DORA 2002 REVIEW

It's the tenth Dora, and given how committed HRT have always been (they could have shown the BBC a thing or two even in the very first one, the production of which was admittedly marred, on the copy of it I saw at least, by some rather dodgy transmission that made every face on screen look like the witness in the Crimewatch reconstruction who isn't allowed to be identified), we could have expected something to mark the occasion.  A special gala where every previous winner performs their winning song and a few more for good measure, perhaps - any excuse for Maja Blagdan.

But that would be reckoning without the other tradition that HRT must have felt honour-bound to maintain: the Inexplicable Opening Act.  This year, it's people with tall hats and large red flags, women in long dresses shinning along cables high above the stage, lots of dancing harlequins and someone with a wheel for a headdress.  I suppose if you can't get Maja, most viewers would be perfectly satisfied with Cirque du Soleil.

We are welcomed by last year's presenters, Bojana Gregoric and Duško Culic: now if only they had to make it across a cable or two, we'd be off to a good start.  Several conductors are introduced, who lead the orchestra in an arrangement of all the Dora winners so far: this is clearly the nearest we're going to get to the gala retrospective, although if they're still auditioning the orchestra now, it's surely going to be a bit late.  

Vanna then appears to perform her winner last year, Strings of my heart, with ten times the energy she gave to it in Copenhagen: you see, she can do it when she wants to.  She is wearing a maroon dress and cardigan, long earrings, and has a tight blonde chignon incongruously reminiscent of Evita.  And, unfortunately, just a little bit of Ksenija Urlicic too.  

After Bojana has run us through the hideously complicated voting system, the songs finally and thankfully begin.  Ivan Mikulic's begins with a tortuous postcard set in a supermarket - didn't Sweden's Melodifestivalen have one of those? - and Ivan being accosted by a cleaning 'lady' in drag. (Wrong final, dear.  Slovenia's the next stop to the north.) Ti si tu is a strings-laden opener that might have felt more at home in a mid-1990s Dora, when they were all like that and it was pot luck which of them went top five.  For anyone watching in the UK, doesn't Ivan look like Louis Theroux?  Who would have a field day if he visited the Dora - especially a few years ago.

Duško introduces us to the backing singers, including the rather fetching Alenka, before Petar Dragojevic follows on with Lazi: his postcard revolves around his being a Dragojevic but not Oliver.  This is quickly clear to everyone with the probable exception of Petar.  Believe it or not, this is the only entry from the former King of the Dora, Tonci Huljic, this year, after he tried to pull off his 2000 trick with "Magazin" again and entered a song far longer than the permitted three minutes in the hope that it could be cut down somehow.  But it doesn't work like that any more.

Without that slice of egotism from Huljic, we wouldn't have last year's runner-up Adalbert Turner Juci in it this year.  Dotakni srce is a rock ballad, into which the solitary line in English 'Kiss me, baby, kiss me, kiss me, don't stop' intrudes from nowhere.  The boost to his career provided by his unexpected second place in 2001 hasn't yet been enough to fix him up with a stylist, regrettably: either he lays off the cream cakes, or the goatee beard must go here and now: as it is, it makes him look like Phill Jupitus.

Zak is another young male soloist, and his inexperience is so obvious it's touching - I wish I knew why he spends most of the time in the same stance as the mascot on the front of a Mercedes Benz.  Apart from the bit about the Mercedes Benz, I have a feeling I might sing rather a lot like that, but there are reasons why these people are performing in the Dora and I'm writing about it.  The poor thing, who has obviously been gearing up for this finale the whole way through, manages to deliver his last line so that it completely misses the microphone, one more reason why Znam ja kako je kad ti uzmu sve collects the rare accolade of scoring less points than there are words in its title.  Another is that the ballad was so unexciting that Giuliano couldn't have rescued it.

Divne godine, performed by "Najbolji hrvatski tamburaši", quite emphatically doesn't belong here.  In Slavonia they have a whole other festival for this sort of thing, called Zlatne Zice Pozege, where everything sounds like this but one has at least been warned in advance.  The last president, Franjo Tudjman, used to have a soft spot for tamburica music, which raises the question of what on earth this song is doing in the Dora now that he's more than two years dead.  Round about 1995, Divne godine wouldn't have sounded any better, but at least it would havebeen understandable.

