That loud sucking sound is nearly four hours of the Isles of the United Kingdom fellating itself at the opening of the 2012 Olympics. I think it was the precise moment hospital beds with sick children and their nurses filled the stage, followed by a wave of Mary Poppins…. no wait, when Daniel Craig as 007 and a Queen Elizabeth II impersonator jumped out of a helicopter into the brand new, 80,000 seater Olympic Stadium in London.
Silly crap.
Just like this entire $14B, travel brochure. Danny Boyle (where is David Lean when you need him?) had an audience of the entire world scratching its heads and muttering "what the fuck was that all about?" If they made it through to the end. Which I didn't come close to.
I got through an hour or so before I remembered NBC had the Ceremony on a delayed feed so nothing out of the ordinary was going to happen, though it was so boring it is possible the London live might have caught up with us (I know, the concept is that though four hours it felt more like fourteen hours so that by the time… ah, forget it).
The first half hour had NBC clearing its throat with a useless "what you will see over the next two weeks") (Not see: the only thing I have the vaguest interest in is Women's volleyball)/ That was followed by the stadium grounds dressed as the verdant English countryside, you saw "War Horses", you know what I mean, morphing into Industrial revolution UK… so on and so forth: it was like watching a country going down the drain in five minute poorly choreographed segments that segued into each other till the admittedly jawdropping lord of the olympic rings finale (that's the pix up there).
Musically, director Boyle is the man who invented the punk song as soundtrack with his "Trainspotting" movie and resurrected Iggy Pop's career so it was not a shocker to hear the Sex Pistols "Pretty Vacant" and even the Pistols anti-monarchy "God Save The Queen. Not surprising but still appreciated. Much better than "Tubular Bells" and "Chariots Of Fire". In the latter, comedian Rowan Atkinson in Mr. Bean mode was resolutely unfunny as an organ player with a sneezing fit. 30 years on, Bean there, done that.
Paul McCartney was excellent at the end, he is the only person in the world for whom an audience of a billion is business as usual. Yeah, he was good, though perhaps he could have gotten out from behind his piano during "Hey Jude". Incidentally, if you want to watch it anywhere, forget it. It's been blocked by the Olympics Committee in yet another act of mindless hubris; below is the only snippit I can find. Oh, and Boyle promises an album of music from the bog show will be released the minutes the Olympics are over. For me, that would be right this second.
Ceremony: D
Music: B-
