Wednesday 13 June 2012

Down on Jollity Farm

So now we know what the Olympics opening ceremony will look like... Dear God! You lob £27 million at a 'gritty' Oscar-winning film director, and he comes back with this achingly twee vision of a 'green and pleasant land' that never was, an exercise in chocolate-box 'heritage' kitsch (with a couple of 'moshpits' thrown in). And I hope he knows what he's doing with all those live animals - I suspect there might be a stampede or two as the tumult and the shouting get under way (the sheep might even drop dead, which wouldn't look good). According to said gritty director - Jim Bowen lookalike Danny Boyle - 'Our nation 200 years ago was a meadow'. There's a statement that neatly embodies the deep ignorance of the past (among other things) that characterises today's Britain. But who would have thought that Boyle was capable of the dewy-eyed sentimentality on display here? It just goes to show: scratch a gritty realist and you'll likely find a soggy sentimentalist. How very different it all was when London last staged the Games...

7 comments:

  1. Hmm..doesn't look like £27m buys much, does it? Never mind the almost £10 billion the whole shooting match will ring up. Your link to '48 puts it neatly on a bumper-sticker Nige. No special venues built, and no Olympic Toytown - athletes stayed in the homes of the folk hosting the games. Would it have been impossible to take even a couple of pages out of this book, and scale it down, instead of up?

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  2. Well quite, and a chunk of that £27 million came direct from the taxpayer's pocket when the project went over-budget (I don't remember being asked). On the other hand, they have got a huge specially cast bell from the Whitechapel foundry - that should be something...

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  3. "Achingly twee"! As a writer, I have to admire that pithy phrase. Perhaps somebody can put up an Olympics banner so adorned.

    Now I have to go try to recover from having seen the ending of Ashes to Ashes last night. My brain may never be the same....kudos to English TV.

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  4. I'd forgive it everything if they found a leading role for Robin Page.

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  5. Ah Robin Page - surely one for Dabbler Heroes?...

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  6. I don't think I'm quite equal to that particular challenge, Gaw...

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