I liked it when Meredith Viera asked Danny Boyle about the “Money Shot” vis a vis James Bond and the Queen.
I tuned in after it had started and was quite overwhelmed by the beginning parts…so much so that I cried a bit. I was initially struck by the stark contrast between the Chinese very structured, very rigid, though beautiful in its precision performance, where every arm movement, every head angle, every expression conformed, and the glorious controlled chaos of the British show, where no movements, not even the marching of the soldiers up the tor, was synchronized. The message seemed to be one of “we work together to achieve amazing things, but we also retain our individuality and our freedom of expression”.
The commentary didn’t upset me as much as it seems to have others, since it was obvious they were following a script to explain what we were seeing, and some of that was very helpful. The jump in time though, from the NHS and the giant baby (how did so many doctors and nurses get the day off? LOL) to the whole Frankie and June thing was very disconcerting, and I just didn’t see what the point they were trying to make was. Maybe if they had chosen characters more familiar to an international audience it would have made sense, but I had no idea who they were or why they got such a huge portion. And then when the athletes started arriving I thought it was all over, and I went to bed and missed the cauldron and poor darling picked-on Paul!
Very disappointed there was no Dr. Who…they could have incorporated his time-travel into the whole thing and really pulled that together! But all in all it was a glorious wonderful mess and I was very moved by the moment of silence…wish we could have seen and heard the “Abide With Me” part. I’ll have to watch it again for that part. I mean, really…an interview with Michael Phelps? Haven’t we had enough of interviews with him the last few weeks? And the scowling Queen…I have to believe that she really couldn’t see everything that was going on very well, and hadn’t been cued as to when to smile and wave. But I loved the way she kept Bond waiting for just those few seconds before she turned and we saw it really was her! What a good sport she was to do that!
There was a tardis sound and a TARDIS in the production - you can hear it during the Queen segment.
My wife and daughter claim you can see the TARDIS sometime between :12-:16 seconds in the above clip, but I don’t see it…
Reactions from here at Casaflodnak (these may not be, strictly speaking, in order):
The opening sequence was very, very good. Even though I didn’t see any sheep. I was promised sheep! Anyway, Isambard Kingdom Brunel!!! (Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.) Just the thing to warm the cockles of my geekgirl heart. Lots of odd bits of British history but it all fit together in the end.
I thought the James Bond/Her Maj thing was cute, but not much more. I was outvoted by the guys, because JAMES BOND!!!1!
The long love story sequence: meh. Mostly good music, but it went on too long without enough direction. Good on them for recognizing Tim Berners-Lee. Two of us spontaneously yelled “Thanks, Tim!” at the television.
I love Rowan Atkinson but I think Mr Bean is one of the weaker things he’s done. Since the “Chariots of Fire” thing was pretty much the Bean character, I thought it was a bit of a waste. Couldn’t one of the Blackadders turned up in the historical sequence instead?
“Abide With Me” caused the screen to go all wobbly for a few moments. Don’t know what it could have been…
Great Ormond Street Hospital/children’s literature sequence: Brilliant to include those stories so many of us know. Most of it was sweet without being sappy. But the giant baby puppet was scarier than all the villains put together :eek: Just before that, the children’s choir singing God Save the Queen? I loved how honest and inclusive it was. You could hear that not all of the kids were brilliant singers, but that was fine.
We liked the idea of building up the cauldron for the Olympic flame that way. A single flame from many nations. Youngest son wants to build one just like it. And we thought having the promising young athletes light the flame was brilliant.
All in all, we liked it a lot. Quirky and mostly upbeat, patriotic in the positive sense, and quite British.
Oh, I forgot about that. Very moving, especially considering some of the kids are deaf.
For a moment, it was slightly disconcerting seeing Wallandar walking around in a top hat (Kenneth Branagh as Brunel).
In case some folks didn’t know, the choir sang the first and third verses only, missing out this slightly more assertive second - another Boyle decision. What they didn’t sing:
Apart from recognising his contribution to the second great revolution, TBL was born and went to school in London. I guess the idea was to include the digital rev but not in a corporate way. Boyle obv. went for the modern teenage Saturday night experience.
I quite liked the girls getting ready and sending photos, and then the role of phones in modern dating. And then he layered the UK music thing over those ideas.
So the Doctor is still leaving the brakes on?
Because it “wasn’t tailored for the U.S. audience.” :smack:
Jackasses. Can you imagine what would happen if the BBC edited a 9/11 tribute out of its coverage because “it wasn’t tailored for British audiences”?
Well, there’s also [modern] representative democracy and the common law system. Those are pretty good. And Roger Bannister, who fits in nicely with the Olympic thing.
I was kind of hoping that the stage would be a giant clock face. I mean, the stadium is, what, five miles from Greenwich?
I had the same reaction when I discovered what I should have been watching instead of that crappy (and incongruous) Phelps interview. What bonehead was responsible for that decision? NBC has lost whatever goodwill it gained from me for its lukewarm support of Community.
Well, the buck stops at NBC’s Olympic coverage executive producer, Jim Bell. For what it’s worth, NBC says they didn’t know the segment was about 7/7, and in fairness it wasn’t explicitly tagged as such.
The entire ceremony was not tailored for US audiences! The whole goddam point of the Olympics is to be international! The host country has a special place, but the idea is for them to show us–everybody else–something. So I wanna see it!
Loved the opening ceremony except for Paul McCartney. He’s too farkin old to sing.
Where was Elton John?
He better be at the closing ceremony…at least he’s one queen that KNOWS how to smile…
Same for the Japanese broadcast team. They were mostly quiet except for some quick comments and labeling segments of the show. During the Parade of Nations, they went through the basics…Number of participants and main athletes and their sports.
Not all. One of the snippets was from Cuéntame, a Spanish show.
The problem I had with the film clips, and certain other snippets such as the rugby clips at the start of the ceremony (which must have baffled much of the international audience), was that they just cut to them full screen. I understand that in the stadium those clips may have been projected on to a screen or on to the side of that house prop that they had, but to TV viewers there was just a jarring cut to some totally unrelated scene from the film *Kes *or whatever. I think it would have been better it the clips had somehow been framed within the live picture.
It may quality as the most heroic presentation of an engineer ever.
I liked how he was using a NeXT cube.
I knew the NBC coverage would embarrass us, and have cut-aways to inane stuff, so I waited until I could see the BBC version. Very glad I did.
I still wanted Kate Bush to come out of seclusion to sing something. Or at least to have a song featured.
Some useful facts for future organisers to bear in mind:
I don’t remember the cows.