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

[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.