If you had the misfortune of following me on Twitter last night, having stayed off all day to write one of the stranger reviews I’ve ever written, you’ll have seen a lot of stress release blathering, aimed firmly at Eurovision. For example, this happened:

Someone might want to tell Lex Luthor that all the red Kryptonite is here. All of it. Supervised by a castrated goth #eurovision

— Krystina Nellis (@flyingnelly) May 16, 2013

ROMANIA TO WIN, for what it’s worth. (Or Norway, because they’ve got an actually amazing song, but they do not have… that.)

Mostly, however, there was me delivering initial analysis of Pyro Budget. What is the phenomenon of Pyro Budget? I’m glad you asked.

Eurovision is a big deal because It Is A Big Deal. It’s a hugely expensive endeavour for the host country, who has to hope that the insane production cost will be recouped in tourism. However, because it brings so much tourism to the host country, both for the contest itself and (hopefully) after, it’s also a huge honour to win. But in these troubled times, not all countries can afford to host it. But they can’t be seen to be doing it half-arsed, either. What to do?

Enter Pyro Budget.

You know how some Eurovision performances are known for being great songs with minimal stage action? And how others – most of them – are known for being ridiculous spectacles? That is Pyro Budget in action. All the money a country can reasonably afford to put towards Eurovision will, in some way, be represented on the stage. The reason this works, incidentally, is because pyro is a pretty bloody expensive undertaking for materials you can only use once, unlike your standard lights. And then there’s all the added Health And Safety that has to go with it to make sure they, you know, don’t incinerate Eurovision (much as some might want to). Basically, the entries that use it are literally burning money.

Oh, you thought it was all about the order of the performances? You were wrong. Only the old school believe that.

It goes in roughly this order:

Pyro: The coup-de-grace. If an entry has any pyro, anywhere, it’s a safe bet. If it kicks off with a bit of pyro starting from the final keychange, they have a fair bit of money and they want you to know it, but they’re being reasonable with it. If the pyro starts from the first note, they’ve got a metric fucktonne of money earmarked for Eurovision. Either way: if an entry is using pyro, it’s a pretty good bet that the country can afford to host it, and so you can vote for them safe in the knowledge that a win for them won’t bankrupt the EU (again).

Confetti: One step below or several steps waaaaaay below pyro, depending on the methods used. If they recruit gigantic confetti guns and cover the entire audience with the glittery stuff, they too have loads of money. If they just put a bit in a bag above the stage and make it fall down gently like snow towards the end, they’re going for the low-budget approach, but it might swing a vote for you. If they get control of the clouds and make it rain confetti both inside and outside the arena, all bets are off.

Sets: Can run the entire spectrum from moving an entire city into the arena, all the way down to one girl and a microphone. But again, generally, the bigger/more ludicrous the set, the better the chances of the country actually surviving in the event of a win. Romania’s entry is particularly notable for the aforementioned Kryptonite, because seriously it is HUGE. Oh, and then he started rising up towards the end. He didn’t quite fly, but I don’t believe for a second he wouldn’t have done were it not for that costume.

Costumes: Let’s be honest, these are always invariably insane so there’s really no way of quantifying it. I will say, however, that Hungary has a properly twee soft rock band in there who did the whole We Have No Image We’re Above This thing, just wearing leather jackets and all that. Appropriately their haircuts alone made them the most Hoxton act Eurovision has ever had. I think Hungary might be in more trouble than they’re letting on.

Lights: All performances have them. But they can be mammoth, taking up all the giant screens (those videos cost serious dinero) in which case they’ve probably bribed my lighting designer mate with strobes a go-go, or a simple spotlight, in which case they might also have bribed my lighting designer mate, to be fair. But generally speaking, the more hallucinogenic the light show, the more it cost and, so – you see where this is going – the better the chance of the country not dying by putting it on.

Wind Machines: Now, this is an interesting one. Because it is often used with a single spotlight to great effect. That said, usually what happens is that wind machines tend to be used in conjunction with LSD light shows, costumes the size of Everest, sets that look like Manhattan, death by confetti and – you guessed it – mega pyro. But it’s actually pretty cheap, what with being a naturally occurring, recyclable element and all. So wind usually equals ‘making it look big-budget on the cheap’. Wind lies. Do not trust wind. Even when it looks amazing. It might look well expensive, but behind the scenes the country is quietly pleading, ‘Please don’t vote for us. We’re not prepared to eat beans for 10 years just to win this.’

Obviously for us Eurovision is mostly a big deal because we get to laugh at the unique ridiculousness of it all. But all I’m saying is that if you have a swing vote situation going on, and you want to make sure your decision doesn’t directly lead to the bankruptcy of another EU-ish country: go with the pyro. ALWAYS GO WITH THE PYRO.

John Newman is signed to Island, who as we all know have a tendency every few years to get in a job lot of excellent pop that everyone from the kids in The Clubs to their mums can get down with.  (Er, and Jessie J.  I miss the ‘Do It Like A Dude’ version of Jessie J.  Also, RIP Jessie J’s hair. I know I’m about six weeks late on this but, we will not forget? (I might forget. Again.))

ANYWAY. Newman featured on the mega-hit (and Popjustice Twenty Quid 2012 nominee) ‘Feel The Love’. He also featured on follow-up ‘Not Giving In’ with professional glum-wobble expert Alex Clare.  ‘Love Me Again’ is his debut single, a bit of a Motown-influenced beast. With added glum-wobble.  And added real instruments, which appears to be The Vogue in dance music right now if those Hedi Slimane-clothed robots are anything to go by.

