Sock It To 'Em, Danny

[poliphilo]

Daniel Craig in character as James Bond strides menacingly into Buckingham Palace. A grey eminence escorts him into an inner sanctum where a dumpy little woman with a tight white hair-do sits with her back to the camera- obviously a lookalike. Bond coughs discretely. The woman turns. "Good evening, Mr Bond."  And- Oh my God. It's really her. It's the Queen. She's acting!

Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony was altogether bonkers and amazing. Kenneth Branagh climbed Glastonbury Tor dressed as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, recited Caliban's speech about the isle being full of noises, then supervised proceedings as smoking chimneys erupted through the soil of an idyllic rural England, Evelyn Glennie led an army of drummers, the Queen parachuted in, J.K Rowling read from Peter Pan, real doctors and nurses and child patients performed a ballet in tribute to the NHS and our great heritage of children's literature,  Voldemort loomed, Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO played the theme from Chariots of Fire- with Mr Bean as soloist, Michael Fish forecast fine weather and down came the rain, a gaudy, celebration of British pop culture- music, TV, cinema and texting- ended with a suburban house shooting skywards to reveal Sir Tim Berners-Lee- yes, really him- sitting at his console, tapping away like the Wizard of Oz,  Akram Khan wandered forlornly among dancers enacting the horrors of war while Emeli Sande sang Abide With Me, cyclists with flapping wings rode round the arena, the Arctic Monkeys sang Come Together, a lone birdman soared heavenwards on invisible wires.  And so on.  We kicked off with Bradley Wiggins and ended with fab Sir Macca leading us in a sing-along version of Hey Jude. Altogether now, "Nah, nah nah, na-na-na-nah...."

Feeling a little rebuked now, are we, Mitt?

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I missed the whole thing. Hurrah!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was lovely. Do try and catch some of the highlights. I thought Danny Boyle might deliver something special- and he did.

[heatherp8.livejournal.com]

some of my FB friends have been criticizing Sir Paul's performance.
Our commentators said he was "choked up" at first but someone on FB stated that then added, "Actually, he just choked."
I could've done without the choir director bit "now just the women" . . . "now just the men" but other wise, I thought it was great. For all we know, he had a cold or something but in any case, I'll ALWAYS love Paul.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He got off to a slightly ropey start. I thought it was a fault with the sound equipment, but really, who cares? It had to be Paul. No-one else has quite that status. He's a national and international treasure. Besides, he was leading a sing-along, not giving a concert performance. It didn't have to be perfect.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Missed the whole thing, was partying last night.

I must track down the Emeli Sande rendition of that lovely hymn. I presume it will be out on youtube in a little while.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I should think so.

I'm hoping they issue the whole thing on DVD.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Cardboard Mitt is off to send love and cheer to the rest of the world.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thus far he's done a lousy job.

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

Maybe he can get out to the rest of the world and stay there...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but we have absolutely no use for him.

[theperfectfool.livejournal.com]

OK. Sorry I missed it now.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It was grand.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

It's on iPlayer in its entirety. And it's worth watching, IMO.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I was irritated with the Times saying that it was her first acting experience. Oh no it wasn't! it might have been her first film acting - but she and Princess Margaret produced their own pantomimes at Windsor - she was usually the Prince and her sister was usually the female lead

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was amazed she agreed to do it, but but then I hadn't known about her girlhood theatricals.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

That sounds WONDERFUL!!! I missed it, but we are having an "Olympic Get Together" here at school this afternoon. Hopefully, there is some kind of a recording of the opening ceremony, and I will be able to see it.

I am totally in love with the U.K., and a special place in my heart for London. It sounds like folks over there know this, and created an opening ceremony just to remind me of that love.

Thank you for sharing!

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

Oh, and one more thing... Romney's an ass.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hope you can find a recording. I'm told it's on the BBC i-player, but that may not be available in the States.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

Someone here may have recorded it somehow. We have a lot of very smart people here. We'll see.

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

Please inform everyone in Great Britain that I apologize for the offensive officiousness of Mitt the Ungracious.

I pray to God that he is not the next president of the United States. If he is, can I come and live with you guys for four years? I do have three cats that I cannot be parted from.

