StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Four hours of opening ceremony and HM the Queen manages to say the same thing in about ten words. I do wonder htough if she passed the time flag-spotting: "own this one, own that one, sort of own that one, don't recognise that one" and so on.

Col. Crackpot wrote:Thank you British Olympic people for giving my kids nightmares.

Soontir C'boath wrote:People in the US can't watch the ceremony live. NBC decided to show it on tape delay for prime-time.

US women are off to a decent comeback start 4-2 against France. Too bad certain DC United and Chicago Fire goalkeepers couldn't keep Honduras from scoring more goals or the USMNT would be there instead...

LadyTevar wrote:WTF? Someone is saying HRM actually did the dive herself?!

amigocabal wrote:

Soontir C'boath wrote:People in the US can't watch the ceremony live. NBC decided to show it on tape delay for prime-time.

US women are off to a decent comeback start 4-2 against France. Too bad certain DC United and Chicago Fire goalkeepers couldn't keep Honduras from scoring more goals or the USMNT would be there instead...

I wish I had BBC America on my TV; I am sure they would show the opening ceremonies live.

A Five-Ring Opening Circus, Weirdly and Unabashedly British

By SARAH LYALL
Published: July 27, 2012

LONDON — With its hilariously quirky Olympic opening ceremony, a wild jumble of the celebratory and the fanciful; the conventional and the eccentric; and the frankly off-the-wall, Britain presented itself to the world Friday night as something it has often struggled to express even to itself: a nation secure in its own post-empire identity, whatever that actually is.

The dizzying production somehow managed to include a flock of sheep (plus busy sheepdog), the Sex Pistols, Lord Voldemort, the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a suggestion that the Olympic Rings were forged by British foundries during the Industrial Revolution, the seminal Partridge Family reference from “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” some rustic hovels, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and a bunch of dancing nurses and bouncing sick children on huge hospital beds in a paean to the National Health Service. It was neither a nostalgic sweep through the past nor a bold vision of a brave new future. Rather, it was a sometimes slightly insane portrait of a country that has changed almost beyond measure since the last time it hosted the Games, in the grim postwar summer of 1948.

Britain was so poor then that it housed its athletes in old army barracks, made them bring their own towels and erected no buildings for the Games. The Olympics cost less than 750,000 pounds, and though they had their mishaps — Roger Bannister reportedly had to break into a car to retrieve the Union Jack for the opening ceremony — the nation was suffused with pride that it had managed to pull off the Games at all.

There was that same sense of relief intermingled with pride this time. But such was the grandeur of 2012, even in these tough economic times, that 80,000 people sat comfortably in a new Olympic Stadium, having traveled by sleek new bullet trains and special V.I.P. road lanes to a new park that has completely transformed the once-derelict east London.

Queen Elizabeth was there, after co-starring with a tuxedoed Daniel Craig in a witty video, and hosting a bevy of lesser royals and Prime Minister David Cameron. The first lady, Michelle Obama, was there to cheer the United States athletes. And Mitt Romney was there, too, somewhere, although he was practically Public Enemy No. 1 around here after he insulted Britain by appearing to question its capacity for enthusiasm (only Britain is allowed to do that).

They all witnessed a 3-hour-45-minute show, culminating with the lighting of the caldron, in the middle of the stadium, by seven teenage athletes after the torch was carried into the stadium by the British rower Steve Redgrave.

The ceremony, conceived and directed by the filmmaker Danny Boyle, was two years in the making. As is the case almost every Olympics, much of the speculation around it centered on how Britain could possibly surpass the previous summer host, China. In 2008, Beijing used its awe-inspiring opening extravaganza to proclaim in no uncertain terms that it was here, it was rich, and the world better get used to it.

But outdoing anyone else, particularly the new superpower China, was never the point for a country that can never hope to recreate the glory days of its empire. Cameron, the prime minister, said this week that London’s are “not a state-run Games — it is a people-run Games,” and Boris Johnson, the London mayor, noted sharply that Britain was not planning to “spend our defense budget” on “pyrotechnics” but would take pride in being “understated but confident.”

That the Olympics come at a time of deep economic malaise, with Britain teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession, the government cutting billions of dollars from public spending, and Europe lurching from crisis to crisis, made the scene a bit surreal, even defiant in the face of so much.

