Olympics: Moving pictures

The still images from tonight's Olympics opening ceremony say it all. But it was worth watching on TV, too. Click through for my review, to appear (with some gorgeous stills) in Saturday's Globe:

There's something to be said for experience. Famed Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, who designed and directed the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, clearly knows how to make use of a $300 million budget – and has a filmmaker's sense of what looks good on a big screen. This was a ceremony made for high definition and massive home theaters – a spectacle of tricks so grand, and details so small, that it would have been a shame to watch them in streaming video on a laptop.

In other words, NBC's 12-hours-later broadcast was decidedly worth the wait, if only for the aerial views of the Bird's Nest stadium, lit up like a giant Lite Brite. A big screen was the only way to get the full effect of 2008 drummers lit by strobe lights, 2008 dancers in glowing green suits, 2008 men in white doing Tai Chi.

A big screen gave a sense of the technology behind the show, from the massive LED screen in the center of the field to the scrim atop the stadium, filled with projections of planets, birds, and ocean waves. Size magnified the human contributions, too – as when skaters circumnavigated a golden sphere, or when a set of rectangles, representing Chinese movable type, undulated gracefully before the mechanism was revealed: a person beneath each one. Or when the final torchbearer, former Olympic gymnast Li Ning, ran across the stadium suspended in mid-air to finally light the cauldron.

As it all spun by, anchors Matt Lauer and Bob Costas could do little more than gush. "When it comes to opening ceremonies, retire the trophy," Costas said near the end.

Costas always waxes a bit poetic during events like these, and last night was no exception; he praised the show's "massive scope, minute precision" and talked about the fear of "craniums colliding at high speed."

Lauer was more prosaic, but got into the spirit, too, declaring one scene "both awe-inspiring and perhaps a little intimidating." It makes you wonder how he’ll ever go back to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Still, their commentary was sparse and restrained enough, and aided by NBC's China analyst, Joshua Cooper Ramo, who brought insight into Chinese philosophy and history. Beyond the context, there wasn't much need for embellishment during Yimou’s show, and NBC seemed, mostly, to understand. The editing was light-handed, the cutaways few, save the occasional glimpse of President Bush peering through binoculars, looking at his watch, and at one point, leaning forward to share some observation – it looked friendly --with Vladimir Putin.

After such an impressive start, the parade of athletes couldn't help but look anticlimactic, though Costas and Lauer did their best to keep the patter lively. Some questions went unanswered: What were bagpipes doing here? Some things went unsaid, such as the way the U.S. athletes, in outfits designed by Ralph Lauren, looked as if they'd just blown in from a croquet match on Nantucket. (The closest Costas came was asking, "Is that a beret?")

And once in awhile, punch-drunk from thrill and pressure, the hosts struggled a bit to contain themselves.

"What do you think of these outfits?" Lauer said, trying hard, as a group of Hungarian women
paraded by in a headache-inducing red and white print.

"Well," Costas replied, trying even harder, "it's all a matter of taste."