U.K. and Ireland - London 2012 - Let The Games Begin

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7250/7652814898_1fe3b19582.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianvisits/7652814898/)

All credit to IanVisits (http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/). Well, for the photo at least - not for the whole games!

I'm seeing the Olympic stadium live on French TV now and it all looks great. Most of the seats are already filled.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7272/7657923290_b5733748a6_z.jpg

And here we go!! :D

Blimey, excellent, I have been knocked down by a feather.

Needless to say, our marvelous TV network (NBC) will be delaying this until 7:30pm California time tonight. Jerks!

I thought the whole thing was really lame. Much worse than I expected. And far too long! Mr Bean was the best bit!

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Off the scale excellent.

I'm very proud to be British.

The opening ceremony has been very well received by the TV commentators here in Argentina....."muy impresionante". ^

The French presenters were also impressed. I doubt Paris would have done as good a job. Well done Danny Boyle. Best opening ceremony ever.

The bar has been set very high for Rio, but I think the Cariocas have it in them to meet or exceed what we just watched. ;)

I thought the whole thing was really lame. Much worse than I expected. And far too long! Mr Bean was the best bit!

I respect that it was a homage to elements of British history, but do agree in many ways. The Queen's entrance and Mr. Bean were my favourites.

Wow, I thought that was truly outstanding. Clever, quirky and fun. Even the normally execrable Mr Bean proved amusing. Kudos to Danny Boyle and the army of volunteers (not to mention the army volunteers).

(Oh, and I hope that nice Mr Cameron was watching how much the NHS is loved...)

I thought it was great - I thought the randomness was excellent (very British) and I thought it was very well done. The forging of the rings was excellent, the Queen/007 was great (fat corgi stole the show). Even the Mr Bean bit was actually funny.

The cauldron was very well done - great idea.

But why, at the end, did they keep cutting from the fireworks to show video clips? :mad:

(Oh, and I hope that nice Mr Cameron was watching how much the NHS is loved...)
I'm sure he loved this.

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"Olympic opening ceremonies make the most sense when staged by totalitarian states wishing to announce their imminent global primacy." :D
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/28/olympic-games-opening-ceremony-british

there's an official site with the story behind the Ceremony, music credits, and film and TV clearances at http://olympicopeningceremony.tumblr.com/

Turns out the Childcatcher wasn't Noel Fielding after all :)

Very impressed with last night's opening ceremony. Bejing was certainly a hard act to follow, but Danny Boyle managed to get the right blend of Great Britain into the event itself.

Great to see the star turn from the Queen herself, nice addition of that and Daniel Craig, and Rowan Atkinson's guest appearance also.

So here we are. It's been pretty much impossible to get affordable tickets to any of the gymnastics sessions, and now they're on TV and the impression is that at least 1/3 of the auditorium is empty :td:

It may be less empty than this but there's no denying there are a awful lot of empty seats.

So here we are. It's been pretty much impossible to get affordable tickets to any of the gymnastics sessions, and now they're on TV and the impression is that at least 1/3 of the auditorium is empty :td:

It may be less empty than this but there's no denying there are a awful lot of empty seats.

Exactly my issue with football. Empty seats but they haven't allocated anymore cheap tickets. Poor form.

I'm watching the eventing dressage - apparently a sell out but 1/3 of the seats look empty.

I think some of the blocks of seats might be unreserved but held for the press and officials and so are empty as when they turn up they get in to these seats on a first-come first-served basis. However, the seats have to be kept for them; the organisers agree the number.

(This is based on my experience of ticketing the World Figure Skating Championships in the 1990's)

London 2012: Olympic empty seats prompt investigation by Locog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/28/london-2012-olympic-empty-seats?CMP=twt_gu)

Someone needs to punch Coe firmly in the face. The ticketing has been a fiasco for us in the UK from the get-go. He is a smug little tosser and I blame him totally.