American Idol: Movie Night

Once again "American Idol" ran over its allotted time even after a slight change in the show's format. This week only two of the judges spoke on each singer - Randy and Kara were one team while Paula and Simon were another. With the frequency and duration of the ad breaks there are times when "American Idol" appears more like an hour of commercials with "American Idol" breaks instead of "American Idol" with commercial breaks. Between the number of commercials and all the various tapes and nonsense chit-chat it is little wonder there is not time for singing and judges.

It was movie night on "American Idol" and instead of a musical mentor "American Idol" brought in a movie director for the "mentoring". Director Quentin Tarantino called his efforts more direction than mentoring. Tarantino was a celebrity guest judge in season three.

First up was Allison Iraheta who chose "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith from the movie "Armageddon". The teen belted out a rendition that Simon said was the best he had ever heard by any female singer. He also said that Allison was the girl's only hope for making the finals.

Anoop Desai followed with "Everything I Do (I Do for You)" by Bryan Adams from the movie "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". Anoop's rendition left Randy and Kara both feeling that Anoop had found his groove - pop songs with a soulful voice.

As resident rocker Adam Lambert prepared to take the stage Quentin Tarantino, who was in the audience, said that Adam was the real deal. Adam's movie choice was "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf from the movie "Easy Rider". Lambert came out dressed in leathers and worked the crowd as well as the stage. The rocker performed a rendition that had a gothic rock feel in which Simon called vocally incredible abut felt the performance was not as good as "Mad World". Simon said it was one of those songs that people would either like or dislike. Paula told Adam that he was on a path to greatness.

Matt Giraud followed suit with the Bryan Adams song "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman". Matt chose to embellish the song vocally as he played the piano in a performance that left Randy and Kara both feeling the rendition took away from the melody.

Danny Gokey took on "Endless Love" by Lionel Ritchie. This week Danny left the somewhat funny looking glasses behind. Paula called Danny's rendition beautiful but while Simon said that he could not fault Danny for the choice of song he was disappointed and found the performance boring.

Kris Allen took the route of the lesser known song and performed "Falling Slowly" from "Once". Randy felt that personally the song didn't do it for him but Kara called the song one of his best moments.

Finally Lil Rounds finished out the night by choosing the slow moving ballad "The Rose" by the Divine Miss M Bette Midler. Paula's contribution was that Lil could not have chosen a song with more beautiful lyrics. But this week's controversy was between Lil and Simon when Lil took exception with Simon's remarks that the song was too soft for her, that she was becoming middle of the road, and not the singer they chose in Hollywood Week. As time was running over and Ryan was trying to run the recap with the phone numbers Lil chose to challenge and argue with Simon with Paula defending Lil's actions.