Danny Boyle risking embarrassing the nation… the opening ceremony thread

Well I enjoyed that. Apart from sir thumbsaloft, of course.

G’night all

tallie – Member
Why were Team GB dressed as Gary Glitter impersonators?

East 17 Reunion more like..

Mind, they where sponsored by JJB…

Hey Jude, because an Old Bloke can get the audience to do the work when the Alzheimers kicks in.

I thought that was outstanding. 🙂

Fantastic! Well, bar the ex beatle at the end. Great event

All but the Beatle was great. With luck the first British gold medal is tomorrow on the Mall.

Agrees with stevewhite – i’d have paid a bit for that.

Haven’t read the 23 pages to here but I thought the opening cermony was fantastic and worthy of a British production.

I am Australian and recall my bitter disappointment at the 2000 Sydney opening ceremony.
Great Britain stood proud tonight.

Dizzy Rascal – Bonkers – being played at the Olympics in front of the Queen = Highlight of my day.

it was indeed Great.. 😀

Glad to see Mr Bean there.

Brilliant.
and were there bits of The Orb playing while the athletes were coming on?

I heard Underworld

Also the Americans won the most militaristic parade uniform, managing to look like something out of Starship Troopers. Yeah that’s the right outfit for an event that celebrates peace….you window licking septics.

And I also caught a German doing a rather suspicious wave that looked a bit like a certain salute….

Ace. Just ace!

I heard Underworld

that was it, but I think there was another as well

am just watching the repeat of it now (damn you insomnia 😡
i must say it looks/sounds most impressive 😀

Danny Boyle for a knighthood, Gary Barlow for the tower

I’m 4 hours ahead of UK time so I missed this last night. Just watched the highlights piece on the bbc web site, interestingly Macca wasn’t included.

Brilliant, although I did nod off for a couple of hours as the atheltes filed in.

Well done Sir Danny.

Just caught the ceremony down under (not live). Loved it.

Well done all the thousands of volunteers – you did Great Britain proud.

edit: and Underworld… really pleased they were involved: my Italian and Australian mates were impressed that we could include Born Slippy, the Sex Pistols, Bowie, Prodigy and all the other tunes. But not Macca.

Brilliant I was sceptic when I got home about 8.30 and seen Teletubby hill but when it started from 9 all that changed. Excellent stuff entertainging, funny and pride too. Well done Danny Boyle.

Sadly I was wrecked from nights so crashed before they lit the flame. I can only just remember Team GB entering the arena.

the flame was…. well look it up, probably on youtube by now 😀

Phillyc +1

don’t even try to describe it, we won’t do it justice.

I do like that they trusted artic monkeys to do a Beatles song, but not paul!

Also love the fact they kept away all the x-factor Simon Cowell driven contribution to music.

If there was any debate in the “who’d buy a gun” thread about members of the public being armed then Paul McCartney has silenced it. At least one would have done the decent thing.

Well Done Danny!! We loved it…..

Highlights…..Bond and the Queen sky diving, Mr Bean (didnt expect that) Muhammad Ali……

And the lighting of the cauldron…..that something else, very special….

All in all, I think they did the British proud!!!

What would really get the games going…..a win from Mark Cav of course!!! 🙂

Let the games begin…

Loads to love about last night – my favourites were the opening sequence of rural life to industrial chaos with the forging of the rings and the wonderful ideology of passing on the mantle to the next generation with the lighting of the torch, especially with the symbology of the torch being constructed from an element from each participating nation. Both brilliant.

The NHS and children’s literature bit – meh
The popular culture and social networking revolution bit – underwhelmed
Mr Bean – ruined one of my favourite sport oriented tunes. Never found a way to think of him as funny.
Choice of music generally – own much artic monkeys music but struggling to see the relevance of song choice at that point, in this context. And Hey Jude, no matter what you thought of Macca’s performance – why that song, why were the lyrics relevant? The only reason I can think of is that most people know it around the world and its easy to sing along to.

Can’t please all of the people all of the time etc etc but the good still outweighed the mediocre for me by some margin. There must have been lots of folk around the world turning their tellies off after that saying WTF,those British are crazy – and that’s good too!

the only thing good about the mccartny slot was that it emptied the stadium fast.

Curate’s egg for me: great start, humour/parody, Branagh, the rings. Then seemed to lose its way, dogged by inclusivity and pandering to PC. The longest music? A funeral hymn. The longest section, the NHS? Ali’s cameo (my US friend didn’t even understand that) and my guards friend fumed at the soldiers inability to march! Musical choice bizarre and we take our greatest conductor and sideline him in the name of comedy and in preference to Artic Monkeys and the sex pistols. But the flame saved the ending – inspired design there.

But lasting impression was slightly odd, especially the German salute. What was that about?

I’m still seething at that Macca clown, ruined what was a really good night

Dizzy Rascal – Bonkers – being played at the Olympics in front of the Queen = Highlight of my day.

Indeed! 🙂

Given the massive 70s rock stage show feel to the night, I will never understand why it wasn’t pink floyd. Everything else was awesome though…

As a few have said, thought the show was overall amazing, however, why Mccartney at the end, really disappointed with that, he’s been rubbish since the beatles split but other than that well done Danny Boyle, did Britain proud last night

I liked it that Team GB all wore Tim Westwood fancy dress outfits. Yo DOG.

woke up this morning proud to be British. 😀

Who was the girl who lost her phone in the music bit? Be still my fluttering heart 😛 chuffing gorgeous.

Really enjoyed the first third or so, the forging of the rings was impressive and the whole thing looked fantastic.

Wasn’t impressed by the Rowan Atkinson bit at all and the ‘music through the decades’ bit didn’t need that phone-loss sequence

McCartney bit was rubbish, lazy and turned into a football chant-along, in a toss up between his performance and his daughters golden tracksuits I’m going out on a limb and suggest she had the better night.

Cauldron was fantastic, really really good.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (being at work…) I only saw up to the bit with the rings being forged. What I saw was fab, and quite splendid.

It’s on the PVR at home, so I hope the rest will be just as brill.

+1 Mr Boyle.