The Greatest Show on Earth: The Beijing Olympics
Aug 25th, 2008 by Ashok
The Beijing Olympics, for me, will always stand as the finest Olympics ever staged.
I was blown away by the Opening Ceremony, with the Closing Ceremony a close second.
To me, that Opening Ceremony was the greatest live show ever staged on this planet. I’m not kidding. I can’t imagine anything matching that. I’ve watched the Openings of several Olympics over the decades, and nothing comes close.
If ever there was a doubt about the Chinese being among the most dedicated, the most disciplined, and the most aesthetically enlightened, that ceremony wiped that doubt away. As for me, China has always been a fascination and a source of inspiration, and watching that Opening Ceremony only added to that impression.
It helped that Zhang Zhimou, one of my favourite directors, was the brains behind the unbelievably grand and masterfully coordinated event. I’ve said before that if I had to pick the ideal director for my Ramayana Series (or for my forthcoming Mba, as and when it’s published), I couldn’t think of anyone more suited than Zhang Zhimou.
He shows us the potential of audiovisual communication, on an epic scale.
In my opinion, no other film director in the world comes close to matching his epic sense of grandeur and style, his sense of aesthetic, his sophistication.
Hats off to Zhimou. And to the People’s Republic of China.
Of course the events were great, the games themselves were spectacular, but the host country China proved once and for all that it’s not just the largest country in the world, but one of the greatest.
In the unlikely event you missed that spectacular Opening Ceremony, you should be able to find it online. Forgot those low-rest excerpts on Youtube or other online video-sharing sites. Try the Official Website of the Beijing Olympics here.
Or you can download it via bittorrent here. (Just the first hour or so, before the entrance of the athletes. If you want the athletes too, there are plenty of good torrents out there.)
I urge you to download it, in full HD if you have the bandwidth, and watch it from start to finish. It makes movies like LoTR and other Hollywood VFX extravaganzas look like last-century’s special effects–which, in fact, they are. This is the future of cinematic spectacles. Just as Asia is the future of the world.
