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London Olympics 2012: Opening Ceremony Music To All Ears
- Published_at:2012-07-28
- Category:Sports
- Channel:liya28a
- tags: Olympics, OLYMPICS NEWS, London Olympics 2012, Danny Boyle, 2012 Summer Olympics Canada, UK Sport News
- description: Sebastian Coe — that's Seb to his pals, Lord Coe to you — had this to say about the architect of Friday night's opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics: "I can't imagine what it is like being in Danny Boyle's head for even half an hour." Well, the world got a full three hours' worth Friday, and a little more, when the Academy Award-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire shone his offbeat, occasionally whimsical light on the touchstones of Britain's cultural heritage, from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling, the Beatles to Arctic Monkeys, sheep to socialized medical care, the Industrial Revolution to the World Wide Web. And Coe, the legendary middle distance runner, now chairman of the Games organizing committee, was right: Boyle's £27-million extravaganza, entitled Isles of Wonder, was a trip. It was a trip that took the world to Buckingham Palace, where Boyle had filmed a short piece in which Queen Elizabeth — the real one, with her Corgis — actually agreed to act in a spoof with Daniel Craig, in his James Bond tux, as they headed off to a helicopter preparing to skydive into the Olympic Stadium.She didn't, really, and neither did 007. But Her Majesty was there, in person, with IOC chief Jacques Rogge, to open the Games. Boyle's trip took a crowd that had been charmed with scenes of Middle Ages pastoral beauty and blasted with the noise and pollution of the Industrial Revolution and transported through the nurses of the National Health Service into sick kids' hospitals — and directly from there into Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean. Bean stole the show, of course. Starting with his one-note part in the playing of the theme from Chariots of Fire, morphing into a daydream about running with Eric Liddell on the beaches of St. Andrews — he won the race in his dream by veering off to take a London cab — the malleable face of this comedic genius opened a chapter on British pop culture that played out to a soundtrack of some of the greatest rock 'n' roll music ever recorded. "We have been pretty good in the music we produce. For such a small country, the amount of popular music we produce has been spectacular, really," Boyle said, in an afternoon news conference, and the middle segment of the evening, with all that wondrous music, showed he was telling no lies. The preamble began with four cotton-candy-like, helium-filled clouds hovering 50 feet above ground, the sound of twittering birds through the speakers — and a stadium floor turned into an expanse of farmland around a thatched-roof cottage onto which maidens and farmers (and a border collie) had herded a couple of dozen sheep, a draft horse hitched to a hay wain, cows, goats, an assortment of ducks and geese and chickens, played soccer, cricket, badminton (badly) and danced around maypoles (the maidens, not the animals). When the hour rolled round, Tour de France-winning cyclist Bradley Wiggins rang the largest harmonically-tuned bell in the world, actor Kenneth Branagh read a passage from Shakespeare's The Tempest — "Be not afeard: the Isle is full of noises" — and the green and pleasant land began to transform itself into the darker, louder, scene of the Industrial Revolution, smokestacks rising where the fields had been.
| ranked in date | views | likes | Comments | ranked in country (#position) |
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| 2012-07-31 | 13,889 | 4 | 2 |
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| 2012-08-01 | 15,418 | 4 | 2 |
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