The middle 8 where it suddenly goes all lasers on deck is ‘intriguing’, in a put-your-hands-up, utterly daft kind of a way.

http://www.popjustice.com/songs/john-newman-love-me-again/

I’ve had a fair few people emailing me about the current Secret Cinema film, mostly because a previous blog on the subject apparently shows up high on the Google.  Specifically, they’ve been telling me what the film is.  (I’m going next week, btw, so I will find out then whether people are having me on or not!)

Here’s the thing.  I worked for Secret Cinema on Blade Runner.  I’m not claiming to represent them now, just me and my own opinions, but that experience undoubtedly does inform what I’m about to say.  On one of the weekend shows two of my friends came along (separately); both tried to find me, and both walked past me several times because I had cyber-punk make-up and what one described as ‘La Roux hair’ (when he eventually found me; worth pointing out that this ended up being during the film itself).  I was proud of this.  I was also proud of my endurance of a week in four-inch heels; apparently the comedy highlight of the week for one of the three Deckards was watching me attempt to walk more than two feet in them.  It was a bloody brilliant week.

The La Roux-referencing friend also had to put up with me issuing frankly ridiculously cryptic text messages trying to tell him what he needed to bring along with him, and why he needed them. It will be the first and probably last time I will ever say ‘You need to board Utopia Skyways and you need to bring goggles for the acid rain’, and not be carted off to the men in white coats (for that reason, anyway).  It remains a miracle that I even managed to communicate enough for him to get to the right place.  The reason for the all the cryptic lols? You got it: spoilers.

I’m not particularly anti-spoilers, really, and I’ve certainly benefited from knowing what this one is.  But, maybe because I worked for them, maybe because I just love the concept, I’m very respectful of the anti-spoiler stance SC take.  Because honestly, it’s the process of discovery and working out what the film is that makes it all the more special.  It’s the process of experiencing it for yourself.  You wouldn’t expect to go to Brazil for the first time, only for you from the future to suddenly show up and start blabbing major details of what you’re about to discover in Rio de Janeiro, without current you even asking future you to do so, would you?  No you would not.  And while I might not be that bothered about spoilers, it does bother me that potentially other people, who’ve written similar blogs, might be getting similar emails and don’t want them.

Please respect the process, is basically what I’m saying.  The SC guys are good people, they go to a huge amount of effort to put on a great show for everybody (especially this time, which has already had hitches), and for them a key part of that is not revealing the film.  It only works if everybody plays fair.

Thank you to those who thought I would appreciate the heads-up. It is, indeed, appreciated. But you can stop now, please.

DIANA (their all-caps styling, not mine) hail from Toronto and describe themselves as an ‘enigmatic foursome’.  Aren’t all artists enigmatic nowadays?  I might just be projecting of course – I literally Instagram my food so in comparison to me I’m pretty sure most dogs would be considered enigmatic.  But I digress.  The point is that this is how they describe themselves, meaning that for now, they are taking the Mysterious Approach.  Which is never a bad thing.

‘Born Again’ feels a bit like what you’d get if you put Animal Collective, Chvrches and Chromatics in a room and told them to get down and dirty with each other.  The result: a lush slice of scuzzy dream pop, a probably vaguely tormented three-parent creation, and one happy me.

Things it is:

- a whole lot of fun. Very daft fun based mostly around a crazy number of action set-pieces, but fun nonetheless.

- worth seeing for Cumberbatch alone. You may think a notoriously posh, alien-looking wiry bloke best known for playing Sherlock Holmes would not be able to pull off such a terrifyingly brutal character.  You would be wrong.  One sequence in particular made me have to look away – granted I’m a grade-A wimp anyway, but for a 12A that’s no mean feat.

- surprisingly, given some of the subject matter, very funny.  All the family’s relationships are undergoing second album syndrome, giving rise to conflict, but frequently that conflict shows itself up in laughs.

- further to the above, it’s, er… look. The only way to describe it is to say that the key romance of this film is between Kirk and Spock. Oh yes, I WENT THERE.  Their relationship’s growing pains is a fundamental driving force of this film, and although they never quite look like they’re about to snog up the Enterprise and I’m not about to write any fanfiction about the film’s ‘missing scenes’, it’s so on the nose in places that you can’t help but think they might as well.  It’s really pretty camp, in an old-TV series way, is what I’m saying here.

Things it is not:

- the 2009 Star Trek.  Well it is, but it also isn’t just a straight rehash either, which it could easily have been.

- particularly dark. Yeah I know that’s what the title suggests, but it just isn’t. There is no Nolanisation of the franchise going on here – the characters’ internal conflicts are, on the whole, resolved fairly easily.

- particularly easy to watch (visually) in places, if you’re in 3D. The way the film is edited makes it very difficult to see what’s going on in several of the more action-packed sequences.  And in one scene with subtitles, neither I nor my viewing buddy could read what was being said.  I had to do the whole ‘glasses over glasses’ thing too, which did not help matters and tended to exacerbate the splitting issue.

- on that note: worth seeing in 3D. Abrams is on record as saying he didn’t particularly want to make it in 3D and, well, it shows. It’s an absolutely bare minimum conversion, completely flat and, thanks to Abrams’ fondness for shallow depth-of-field, even the slower-paced sequences are difficult to watch. In the right circumstances 3D can be effective – not here. Seriously, save your money.

- particularly nitpick-proof. It’s a big, ultimately pretty silly blockbuster – what film of that type is immune to nitpicking? There are a couple of moments where the nitpicking is valid – in particular, Cumberbatch has a fairly epic info-dump monologue that I’ll need to go back and watch again because my eyes slightly glazed over – but for the most part the fun element more than carries the film over any niggles it might have.

Mostly it’s just a very fun ride. And – dare I say it? – bodes well for Abrams’ imminent taking of the Jedi reigns.