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| Golden moment: Oscar winner Danny Boyle is the artistic director for the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony |
Spyns clients that are coming on our tours are very excited about the opening ceremony. With each Olympics the host country trying to out-do the pervious host, in this case London wants to beat the magnificent show of color and culture Beijing put on in 2008. Created by Oscar winner Danny Boyle (Slumdog millionaire) the Opening Ceremony starts at 17:30 on July 27, 2012. If you would like to come along with Spyns on a luxuary tour that you will never forget, email me at henry@london-olympiad.com for details of our 4,5,7,and 10 day tour packages.
It’s getting closer all right, the anticipation is ratcheting up daily. This week, the velodrome in the Olympic Park was unveiled to the press.
Ahead of time, under budget, neatly undermining all those cynical instincts we reached for when anticipating how the country would humiliate itself in the preparation for hosting Olympic Games, the scale and beauty of the place left those who attended catching their breath.
The 250-metre piste consists of 54km of Siberian pine shipped in from Archangel, shaped at a German sawmill and affixed into position by 360,000 nails hammered by a team of a dozen carpenters working non-stop: just to repeat the details of its construction is to swoon. No wonder those who will actually ride there are counting down the days.
Yet, oddly, the piece of news this week which most whet the appetite about what lies ahead came not from Stratford but from a place not readily associated with sport.
The new stage version of Frankenstein opened at the National Theatre to ecstatic reviews. It features an intriguing casting trick: one night Benedict Cumberbatch plays Frankenstein while Jonny Lee Miller tackles the good doctor’s monstrous creation; the next they swap parts.
What a brilliant idea, the critics all agreed. And what a show it is. One we have come to expect of the director Danny Boyle.
With one of his movies, 127 Hours – the follow-up to the award-laden Slumdog Millionaire – in the running for Best Picture at Sunday night’s Oscars, Boyle is absolutely at the peak of his powers. Right now, he can do no wrong.
And the good news is, it is he to whom the organisers of London 2012 have entrusted the single most significant role of the whole caboodle: he is to direct the opening ceremony.
Never mind Mark Cavendish, riding off in the road race, the first event of the London programme. Never mind Jessica Ennis, hoping to sparkle as much on the track as she does on the cat walk.
Never mind Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton, expected to dominate the new velodrome as they did the one in Beijing. There is no doubt it is Boyle who is under the most pressure to deliver a result.
So far the director has wisely kept his counsel about his intentions – if he has yet formulated any. And a glance at his output gives little clue as to what we might anticipate.
There is nothing within his movies that qualifies as typically Danny Boyle. Some involve musical set pieces. Others don’t feature a note. Some have vibrant crowd scenes. Others are claustrophobic solo tours de force.
Some are thrillers, some funny, some supernatural, some futuristic: this is a director, it seems, who can turn his hand with equal facility to any genre.
That said, there is plenty in his movies which he would rather not reprise at the ceremony lest it be seen as unhappy comment on the London Games.
The desperate search for a bit of decent weather, perhaps, that was explored in Sunshine. Or the length of time those wishing to apply for tickets are obliged to engage with the official website (127 Hours).
Not to mention, through the gloriously revolting lavatorial set pieces in both Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, the quality of the public facilities.
As he has no doubt discovered in his preliminary discussions with the organisers, Boyle will have neither the budget nor the scale of cast that made the Beijing opening such a jaw-dropping spectacle.
With a cast of 15,000, the first number alone there featured 2008 soldiers hammering away at drums. He knows he will not be able to call on such manpower. Not least because after the latest round of defence cuts they aren’t that number of troops left in Britain.
To reflect austere times, the director will instead have to rely on his own ingenuity. Plus, for the pyrotechnics, a couple of roman candles and a sparkler left over from Bonfire Night.
Working out what he might include, it is probably easier to list what we would rather he ignored. Please let’s not have any chirpy dancing pearly kings. No beefeaters, either, or bowler hats or London bobbies.
After the debacle that was the British contribution to the Beijing closing ceremony, let’s hope Boyle avoids exploding London buses, tone-deaf X Factor winners and superannuated hard rockers.
Plus, it would be good to keep the gymnastic tableaux symbolising hope, tolerance and the grand communion of the human spirit to a minimum.
Indeed, the more you think about it, the more you realise that Boyle would be best sticking to the one area of spectacle at which the country has long excelled.
Build a stage at one end, turn the Olympic Stadium into a mini Glastonbury and feature our finest bands playing their way through their greatest hits. If nothing else, after half an hour of listening to Radiohead, the crowd will be so depressed they will do anything to cheer themselves up.
Well, it’s one way to sell those tickets for the synchronised swimming they haven’t managed to offload on Azerbaijani competition winners.
Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our package tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games, including London Olympics hotels, London 2012 tickets, and summer games VIP access, please visit our websites http://www.london-olympiad.com/ http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720. www.spyns.com.
