fodor are having a bash at Wild dances, but mercifully nobody has been able to coax them into a leather skirt.  Fodor looks as if he'd rather be anywhere else, whereas Turki is having the time of his life out there 

Ibrica Jusic had the best-crafted song in last year's Dora, Još samo ovaj put, and is too classy by miles to be in a show like this.  Sutra ce biti prekasno is another sevdah-tinged schlager of the sort they just don't make any more, and raises two questions - the first being what a Dora audience more accustomed to Tonci Huljic-style turbo-schlager is going to make of it, and the second being what on earth Ibrica's Border collie is doing on stage with him.

Emina Arapovic is one of several talent-show products in this Dora, but ended up as the Rock Chick when the stereotypes were being handed out.  She's not made too bad a job of it, with practically the only memorable song in last year's Splitski festival, and Pa šta is more of the same, although could just as easily have passed for a Stars in their Eyes rendition of Sasvim sigurna. 

Zanamari Lalic is another, and has wound up with Lane moje Part 700 written by Branimir Mihaljevic, who sang the toe-curlingly dreadful Milenij ljubavi a few years ago.  Kako da te volim has everything going for it - pan-pipes, percussion, and backing vocalists who seem to be doubling as Greek priestesses during the middle eight - but is let down by Zanamari's indifferent voice, and I don't even want to think about what someone with a half-decent pair of lungs (calling Maja Blagdan and Jelena Radan!) could have done with this. 

Vesna Pisarovic performs Probudi mi ljubav in her highly characteristic style, in other words, dancing as if the words to the chorus are written on her shoulder blade and she has to keep checking what they are.  Vesna's been getting camper by the minute since we last saw her in Dora, including writing In the disco for Deen to take to Istanbul, and is now only a few more key-changes, a leather bodice, and a whole palette of eyeliner away from turning into Nuša Derenda. 

"4 asa" are a 1970s band on a comeback now that one of their number, Rajko Dujmic, has run out of schlager to write for "Novi fosili".  The three guitarists look as if they belong to a Queen tribute band; Dujmic, on keyboards, appears to be turning into immediately-post-hair-transplant Elton John.  Unless the four have been cryogenically frozen since they split up (in which case, somebody is going to have to take the blame for Ja sam za ples), they ought to know that the chorus of Ja nemam prava belongs to Josipa Lisac's 1980s hit Danas sam luda.  On the other hand, if that is what's happened to them, it will explain why Dujmic's maroon jacket looks like that.

Ivana Radovnikovic is an Identikit Talent Show Blonde, which is why I'm all the more surprised when she pulls Ponesi me out of the bag: a pan-pipes-and-harp Celtic extravaganza which could have graced any Eurovision between Nocturne and Sanomi.  More surprising yet, Ivana makes a rather good go of it too, and there's something very Neka mi ne svane or even Sveta ljubav about her performance, which largely consists of waving her arms around a la Danijela Martinovic, Jelena Rozga, Andrea Šušnjara, or any other woman who's ever had Tonci Huljic write a song for them.

It appears to have become obligatory to refer to Jacques Houdek as The Bouncing Fat Man, although by the standards of previous years he's a positive bantamweight this time.  Jacques livened up the Croatian silly season no end last year by picking a fight with Minea when she allegedly turned up to Bihacki Festival wearing the same dress he'd ordered for his dancers, which may explain why he's outfitted these ones at the nearest branch of New Look.  Meanwhile, there seems little risk of Minea getting her own back by turning up to her next festival in Jacques' XXL bowling shirt.

Andrea Šušnjara has the second Titanic song of the night, with Ljudi s mora - in other words, People from the sea<.  Could this be why she sounds like she's singing under water?  Evelin Samuel, Enya-soundalike veteran of umpteen Estonian finals, would feel very at home with this.  Eighteen-year-old Andrea was Tonci Huljic's big discovery last year, leading to Huljic being asked on live television when she was going to become the new lead singer of Magazin.  The current incumbent, Jelena Rozga, has lasted longer in the job than anyone else, but on this showing, hasn't got much to worry about just yet.  At least, not from Andrea, although if I were Ivana Radovnikovic, I might be fancying my chances.

Goran Karan is another contender for the stand-out vocal display of the night, with an energetic rock ballad and impeccable delivery.  Still, somebody needs to have a word about his goatee, unless he's suddenly been replaced by Ricky Gervais.  Saša, Tin i Kedzo, on the other hand, ought never to have been here at all - more talent-show graduates, whose voices are crowding each other out like three prima donnas sharing a dressing room.  Whichever way round Saša, Tin and Kedzo go, one of them is a dead ringer for Will Mellor, one for Adrien Brody, and one for Dr Macartney from Green Wing.