I liked all the dancing Mary Poppins clones and the gigantic voldemorte.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No apologies needed.

The cats might be a problem. I think they'd probably come to blows with our rabbits.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Come on over! Refugees from Republicanism more than welcome here.

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

Hurrah!

When I consider what the ultimate end to all this tea-party, extreme right wing, "talibangelical" republican crap is inexorably leading to, I am so thankful that I am old and have no children!

I think I'd ultimately get burned at the stake for not believing that poor immigrant families and gay people should be stoned or shot on sight. Sigh.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I just might take you up on that - if November does not pan out.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

It really was all quite amazing, wasn't it? And so very very British. I loved it (but could have done without the lengthy musical part spanning 4 decades and all that texting).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I didn't altogether understand the musical sequence. Apparently she'd lost her phone and he'd found it (or something like that.) but I thought it was fun. I loved the bouncing punks.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

I thought it was great! I'm glad I got up at 5am to watch it.

I'm living in Seoul as an English teacher now, but I would have had to get up around the same time in Australia anyway.

I don't know how many people would have watched it here but it seemed to go down well. I'm pretty wary of the Olympics in general but the Seoul Olympics are the textbook example of hosting helping to bring democracy and more liberty to a country. (But the Beijing Olympics are the most recent example of hosting bringing glory to a autocratic state, and in general I think we'd be better off with Athens as permanent hosts.)

Anyway, the opening ceremony was a lot of fun. I liked all of it but especially the tribute to children's literature. And I liked the media/social-media number. I liked how it was very British but also very globalised without shoving either one down people's throats.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My daughter-in-law is South Korean, so I'll be cheering for their team.

I think it would be an excellent idea to give the Olympics a permanent home in Greece, but I don't see anyone calling a halt to the gravy train any time soon- not while countries are still so eager to host it.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

It's true, and it's a gravy train for the Olympics people, but it can be a big financial burden on host countries. I think the latest figures say Sydney lost about $2b hosting the games even adjusting for increased tourism - about the cost of all the new buildings. The cost has left Sydney with decades-outdated public transport.

But I guess it's hard to predict what will come of each games. We surveyed my public school 13-15yo students recently about what they want to do in the future etc and many of them said they want to go to London/the UK. I don't think the UK had a high profile among young Koreans until quite recently.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't see how one can possibly quantify the profit and loss. And it's not just about money. Goodwill comes into it too. I know the Sydney Olympics left me with warm feelings about Australia.

[all-unnecessary.livejournal.com]

The bouncing punks! The lighting of the cauldron, wow. The honor guard of the construction workers! And the tribute to the NHS, so wonderful (though the giant baby was freaking weird).

And Hey Jude is still stuck in my head.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The cauldron is amazing- a brilliant piece of design.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

So Sir Paul's voice is getting a bit aged and tired! At 70? Arent we all? To have held a spectacular like this without him, one of the leaders of the "British Invasion" would have been abominable. I liked that he got the audience singing along in the fashion of my favorite folk singer, Pete Seeger, who was still singing into his nineties even though his voice was no longer "on the job". Pete would start us to singing, then let us carry it, except for a phrase here and there. You still rock, Sir Paul!
At first I dismissed the opening ceremony because I thought it would be just some so-so noisemaking. However, that evening I went to the TV room downstairs in my building to watch the usual shows at 7 pm. There was only one such show, then the opening ceremonies. I watched, and I apologize for my hasty pre-judgment of something that turned out to be truly wonderful. I especially loved the segment about the writers. I have often commented on the fact that I love the way the Brits write, especially for children. They have undestood that kids know how to read words of more than two syllables. From P.L. Travers, to Sir James Barrie, to Hugh Lofting all the way to J. K. Rowling we on this side of the Altantic have a large debt to British children's authors, who got us reading at a young age and kept us there into our old age.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

McCartney is an icon- a national treasure. That's mainly why he was there. It didn't bother me a bit that his performance was a little shaky. Who else could they have asked? Elton John? David Bowie? Brian May? None of them has written songs that the whole world knows and can be trusted to sing along to.

The tribute to children's literature was charming- and it was clever to entwine it with a tribute to the NHS.