The concluding para of Danny Boyle’s programme notes:
the rest is here:
http://doohan.org/blog/2012/07/28/danny-boyles-olympic-welcome/
The BBC has the whole thing available online, although I suspect that is limited to UK only
I have been watching Olympic coverage ever since they begab showing it on television, but this is absolutely the worst I have ever seen.
Unlike many of the opening ceremonies that were beautiful, artistic an pleasing to the eye or ear, this noisy mish mash remine me of some propaganda film of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Along with the workers swinging hammers, I expected to see some others using sickles.
Then an entire sequence celebrating their health care system? Is that the best thing they can claim?
After all that, it supposedly went into the modern computer age. That mess seemed like something a bunch of junior high school kids would come up with.
The Chariots of Fire beach scene was amusing, the entire Queen’s episode let us laugh out loud, but other than that, it was awful.
I also agree that those berets on the Americans let them look like dorks.
Click the Watch Now button. You’ll need to install Silverlight if you don’t already have it, but it’s reasonably painless.
I thought the “hospital bed/nurses” sequence was quite bizarre-I laughed my head off. What was it supposed to suggest?
CTV is covering the Olympics, but their web layout is challenging.
Here is the World Feed 1 of the Opening Ceremonieson the CTV website. There is about nine minutes of pre-roll. TSN - Canada's Source for Sports News, Scores & Live Games
The “Full Event Replay” section has another version of the Opening Ceremonies that included Brian William’s ongoing comments.
It requires Silverlight. You might wish to right click, and then set the playback to use hardware acceleration.
Yeah, a few of my friends in the US felt that was disrespectful.
On another note, I just found out that one of the Mary Poppinses was an old room mate of mine. Weird.
OK. It sounded like you were speaking for all non-Brits, which is why I asked.
The NHS is a great achievement to celebrate. OK, I did think it was a little strange to have it feature in the opening ceremony, but if you take it as a celebration of British society and culture then it makes sense. As for propaganda… I think “What?” sums up my thoughts quite nicely.
It was a potted history of 50 years of popular culture, I did wonder how many of them would be recognised outside the UK. The medley of music playing at the time should have been a lot more familiar.
It was also a celebration of children’s literature. There was a direct link there, as J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, gifted the copyright to the famous children’s hospital at Great Ormond Street. I thought the suggestion of the doctors and nurses as protectors against (real and imagined) nightmares was quite well done. The section was a little amateurish, but that was part of it’s charm.
It might seem like a strange subject for an Olympic ceremony, but our rich tradition of children’s literature and the NHS are both well worth recognising.
To be fair the NHS is sort of a myth as before it came into being almost everyone could get free healthcare anyway. It just nationalised all those systems in to one. Except not really (see postcode lotteries etc).
Did anyone notice the American commentators were kind of being assholes during the parade? Like, ‘‘This country has no chance of winning’’ and other negative facts. I mean, couldn’t they try to get one positive thing out of each country?
As an American, this is my takeaway:
“Britain! We scare the shit out your children, our Queen is a paratrooper, we invented music and sex and the internet and bicycles (China) and oh yeah - the Olympics, which, let’s be honest, are really kind of silly. And we did it as amateurs, because the unfettered drive of love is the greatest force on Earth, and we did it all while wearing funny hats.”
As an American, I’m impressed!
I saw it again and I think the “don’t even bother to try and top China” syndrome is what caused the ceremony to fall flat. It seemed to a be a good crutch to fall back on and it permitted some really lacklustre and downright awful ideas (the Bengali/European dance, the love story) to be permitted. The organisers managed to top Beijing in things such as the rings, the bit with Her Majesty and Commander Bond and the cauldron.
The organisers were too scared to aim for perfection and instead settled for good enough. They got something between mediocrity and acceptablity. Which is sad, a better show was well within capability.
I liked very much from the Thames flight to the forging of the rings. After that, more of a mixed bag. I actually would have liked to see more of Britain’s history, even preceding the generic pastoral scene. I guess it was meant to be limited to the United Kingdom period. I understand the celebration of the NHS and children’s literature. Kind of remarkable to see punk and rave given essentially a formal place in the country’s history. The pack of kids with torches didn’t move me–I like the traditional form of a single past Olympian–but the cauldron itself was nice, both visually and symbolically, composed of the ‘petals’ from all nations.
Lord, yes. The show was pretty good, some parts better than others according to one’s taste, but the NBC talkers absolutely hurt it. Almost all of what they said was useless; give some credit to the production and the audience, please, you don’t need to tell us to notice the other four huge glowing rings flying in. Sometimes they were worse than that, talking right over important developments in the music.
The look of horror on the kids’ faces during the non-pop was awesome. It literally made me think, “Houston, we have a problem”. The look of terror (shrugging of shoulders in anticipation of the pops was amusing too for lots of the kids too.
I enjoyed it well enough, but I thought the presentation could have been better. Far too much jumping around to different camera angles- especially during the hospital bed scenes. This was true of both the BBC version and the NBC version so it seemed like there was really just one main feed coming out.
dancing nurses feet for 2 seconds - check!
white girl bouncing on bed 1.5 bounces - check!
black boy on knees bouncing 1.5 bounces -check!
Prince Harry reaction 3 seconds -check!
swirling head shot of dancing nurses for 2 seconds -check!
crowd shot of people peering around their LED panel -check!
Wait a minute, we’ve got a bad dancer on camera 8- pan in cuz she’s a cute young thing - check!
I am a big fan of british TV and music and I thought that the entire Teenagers falling in love episode was craptaffic- good music and dancing, but some lame story in which the characters are always in a crowd doesn’t play well to cameras let alone to a crowd of 70,000 people. What does the Prime minister and queen think for 2 seconds- check! I am convinced that Danny Boyle was just trying to see how far he could push the boundaries with an international family audience with images of women making out and then unaccompanied teenagers in an attic- willl they or won’t they? Princess Kate’s face looks like she thinks they should go for it - check!
I caught a chunk of the industrial revolution part and was reminded of Waiting for Guffman, I was like ‘it’s the history of Blaine!’
I assumed the Daniel Craig bit was one of those chessey olympic commerials till now.
See, I think it was pretty deliberately saying that Government sponsored “perfection” like we saw in Beijing is just meaningless show. Home-made amateurism that comes from the heart is what made Britain great, not big-money government spectacle.
“Our government spends its money on healthcare for the needy, not over-rehearsed propaganda” is a really kickass message.
I was just coming off a zoo night in the ER, so I might have been a touch cynical.