2024 Summer Olympics Paris

[ap215]

Gotta show support for Old Glory for the Summer Olympics in Paris let's go

[ZoWie]

I don't think I can watch any more of the opening ceremonies. It's the worst show I've ever seen, and that includes my own dailies, even the ones in the undergrad classes of movie school. No coherence, no continuity, and their boat parade is taking place in a torrential downpour. The NBC TV announcers are brain damaged. The music and dance numbers are trying way too hard. The shot setups make the world's most beautiful city look ugly and stupid. Some guy with a fake looking torch is running around Paris landmarks, completely out of continuity with anything, and he looks pre-recorded to me. You can barely see the athletes, and they're what the whole thing is supposed to be about.

Now they've started having commercials.

OMG, there's two more hours of this nonsense to go. Right now the highlight is the rain.

[ZoWie]

Turned it back on. The USA part had coherence, only because they had people on the boat talking to all the athletes, but it still looked all a bit silly, out in the rain at 10 PM, with sudden abrupt disruptive cutaways to just about the worst fashion show ever staged.

And of course that was when the commercials got longer, and loooonnnnggger, and loooooooonnnnnnnnnggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrr.

Who's gonna light the torch? I hope not that clown with the opaque mask in the French Revolution getup with his torch that looks like a new kind of sex toy.

Oh well, after this mishmosh, anything LA does will look good. If they can make Paris look like the Podunk County Fair, we can certainly make the sickest city in the US look like the heart of screenland. Maybe I'll volunteer to take part (again) if I'm not too old. It was a blast last time.

Still I'd love to get my hands on a recording of NBC's sodden 4-hour show. It looks and feels like a daily screening. I think I could cut it into a snappy 45 minutes, and lose practically nothing.

[ap215]

I hear ya Z there were some things of the Opening Ceremony that didn't look right or out of place but much different but NBC/Comcast cares about one thing $$$$$$ their friendly corporate advertisers i wonder if this will be the same production The Summer Olympics will be in your neck of the woods L.A. in 2028.

[ZoWie]

The 1984 LA Games had about 1/10 of the funding, if that. It was another age, the US was out of money having spent it all in Vietnam for nothing, the Olympics were somewhat in disrepute and pretty much broke, and LA got the gig by promising to deliver a good show on a low budget. We weren't the exploitation film capital of the world (at that time) for nothing. We put on a great show, for a very small fraction of what this bloated mess in France is going to end up costing.

Since LA has a lot of sports facilities they'll dress them up and make them telegenic. That will save money. The main problem will likely be What To Do With The Homeless. I mean, seriously. There really are somewhere between 45 and 50 thousand of them. They're everywhere. They camp on sidewalks, under freeways, and just anywhere else. They take over parks. They take over whole streets. They break into empty houses with for sale signs.

Putin had the same problem with his winter games, and he simply had them all rounded up and slapped into camps until the event was over. America doesn't do that. Even if we could, the money would be better spent on solving the problem.

[Ted]

The Olympics is great.

Athletes competing for their country against the best from around the world.

Most events we know well and others that are only prominent every fourth year.

Compelling personal stories from every walk of life.

I will follow it with great interest until the closing ceremonies.

[ZoWie]

I like the Olympics. Typically it's the TV coverage that sucks. If you ever get a chance to go to an Olympic event, do it. Ticket prices are through the roof, but it's worth it. It's especially good for sports that look boring on TV, because this is world competition and the athletes go all out. You would be amazed how physical some of these tame looking games can get when it's all on the line. Besides, they're cheaper.

[Number6]

Well, these had to be embarrassing for the Olympic organizers.

The Olympic Flag was accidentally flown upside down at the opening ceremony.

https://www.si.com/olympics/olympic-fla ... g-ceremony

South Korea athletes introduced as being from North Korea.

https://apnews.com/article/olympics-202 ... 0f329598c3

[ZoWie]

I think I figured out what was wrong with the opening ceremonies. I know, they are always corny, but that's the whole point. It's about aspiration, and all that. For an hour or so, we're supposed to think about what could be, instead of the mess we live in the rest of the time. That was missing this year. It was all about filling a little screen with typically disconnected television.

Now, there's something to be said for opening up the ceremony with the boat parade in the Seine, because it's seen by someone in the city besides whatever international upper class types could afford $1500 tickets to watch in the stadium stands. However, their execution and the sudden cutting around between very constricted and stagey camera setups in places miles apart meant that a dramatic 1-hour event turned into an amorphous 4-hour event.

Worse, the TV show was cutty, disconnected, and often confusing. We're in Ile de la Cite. We're on Rue de Rivoli. We're at the Eiffel Tower. No, now we're back at the Louvre. Now we're on some rooftop somewhere watching some clown with a French Revolution getup waving around a fake looking torch. No, now we're watching some has-been singer waving a different fake looking torch around. No, now we're watching a drag show. No, now we're watching some old guy playing a piano in the rain. No, now we're watching the world's worst fashion show. Where are we? Does it matter any more in the Age of Internet?

I thought the Olympics were about connection, not disconnection. Weird.

They never did show the dramatic moment that's supposed to climax the ceremony, when some surprise famous athlete runs into the stadium and lights the Olympic flame above the assembled athletes of the world. Nothing happened in the stadium, except sitting and watching the Eiffel Tower light up. Neat light show, but once again disconnected from what's supposed to be a single continuity leading to a boffo ending.

Usually the torch is dramatically run through the city, with one famous athlete passing off to another, then into the darkened stadium with all the athletes assembled on the field and 90,000 rich people lighting whatever was taped under their seats in the stands. The music climaxes, and Fiat Lux, there's the fire that will light the world.

Not this year. Some French athletes that I never heard of passed around another one of those sex-toy fake looking torches in a shot that was essentially black limbo, then suddenly they were at the fountain in the Tuilleries. Gotta admit the balloon was a great idea, since the French invented that kind of aircraft, but why not at or near the small stadium by the Eiffel Tower that could have served as a focus? They could have done it safely in the river. It goes right by there.

You lost the idea that an event was happening, as opposed to just another overlong telecast.

[ap215]

There is one feature on TV i do like that i've watched often now Picture In Picture not only do you get to see the usual sponsors commercials after an event etc on one side but now you get to see what's happening in real time behind the scenes on the other side on TV, Tech etc & you won't miss anything cool feature.

[ZoWie]

That would be easy to do at the Olympics. Every event is covered by TV crews, and it all goes to an International Broadcast Center where all the world's various networks buy into whatever they think is most interesting to their viewers. One thing I learned is that putting on an Olympics is a lot like putting on a war, where whole cities get involved and there's logistical and support stuff happening all over that no one knows about. Afterwards the host city gets to use all the fiber networks, etc, that get funded by all kinds of people before the Games.