The crowd in the stadium was ecstatic, if a little bewildered at times. Meanwhile, volunteers have been behaving with an enthusiasm that seems bewilderingly un-British. But out in the rest of the country, critics have been questioning the expense, the ubiquitously heavy-handed security apparatus, and the rampant commercialism of the Games.

In The Guardian, the columnist Marina Hyde said that government officials appeared to be rashly depending on the Olympics, which cost an estimated 9.7 billion pounds (or $15.2 billion), to save the country’s struggling economy virtually single-handedly.

Referring to a British track-and-field star, Ms. Hyde wrote that according to the government’s thinking, “Jessica Ennis winning gold is no longer merely a sporting aspiration but something that would cause a massive and immediate recalibration of the balance of payments.”

The final economic cost, or benefit, of the Games will never really be known. But for now, the fact that things went smoothly on Friday was in itself a minor cause for celebration. Until the last week or so, the British news media have been relentlessly negative about the organization of the Games, complaining about traffic, money and security and focusing resolutely on things that have gone awry.

Then the booming economy began to slow, and once the crisis took hold in earnest, criticism centered on the expense of the Games, which were originally expected to cost less than 3 billion pounds but ended up costing three times that.

Mr. Boyle said he did not want to seem extravagant, particularly in a time of economic trouble, as he was given the daunting task of trying to find a way for Britain to account for itself in this strange time. The country has always eagerly celebrated its past: its military victories, its kings and queens, its glorious cultural and intellectual achievements. But it as a harder time celebrating its present.

A quixotic exercise in self-branding, during which the then-Labour government thought to unite the country by coming up with what it called a British “statement of values,” devolved into near-farce when the public greeted it with ridicule rather than enthusiasm. The Times of London mischievously sponsored a motto-writing contest; the winner was “No Motto Please, We’re British.”

The ceremony seemed to reflect that view, too, suggesting that the thing that is most British about the British is their anarchic spirit and their ability to laugh at themselves. It is hard to imagine, for instance, the Chinese including, as the British did, a clip of Rowan Atkinson inserted into the opening scene from “Chariots of Fire,” shoving the other runners out of the way (and ending with a rude noise paying tribute to British lavatorial humor).

The ceremony, too, reflected the deeply left-leaning sensibilities of Mr. Boyle. It pointedly included trade union members among a parade of people celebrating political agitators from the past, a parade that also included suffragettes, Afro-Caribbean immigrants who fought for minority rights, and the Jarrow hunger marchers, who protested against unemployment in 1936.

It would not be lost on Mr. Boyle that unions have suffered in Britain in recent years, particularly at the hands of the British Conservative Party, led by Mr. Cameron. But he devised the ceremony, he said, with no political interference.

That proved highly irritating to at least one politician, Aiden Burley, a Conservative member of Parliament, who denounced what he referred to as the ceremony’s “leftie multi-cultural” content on Twitter.

“The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen — more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state!” he posted grumpily.

But his was a minority view, and even jaded cynics seemed taken by the joyfully anarchic spirit of the ceremony.

“I kind of don’t care that other countries will be baffled,” the British TV columnist Alison Graham wrote on Twitter. “This is joyously barking.”

Campbell Robertson, Christopher Clarey, Victor Mather, Andrew Das and Stephen Castle contributed reporting.

fgalkin wrote:Oh, and a NHS piece in an Olympic Opening Ceremony? I can understand the desire for inclusiveness, but what is exactly the point of showcasing disability in a competition designed to showcase the peak of human athleticism?

FSTargetDrone wrote:You paid how much for all of this? The only part worth watching has been the bit with Daniel Craig and the Queen, most of which was pre-recorded. I'm sorry, but a performance piece about the Industrial Revolution and a retrospective of British pop music does not suggest "Olympics" to me.

Sorry guys, China still has you beat with respect to the Opening Ceremony.

FSTargetDrone wrote:

fgalkin wrote:Oh, and a NHS piece in an Olympic Opening Ceremony? I can understand the desire for inclusiveness, but what is exactly the point of showcasing disability in a competition designed to showcase the peak of human athleticism?

Maybe more suited to the Paralympics? Yes?