Over to the green room, which this year is actually green: or at least, the tablecloths are, which is a start.  Alen Lazaric is an unknown singer from Istria, pretty much an ever-present in the regional festival there but who has seemingly never been out of Istria.  Sve ljubavi mog zivota has been written by Bruno Krajcar, the man who gave the Dora three minutes of unadulterated Istrian dancing last year.  If only someone would turn the violins up a bit more, and turn Lazaric down a bit more as well, this might not be too bad, but as it is, they're going faster and faster downhill since Ivan. (Final thought: with a title like that, wouldn't Tereza have loved to sing it?) 

Branimir Mihaljevic is a name to fill Dora veterans with trepidation.  This, after all, is the man responsible for Milenij ljubavi, last year's hysterically kitschy song which included the line 'Let the music be the only language of around the world'.  Hvala ti za sve, however, is supposed to sound like it belongs in San Remo, so at least there's no need to hide behind the sofa, unless San Remo's standards have really been slipping too.  I've never previously known what Mihaljevic thinks he's doing in his Dora entries, but for the first time he seems to be taking it seriously - he's even sitting at a piano.  By thhis year's standards, it's not bad at all, although on its own that's no recommendation.

"4'33" are six girls from the Gulf of Kvarner, just like "Putokazi", the group who I imagined would sing Ave Maria Laudata on hearing nothing else but the title.  A 1980s-style arrangement, an overload of synthesised strings, extremely puzzling choreography, and for some reason the girls have been dressed in ancient Greek tunics: tunics aside, this is likely to be the best song of the show by a mile (was that really only three minutes?), with a hint of 2000's ZadarFest winner Anno Domini by Sanja Lukanovic and Mayumi Kamei.  If this had gone to Tallinn alongside Greece's Michalis Rakintzis, Eurovision would have felt more like the 1980s than it did in the 1980s.

No, Catherine, you can't just keep on listening to this one, there's twelve more of the damn things to get through yet.  And when I'm starting to call Dora entries 'the damn things', this is a bad sign.

Odlazim is written by Ante Pecotic, also responsible for last year's Što znaci zbogom by Dado Topic - funnily enough, another slow ballad by another middle-aged man wearing black and standing nearly stock-still.  With his band Ritmo Loco, Davor Radolfi has been setting himself up as Croatia's Ricky Martin in the past, going as far as to cover 1 2 3 Maria and betting that Croatians won't mind if their Ricky Martin looks more like a fisherman.  Even if it would have felt as if we'd been transported to the Maltese final, one of his Latino efforts would have been far more welcome.

Jacques is a new singer - debutants rule?  What debutants rule? - with too many blond highlights and a half-black, half-grey suit.  In contrast to Znam ja kako je kad ti uzmu sve, Carolija is exactly the sort of song that Giuliano could have rescued - or equally, deep-voiced Indira Vladic from Colonia, the band who the songwriter Boris Djurdjevic comes from.  It does not need, however, to be sung by a man with a faltering voice who relies too much on his backing vocalists and who just needs an ermine robe to be the king from a pack of playing cards.  There is clearly hope yet for Pop Idol Rik.

Another overlong postcard introduces Zdenka Kovacicek, who strictly speaking deserves to be congratulated for the way her career has resurrected in the last couple of years, and for having dared to do it with uptempo songs more appropriate to women literally half her age.  Odavno shvatila sam sve is possibly the best song yet of the Kovacicek revival, with - dare I say it - an arrangement verging on Britney Spears; and after some of this Dora's performances, by singers who looked as if they had never been on a stage before, it's clear that Zdenka knows exactly what to do, how to do it and when to reach for the high note after the middle eight.  

But what does she think she's wearing?  It's a long red velvet dress, a long blue velvet jacket, and the front half of her hair is black while the back half is red. ('I said Britney Spears, Zdenka, not Lene from Aqua.') With the amount of eyeliner she's got on, she looks like Tereza Kesovija's evil twin.

Tihana Sabati, on her first appearance in the Dora, is one of those women half Zdenka's age.  Tihana's voice can still go over the place from time to time, but she's a confident performer nonetheless, and rather like Severina, gives it everything she has got.  Ne ljubim više na glas isn't unlike Zdenka's song, in fact, but one appearance of Cruella de Vil per year is quite enough.  Although Tihana's eventual 13th place this year was disappointing, with luck she'll be back.

Goran Karan now needs no introduction.  And to be honest, neither does Još uvijek vjerujem da ljubav postoji, if all they're going to do with it is play The winner takes it all.  Karan's hair is surely getting longer by the year, and there's him meant to be a Hari Krishna too.  If this really is Zdenko Runjic's last fling before retirement, he'd have been better off going out on Dalmatinske suze, Karan's entry to last year's MHJ.  As ever with Karan, it's very well sung, but the song could have been much better if Runjic had wanted.  And why is there paint down his leg?

