- Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" is played by something called "the choir from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs."!
- Somehow songs by Queen and t.A.T.u got by the censor! and plenty of Tchaikovsky (who was known to be gay) - I guess you can overlook lots of things if you need to; let's hope it continues.
- As expected plenty of classical music from the Russians, but one of the greatest classical musicians is very quiet - Chinese violinist Vanessa-Mae is representing Thailand (she has duel citizenship) in the alpine events.
- The stadium took a while to populate, and was not completely full - a first for an Opening Ceremony?
- I realise it's a little different when a big city is host, but similar to Atlanta Summer Games there was no reference to the host city.
- Yesterday's team figure skating was notable for its empty seats, even with marquee Russian athletes competing.
- Inevitably there is an historical element to each opening ceremony, and so whoever scripted this would have some challenges - there are certainly some messy bits of Russian/Soviet history! This one went from the Revolution straight to mid 1900s reconstruction, neatly avoiding the need to mention Uncle Joe - neither was there much mention of the gulags, prison camps or the Siberian salt mines, but to be fair LA didn't make much mention of the abuse of Native Americans in 1984!
- Don't tell the Mayor of Sochi about this (he was quoted as saying there is no "gay activity" in the city,
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/no-gays-in-sochi--huh--tell-that-to-the-people-in-sochi-s-club-mayak-001109107.html
- unfortunately it seems there is a downside to nearly everything!
http://www.recorder.ca/2014/02/07/russian-who-lit-olympic-cauldron-tweeted-racist-obama-photo
- Somehow songs by Queen and t.A.T.u got by the censor! and plenty of Tchaikovsky (who was known to be gay) - I guess you can overlook lots of things if you need to; let's hope it continues.
- As expected plenty of classical music from the Russians, but one of the greatest classical musicians is very quiet - Chinese violinist Vanessa-Mae is representing Thailand (she has duel citizenship) in the alpine events.
- The stadium took a while to populate, and was not completely full - a first for an Opening Ceremony?
- I realise it's a little different when a big city is host, but similar to Atlanta Summer Games there was no reference to the host city.
- Yesterday's team figure skating was notable for its empty seats, even with marquee Russian athletes competing.
- Inevitably there is an historical element to each opening ceremony, and so whoever scripted this would have some challenges - there are certainly some messy bits of Russian/Soviet history! This one went from the Revolution straight to mid 1900s reconstruction, neatly avoiding the need to mention Uncle Joe - neither was there much mention of the gulags, prison camps or the Siberian salt mines, but to be fair LA didn't make much mention of the abuse of Native Americans in 1984!
- Don't tell the Mayor of Sochi about this (he was quoted as saying there is no "gay activity" in the city,
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/no-gays-in-sochi--huh--tell-that-to-the-people-in-sochi-s-club-mayak-001109107.html
- unfortunately it seems there is a downside to nearly everything!
http://www.recorder.ca/2014/02/07/russian-who-lit-olympic-cauldron-tweeted-racist-obama-photo
The choir singing Get Lucky is hilarious. Did you see some of those stodgy policemen up there?
ReplyDeleteI think the really sad thing is they don't realise how stupid they looked, and how somewhat ironic their choice of music was
ReplyDelete