Madonna's first Super Bowl show falls flat
After a month’s anticipation, Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show largely fell flat.
This was Madonna’s first performance at the Super Bowl, and the “it-girl” of 1980s pop confirmed she is no longer at the height of her popularity or provocative powers with a tame, somewhat leaden performance.
The more-ambitious-than-usual halftime show started with an awkward celebration of slavery, evolved into a fast-moving medley and then ended with a tacked-on message about world peace.
While a curiously never-out-of-breath Madonna was front and center through most of it (and performing a number of look-what-I-can-still-do acrobatics), the real stars of the show were the set and lighting designers and the dancers.
The dancers got some of the biggest cheers of the night from an in-house crowd that was largely subdued as Madonna, 53, bopped through one new song and three of her hits. Inside Lucas Oil Stadium, the bass-heavy music was overwhelming, and spectators in the middle and upper sections had difficulty hearing the lyrics or even finding The Material Girl on stage.
This year’s light show won more praise from the stadium crowd than did almost any aspect of the show, as spectators joined in with small portable lights that were put under their seats to use during the halftime show. The crowd also cheered as the words “World Peace” lit up across the bottom of the stage toward the end of the show.
Madonna seemed to lack energy and the crowd responded in kind to her performance. The crowd was more effusive when Cee Lo Green joined her on stage. If Green appeared to be along for the ride, with little to add to “Like a Prayer,” TV viewers were given a hint about his inclusion via an ad for his NBC show “The Voice” appearing immediately after the performance.
M.I.A., a guest singer during the Madonna performance, shot a middle finger, marring the show. The screen blurred after the images made their way into more than 100 million homes. Much of the live audience saw the gesture.
The stage itself was much smaller than for past Super Bowls, but the crew putting it up and taking it down during the 31-minute halftime was lightning fast. In production design, if not music, the bar has been raised very high for future shows.
http://www.ibj.com/madonnas-first-su.../article/32471
Super Bowl TV: Good game, nasty ads, pathetic half-time show
And then, there was Madonna's zombie halftime show.
I can't recall the last time I saw a major TV production so desperately in need of a guiding concept. And that includes the obscene gesture from one of the other performers, which typifies the utter lack of imagination from beginning to end of Madonna's so-called performance. (You can read about that crude and ignorant gesture from singer M.I.A. here.)
But what the hell was she doing? Was it ancient Egypt with the Cleopatra entrance? Or was it ancient Rome with the toga boy bouncing on the wire in front of her? (Hey, at least toga boy brought about five seconds of energy to that death march of a production.)
Oh wait, I know, it was supposed to American circa 1950s high school football with Madonna waving pom-poms as a cheerleader.
No wrong again, because now Madonna is standing in front of a huge choir full of people in robes – and she’s acting as if she’s almost singing. I say almost, because there is not a whit of artistic aspiration in the star performer or the production as far I can tell.
But hey, that’s our sad-sack, super-sized, gross American culture these days, isn't it. And it is perfectly suited for empty Super Bowl half-time spectacle. When you don’t have real energy, true conviction, religious belief, art or transcendence, just trot out a monstrous, phony, show-biz choir of singers clapping their hands and looking heavenward as they strut and prance around the lip-synching star.
Thank goodness there was real emotion on the field in a thrilling, 21-17 Giants victory.
On Sunday night, the game was the thing that wound up counting -- as it should be. Not the ignorant and nasty ads or the moribund halftime show.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/201...ame-review-ads
lol
at those local nobody cares reviews. 