"Perle", the choir of the Split youth theatre, are back this year.  As the postcard complains, there are far more Perle than the six allowable on stage, which means that the group can keep rotating their line-up for several thousand years yet without repeating themselves once.  Nemirna rijeka could have been expected to be an etno song, which it unfortunately isn't, and there are better ways to begin a Dora entry than with the line 'Kao rijeka', since it invites a comparison to Vanna's 2000 runner-up that very few are going to match.

Along with Karan and Vesna Pisarovic, Boris Novkovic is meant to be one of the favourites this year.  From the outset, when he starts singing in French, it's clear that even though the song is called Elois it's as far from Arvingarna as can be imagined.  And doesn't Boris look like Goran Višnjic?  At least, a little.  It's to be hoped that the woman on backing vocals whispering 'Un espresso pour moi' every so often does actually make an appearance, though, or it will be the Marija Magdalena controversy all over again.  Not the type of song that should win, perhaps, but it's good to have it there.

"Joy" have split off at some point from the more famous "enJoy", who at the start of their career were also called "Joy".  Perhaps the boys got to keep the name if the rest got to keep Maja Šuput; I'm afraid "enJoy" got the better half of the bargain.  I can still not find a better verdict than the SMS I received at the end of Takav sam ti ja proclaiming 'Oh dear - Russian boyband'.  And Tallinn's getting one of those already, in any case.

Vesna Pisarovic should have won last year with Za tebe stvorena; as Vanna would be able to tell you, this is possibly the best qualification for winning on your next try.  Vesna's now got black hair, which coupled with the heavy beats of the introduction to Sasvim sigurna and her white dress all strongly suggest that she's trying to set herself up as a young Doris Dragovic.  It's a much better performance than her other two in the Dora, especially for connoisseurs of Vesna's right leg, but it still feels rather like Britney-with-added-guitar.  Couldn't they give her Odavno shvatila sam sve?

Mladen Burnac and two girls with bare midriffs do what "Joy" didn't quite manage: bring back early-80s Jugovizija for three minutes.  Ja, ja is written by Zrinko Tutic, the writer of Sveta ljubav who has been missed from the Dora, although one does wonder how someone comes up with something like that and then something like this.  On the other hand, he was also the man behind Hajde da ludujemo, which you can hear rather a lot of in the chorus if you want to be uncharitable.

Alen Vitasovic is seemingly summing up his entire career by singing Ja sam Istrijan, a fact of which he has always been only too keen to remind us.  Istrian music typically includes discordant accordions as a matter of course, but the singing as if it was the worst hangover of your life is Alen's personal touch.  Nobody in Croatia really needs telling where Alen comes from any more, and non-Croatians possibly don't want to know.  And didn't Lars Frederiksen wear one of those?

Davor Tolja and Ida Buric are on last, and it hasn't been as arduous a journey getting there as I'd feared round about when Mihaljevic was on.  101 laz - can we presume the title is a misfired approach to win the Dalmatian vote? - is a less exciting Ljepota performed by, apparently, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones.  After the reprise of all 20 songs, which could have started at number eight and missed out nothing of note at all, there is then another interminable dance, presumably while the scrutineer works out just who they are meant to be telephoning to deliver which set of votes.

The interval act is five songs by Ivana Spagna, the San Remo veteran, who is addressed by Bojana in Italian and replies to her in English, finally telling the crowd in Croatian that she's very happy to be here tonight, an effort that is much appreciated.  If she hadn't gone on to gush about how good a festival she thought it had been, we might even believe her.  Five songs is a bit much, from a woman who looks like Meg Ryan's mother wearing a Reservoir Dogs suit, especially when one of them is Imagine, but Ivana could still teach every one of the performers, with the possible exception of Zdenka Kovacicek, a thing or two.  In fact, she should probably be kept away from Zdenka altogether, in case the two of them start exchanging style tips.

Over one chaotic hour of voting later - anyone could have told them they'd start to trip over themselves with a system like that - Vesna Pisarovic wins convincingly, leaving the only question as whether she sings in Tallinn in Croatian (as Vesna wants), in English (as the songwriter Milana Vlaovic wants) or in Spanish (as I can't remember who wanted, but somebody did, and it would certainly be a creative application of Eurovision's free-language rule).   With luck, she'll do rather better than Vanna in May, although on the principle by which Vesna won in the first place, perhaps we should start preparing ourselves already for a win by Zdenka Kovacicek.