Fireworks And Wireworks

I had a blast watching the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics last night. Traffic was bad, and I thought I would miss the show, but as luck would have it, I ended up in a medium-sized shopping mall that had projection screens showing the opening ceremony telecast. It was a nice crowd too, who even stood up during the Chinese national anthem!

It was an amazing show, made more by the fact that a friend this morning told me she wasn't impressed with it because it was "not big enough." I wonder, what could be bigger than THAT?!

There were quite a few "How did they do that?"moments, and it was a big opportunity to showcase all sorts of Chinese inventions, including, of course, fireworks. Then it hit me, that the Chinese also gave the world wire-fu, without which there wouldn't have been The Matrix! And there was no shortage of wirework displays last night.

And Zhang Yimou, who directed the whole show, certainly has had experience with wire-fu.

I bet Spielberg is banging his head against the wall of his house now, thinking: "Damn it! I thought the show would fall apart without me! Damn damn damn!" Or maybe he didn't even watch the show, which was a delayed telecast in the US and angered many Olympics fans who had to wait 12 hours for it.

Naturally, the protests and other "activism" has restarted, and this guy has expectedly posted another stupid blog entry on the eve of the opening ceremony. The guy is Grady Hendrix, and the blog is "Variety's Asian film blog," but you have to wonder what entries like this latest one and previous China-bashing ones have to do with "Asian films."

All these protests are missing the one pertinent point about the whole affair - that this is an inspiring moment where a nation troubled by natural disasters and other problems bounces back unfazed and against incredible odds to put on a formidable show, not just for the world, but also as a reaffirmation to themselves.



Here's what I wrote about the other Kaiju "smackdowns" of China
And here's Spielberg trying to be a hero