Was that the lamest Opening Ceremony EVER?

[Berkut]

I never thought that I would look back at the Beijing Olympics with nostalgia.

WTF was that? Giant baby heads? Voldemort menacing children in beds?

Seriously, that was the weirdest and then the smarmiest thing I think I may have ever seen.

[Berkut]

Habs is telling me the nurses and stuff was supposed to be some kind of NHS tribute.

Surely not?

[Eddie Teach]

That's what the announcers said. 

[Sheilbh]

Habs is telling me the nurses and stuff was supposed to be some kind of NHS tribute.

Surely not?

Yep.  Though that's a bit simple.

It's a few things - most of the performers were NHS staff but there were some patients on stage too.  The section was about the NHS and children's literature.  It was called 'take the second right and then carry on until morning' which is from Peter Pan.  Barrie donated all of the proceeds from Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital (specialist children's hospital in London - they spelled out the logo at one point).  But then it goes, I think brilliantly, into kids reading in bed - with all the villains coming real like the child catcher, Voldemort and Cruella de Vill - before Mary Poppins/nurses restore order and everything's okay again.

They also spelled out NHS in that section:


Edit: Here's the Great Ormond Street logo:

[Berkut]

Brilliant?

Not the word I would choose.

[Sheilbh]

Brilliant?

Not the word I would choose.

I loved the whole thing personally - except for some of the weirdly creepy IOC moments like the UN Champion of the Earth and the Olympic anthem

[Berkut]

I actually said the Habs while we were passing the vomit bucket back and forth "I bey Shelf eats this right up..."

[Sheilbh]

I actually said the Habs while we were passing the vomit bucket back and forth "I bey Shelf eats this right up..."

 

They had me at Jerusalem 

Edit:  I think it touched a lot of points for Brits that maybe don't translate

Even right-wingers generally seemed to love it.  For example here, from the Telegraph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100173004/danny-boyles-olympic-opening-ceremony-was-as-ironic-complex-and-beautiful-as-britain-herself/

Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony was as ironic, complex and beautiful as Britain herself
By Tim Stanley Politics Last updated: July 28th, 2012
143 Comments Comment on this article

Danny Boyle's Olympic Ceremony told many stories about British history. For Tories, there was a pre-industrial ruritania. For liberal capitalists, there was an industrial revolution. For socialists, there was an NHS song-and-dance routine that ended in Mary Poppins thrashing Voldemort with her umbrella (all hail the "nanny" state). All that was missing was Grace Jones and her fabulous hoop. Dear old Grace. She's probably on a cruise ship in the North Sea right now, belting out disco like it's going out of fashion.

The show was as complex (or confused) as British identity itself. But it was also spectacular, beautiful and funny. It opened with children singing hymns (did Britain used to be Christian?! Don't remember reading about that at school), the camera flying through the hills and dales of our Angel Isle, before settling on a quaint village in the middle of the stadium. As a jaded traditionalist who hankers for the certainties of the 13th century, this was pure poetry to me. Then came the inventor Brunel to announce the coming of the industrial age. "Boo, hiss."

The workers emerged from the scorched earth and tore away the grass piece by piece – to unveil a hideous industrial landscape of ash and concrete. The effect was stunning: from Surrey to Manchester in ten horrible minutes. On came the reforms of the 20th century: women's suffrage, immigration, democracy and ... the Beatles. There was a pause – incredibly moving – for the dead of World War I. That's the price of greed and ambition. Millions dead for a blade of grass in Belgium.

On Britain worked, fire pouring from ugly chimneys to create the golden rings of the Olympics. They rose into the air to hang above the crowd and pour their Wagnerian gold from the sky. I was half expecting a human sacrifice to Odin.

Then came the NHS bit, which was a mix of the perverse and the endearing: nurses twirling beds around in a sort of Busby Berkeley on the cancer ward. Literally every available bed on the NHS was on that stage. The children beneath the bed clothes had nightmares, and from them sprung a giant Voldemort which floated upwards like a figure of death. Mary Poppins banished it back to Hell and the monsters were gone. Or at least, they were until we entered the digital age.

Now maybe it's because I have the tastes of Colonel Blimp, but I can't help feel that the last third of Boyle's act reflected all the failed ambition of postwar Britain. If it was an accurate portrayal of modern life, then it would seem that we've spent the last thirty years at an ecstasy rave. Lines of dancers jiggered and pokered around on the spot in loud costumes in a mass celebration of nothing at all. But I'm not complaining. The reality of a nation is that it contains some 60 million individuals, each with a different idea of what that nation stands for. For some, it's David Bowie – for others, it's Purcell. For me, it's watching The Professionals on a wet afternoon with a mug of tea and some custard creams. Towards the end of the ceremony, I nearly took my face off when trying to light a cigarette from the gas stove. That's the real Britain, Mr Doyle.

That we can laugh and bitch about ourselves is one of the defining things of being British. Hence it was marvellous to see Mr Bean playing keyboard during a rendition of Chariots of Fire. And we've tried very hard to integrate the new, which is why the conscious effort at diversity felt perfectly apt. I'm proud of the part of the British soul that is curious and tolerant. Not everyone agrees. A Mr Aidan Burley tweeted, "The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen – more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?" And, later, "Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multi-cultural crap." Aside from the content, the problem with those tweets is that Aidan Burley once threw a Nazi-themed stag party and is now an MP. That's MP as in "Member of Parliament", not "Monkey-brained Prat-boy."

Finally, the athletes paraded into the stadium – a blow-by-blow reminder of how many countries there now are in the world. There was even a separate team for Jimmy Carr's bank account. The North Korea chaps looked happy, but then I'm sure that Pyongyang radio is already reporting that Kim Jong Un has won all the medals. That guy's amazing.

So after all of this, what is Britain? A country that can still put on a show, that has many identities, that is culturally rich, that has a battered landscape, that lost a lot when the factories were first built, that has patches of God still found lying about, that is intensely proud of what it got right (free healthcare, women's votes), but not too comfortable about what it got wrong (empire was never mentioned). It is a mess. A jolly wonderful mess. We're good at those.

[merithyn]

I'm with Sheilbh. I loved it.

Admittedly, it was a bit slow in places, and I didn't always understand all that was going on, but the ending totally clenched it for me with the bronze leaves folding up to create the Olympic Torch. I thought that was pretty amazing.

[Sheilbh]

Apparently NBC cut the tribute to the 7/7 victims (the bombing was the day after London was announced as host), which seems an odd choice.  It was a lovely hymn too

[sbr]

Iraqi flag bearer chick was pretty hot.

[merithyn]

Apparently NBC cut the tribute to the 7/7 victims (the bombing was the day after London was announced as host), which seems an odd choice.  It was a lovely hymn too

And I guess the lesbian kiss was cut here, too, but allowed in Saudia Arabia.

That's the good ole' US of A! More socially conservative than Saudia-fucking Arabia. 

[sbr]

Why were lesbians making out at the opening ceremonies?

[jimmy olsen]

Mary Poppins thrashing Voldemort with her umbrella

WTF!? 

[Sheilbh]

Why were lesbians making out at the opening ceremonies?

It was a bit taking a tour of British music kind of told through a story of a boy-meets-girl on a night out, with images from British TV and film to reflect the mood (and era) being flashed on a suburban house - all praising the internet.  When the girl and boy got together they showed a montage of famous kisses (to Song 2).  The montage included the Anna Friel kiss from Brookside.

Edit:  Or as a reporter tweeted 'I love this - our suburban lives made magical by music, snogging and Saturday night'