Danijela is allegedly only here to show off her new breasts, thereby getting one over on Tara from "Karma", the Croatian Vengaboys, who was all over Gloria last summer parading her new nose.  Messing about with candles, ribbons, and infinitely extensible dresses is So Over as well, even when accompanied by backing vocals she's knocked off from Andrea's song last year.  (There is by now surely more than enough material for a full-scale four-way cat-fight among the Huljic girls in the green room.)   

Strongest performance of the night, for sheer enthusiasm, goes to Luka Nizetic, who charges down the staircase in a white shirt and whopping silver necklace and performs the sort of thing that has gone top 10 for Greece and Cyprus more times than they can count: this is ethnokitsch the Mediterranean way, by a guy who looks as if he enjoyed Sakis Rouvas very much indeed.  (I'm sure I've seen Severina wear those trousers a couple of videos back.)  A result like that is exactly what Croatia could do with right now, which will make it all the more inexplicable in half an hour's time when the expert jury contrives to keep Luka (who won the televote in his semi-final) out of the final three.  He's accompanied by a close-harmony klapa, and the whole thing turns into a mixture of Bosson, Andrés Esteche and Osten med Resten; I'm sure Melodifestivalen would have him, if Dora won't... 

This is Boris Novkovic's fifth Dora, which was a lucky number for Ivan Mikulic last year.  His backing group, "Lado", are serious folk musicians, at least some of the time.  This doesn't stop them wanting to dress up in silly costumes, or, in the drummer's case, doodling on his bald head with felt-tip pens and putting on a vest covered in pictures of bare-naked ladies.  Vukovi umiru sami has got a bit of Lane moje, a bit of Hari Mata Hari, and just as much of When the spirits are calling my name, all of which are Good Signs but none of which stop Novkovic making a bit of a pig's ear of it.  The rest of the pig has apparently gone to give the bagpiper something to play.

For the last few years, Tonci Huljic has been composing the odd song for the Anglo-Australian classical-crossover band Bond, which has in practice consisted of recycling old Magazin songs and hoping nobody will notice.  Last year, he took a Bond song and recycled it for Magazin instead, and their repertoire has grown increasingly over-the-top even by Huljic standards: melodramatic percussion, Biblical references all over the place, and the string section turned up to eleven.  If he tries any harder than Nazaret, he's going to do himself a mischief.  Jelena's joined by a handful of backing dancers who have borrowed Vesna Pisarovic's Sasvim sigurna outfit wholesale, and she's accompanied by a Jacques-shaped, long-haired and bearded male vocalist in a white suit, whose function is purely to belt out I Na-a-a-zaret whenever he feels like it.  To be honest, he looks as if he'd be happier in Jerry Springer: The Opera, but Croatia unfortunately being what it is, there isn't much chance of him getting to dress up in a nappy and belt out I want to be your baby, Baby! instead.

Abba impersonators Bjorn Again are wheeled on as the interval act; their repertoire includes Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight, of which Maja 'the Tajci of the noughties' Šuput sang a version not too long ago, and Super trouper, which was covered by a one of Croatia's far-right folk-rock singers in what must rank among the most bizarre covers in European pop.  Anything up to half the audience, accordingly, will now be wondering why these people are singing a schlager arrangement of Iza devet sela.  Ivan Mikulic is brought on to sing Daješ mi krila, even though, after the way he behaved in Istanbul (not to mention his abysmal showing on Croatian Millionaire), one would think he'd have appeared on Dora over Aleksandar Kostadinov's dead body.

There's no room for another Dora tradition, the hour-long round of voting from two dozen different cities in Croatia.  This at least lets us get away before midnight, but denies us the spectacle of the phone line to the Zagreb jury going down when the panellists are sitting in a green room 200 metres away.  Instead, we're somewhat arbitrarily presented with a final three consisting of Novkovic, Magazin and Danijela, and after five more minutes of time-wasting by the hosts we learn that Boris Novkovic is going to Kiev.  This is less surprising when one remembers thst, by the inexorable law of Dora, he has the biggest name in it who hasn't won yet, and that his dad Djordje is better known in the world of Eurovision as Mr Don't ever cry And Hajde da ludujemo.  Vukovi umiru sami is an improvement on half the entries other countries have sent to Eurovision this year, but unfortunately Boris had to come from the same country as Luka and Magazin.