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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/14/2010 in all areas

  1. So...a month has passed and I will now confess: I carried the torch as well. Through the streets of downtown Vancouver. Was such an incredible experience. But I still haven't found a decent place to keep my torch. Any suggestions?
    2 points
  2. Well, Sky Sport screened the ceremony live here in New Zealand, which was quite impressive, so good work to them. Ummm, a little bit disappointed, but I guess good in the context of the budget and that these were the Paralympics. Not surprisingly, a downer after the amazing Beijing ceremonies. Not from just a size point though, I can't help but feel they were just falling into that corny mould of *how inspiring, overcoming the ods etc etc*. Yes, we get that. But these are high performance athletes with the mindset of any other Olympic athlete, I can't help but think that these guys would be cringing at the cheese put before them. I don't see why they can't give them just a normal artistically fun opening ceremony, keeping in mind budget restraints of course. There were moments of that in this ceremony, which worked well, but overall was just a tad kitch and abit too wordy too, definetely not one of the multi-national non English speaking nations. As for the music, there were a few nice parts, but had that really bad casio keyboard calgary 88 sounding quality to alot of it. A few times I could see that they had some good ideas, but maybe budget got in the way, and that particular idea turned into various levels of nothingness. They set it up so well during the story blanket part, with that thing covering the floor and then the storytelling scene rising up on the main stage. But instead of doing something cool with that, they just propelled Sumi into the air, a mascot. I just wouldve liked them take a different thematic approach instead of doing the Paralympic standard. Something like the Plane tree in Athens. In saying all this, for a 5m production for the Paralympics, it was decent.
    2 points
  3. Actually there's not very much to add to Mattygs' very good review. I found it quite appalling as well how corny the ceremony was. Having a low budget shouldn't mean that there's a kitschy and uninnovative concept. And yes, the ceremony was much too wordy. The absolute lowpoint was Aimee Mullins' and Chantal Petitclerc's lengthy lecture about the origins of the Paralympic Games. Firstly, because these are things which every interested viewer could easily look up on the internet (or has probably already been told told by his TV commentators at that point), and secondly: A Paralympic (or Olympic) opening ceremony is a very inappropriate setting for a university lecture. In this ceremony, I only had one "Wow" moment -- namely when Michaelle Jean was led into the stadium by those children holding her hand, and when she was included as a performer. But from that point, the ceremony went straightly downhill for me. Maybe also because our German TV commentators were very talkative during most parts of the ceremony, which created (together with the overall wordiness of the ceremony) the very annoying situation that almost everytime someone was talking or you couldn't even really hear what was said by the announcers or how the music sounded. Can't one simply shut up from time to time and let the segments speak for themselves? And that applies to both our German commentators and to the announcers and some of the performers at the opening ceremony. That "Oh, we must explain that in every explicit detail" (for example, having a sign language translator for the Canadian anthem -- who was, interestingly enough, never shown in a close-up in the international broadcast) almost came across like saying, "Oh, you viewers out there must be really mentally disabled". Furthermore, the lighting of the cauldron was very underwhelming. The idea of having a ring of torch bearers was actually not bad, but it was poorly executed and rather anti-climatic (especially since those torch bearers weren't included in the actual lighting of the cauldron). The lonesome centre part of the original indoor cauldron looked poor. And the camera work was once more terrible (like during the extinguishing of the outdoor cauldron at the Olympic closing ceremony) -- the final torchbearer tipped his torch to the base of the cauldron, and when they cut to the whole cauldron, the flame was already fully ablaze. The lighting "mechanism" was also ludicrous. They didn't even try to pretend as if the flame travelled from the base of the cauldron to the top. That boy simply tipped his torch shortly to the base, and suddenly the cauldron was lit. Overall, I was left with the impression that the organisers thought, "Well, these are only the Paralympics -- so give them a tiny budget and with that little money, create a very uninspiring, stale and sometimes even tacky opening ceremony". That said, I almost don't want to know what the closing ceremony will look like.
    1 point
  4. Not sure what you mean...the Singapore YOGs are only a few months away so of course they will be pushing things out before London and Sochi..
    1 point
  5. And we're stuck with the stiff, know-it-all Brits for the next 27 months or so??
    1 point
  6. Don't be IDIOTIC. The Games should be combined. No reason at all NOT to have them combined...except host cities who are willing to have thmselves go bankrupt.
    -1 points
  7. well, I will also confess that I carried a "fake" 1984 torch in Santa Monica. It was actually a "toilet plunger" with some tin foil! I was quickly hustled out of the Official Area run!! Of course, they didn't know what hit them!!
    -1 points
  8. Oh yeah, an aerostat hovering over the stadium. Pretty enticing for terrorists. BLACK SUNDAY anyone??
    -2 points
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