HUG-1
28-07-2012, 09:34 AM
"... breathtaking and bonkers ..." .... "... a masterpiece and not a ceremony ..."
Welcome to London! Welcome to the only city to have hosted the games three times. Welcome to modern Britain! In these challenging economic times, Britain had something to prove for the money invested in hosting the games. And world opinion gave us the thumbs up. We all hope that you enjoyed the opening ceremony, in whih we tried to give a flavour of the diversity of post-industrial Britain. Some media quotes ....
Yahoo Eurosport (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/eyes-london-spectacular-games-opening-000641924.html) and also here (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/armchair-pundit/masterpiece-not-ceremony-020036474.html)
The quintessentially British flavour to the ceremony, accompanied by a stunning soundtrack of hits from Elgar to U2, caused plenty of confusion among international journalists struggling to describe it to readers back home.
"It couldn't get any more British if it came drenched in tea," quipped the Hollywood Reporter movie magazine.
"It really played to what Britain does best," said Sarah Clarke, a visitor from South Africa, as she left the stadium after the show. "It was a British ceremony but absolutely we felt included."
The ceremony, inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest", began with Britain's first Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins ringing a giant 23-tonne Olympic bell. Played out before world leaders, European royalty and dignitaries including US First Lady Michelle Obama, the show switched to the playful recreation of an English rural idyll with grassy meadows, fences, a water mill and maypoles.
A cast including shepherdesses, sheep, geese, dogs and a village cricket team filled the stage during the one-hour prologue to the show that included a dramatic, low-level fly-past by the jets of the Royal Air Force's Red Arrows stunt team.
After "England's green and pleasant land" came the "dark Satanic mills" of William Blake's famous poem.
The Telegraph newspaper (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/london-2012/9434319/London-2012-What-the-world-thought-of-the-opening-ceremony.html) said
US media coverage hailed the British eccentricity of the opening ceremony, praised the humour, puzzled over some in-jokes and mused on what it all said about the country’s search for a post-imperial identity. The New York Times headlined its review: “A Five-Ring Opening Circus, Weirdly and Unabashedly British”.
Sarah Lyall, the newspaper’s London correspondent, wrote: ”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.
“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.”
Overview here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9433818/London-2012-breathtaking-brash-and-bonkers...an-utterly-British-Olympic-opening-ceremony.html). We hope you enjoyed the meeting between the entirely fictional James Bond and Her Majesty The Queen!
Welcome to London! Welcome to the only city to have hosted the games three times. Welcome to modern Britain! In these challenging economic times, Britain had something to prove for the money invested in hosting the games. And world opinion gave us the thumbs up. We all hope that you enjoyed the opening ceremony, in whih we tried to give a flavour of the diversity of post-industrial Britain. Some media quotes ....
Yahoo Eurosport (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/eyes-london-spectacular-games-opening-000641924.html) and also here (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/armchair-pundit/masterpiece-not-ceremony-020036474.html)
The quintessentially British flavour to the ceremony, accompanied by a stunning soundtrack of hits from Elgar to U2, caused plenty of confusion among international journalists struggling to describe it to readers back home.
"It couldn't get any more British if it came drenched in tea," quipped the Hollywood Reporter movie magazine.
"It really played to what Britain does best," said Sarah Clarke, a visitor from South Africa, as she left the stadium after the show. "It was a British ceremony but absolutely we felt included."
The ceremony, inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest", began with Britain's first Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins ringing a giant 23-tonne Olympic bell. Played out before world leaders, European royalty and dignitaries including US First Lady Michelle Obama, the show switched to the playful recreation of an English rural idyll with grassy meadows, fences, a water mill and maypoles.
A cast including shepherdesses, sheep, geese, dogs and a village cricket team filled the stage during the one-hour prologue to the show that included a dramatic, low-level fly-past by the jets of the Royal Air Force's Red Arrows stunt team.
After "England's green and pleasant land" came the "dark Satanic mills" of William Blake's famous poem.
The Telegraph newspaper (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/london-2012/9434319/London-2012-What-the-world-thought-of-the-opening-ceremony.html) said
US media coverage hailed the British eccentricity of the opening ceremony, praised the humour, puzzled over some in-jokes and mused on what it all said about the country’s search for a post-imperial identity. The New York Times headlined its review: “A Five-Ring Opening Circus, Weirdly and Unabashedly British”.
Sarah Lyall, the newspaper’s London correspondent, wrote: ”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.
“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.”
Overview here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9433818/London-2012-breathtaking-brash-and-bonkers...an-utterly-British-Olympic-opening-ceremony.html). We hope you enjoyed the meeting between the entirely fictional James Bond and Her Majesty The Queen!