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[SpV]

As mentioned, if you can trick the internet as to where you are located, iplayer has the OC.

Otherwise it's available on Thepiratebay.

As a Londoner I'm very proud of the spectacle my city is putting on and the legacy of the Olympics will last forever, turning a run down east London waste land into what is not a great area.

Just a shame the Olympic stadium will be wasted on a second rate football team, mainly supported by knuckle dragging morons

[Fozzwaldus]

I thought it was brilliant and I got a bit tearful and patriotic watching it

It really did show why Britain is special, it was funny and made some important statements like NHS is one of the best things about Britain and also that we are a country where people are respected just because they are people!

Every ceremony for these things is about 'We are an amazing country' but this one was a step up and was actually about people not just nations.

Here here, I mean, Beijing was obviously awesome (in the original sense of the word), but more in a geopolitical sense of the word. It marked China's arrival and the relative decline of the west in 2008.
It didn't make me laugh however, and seemed to carry a certain sense of menace at times. It was by the party for the party, as are most things the party does.
The big difference for me was the torch race through China (notwithstanding the protests abroad) where the runner were all party official, and locals were told to stay indoors with the curtains drawn.
Ironic that something that drains the fun out of everything should be called 'the party'. 

[Fozzwaldus]

it seems like Mr Eye Way Way agrees with me

"Brilliant. It was very, very well done. This was about Great Britain; it didn't pretend it was trying to have global appeal. Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn't need a monumental Olympics. But for China that was the only imaginable kind of international event. Beijing's Olympics were very grand - they were trying to throw a party for the world, but the hosts didn't enjoy it. The government didn't care about people's feelings because it was trying to create an image."

[The Local Dialect]

Fozz, menacing is a great way to describe the Beijing opening ceremonies. I honestly never thought about it that way before, because at the time everyone was all rah rah go China and I was in Beijing at the time so it was easy to get swept up in the hype, but actually the BJ opening ceremonies definitely had this implied threat of Chinese dominance. The whole "China has arrived" cultural meme was at its highpoint and we were all meant to believe that if China could put on a The Best Opening Ceremony Ever then they could basically kick our asses at pretty much everything.

The only one thing I find irritating about the London games so far is the overuse of that magenta color. I've been watching gymnastics and the entire stadium is this bright pinkish-purple awfulness. The camera-people and photographers must be having absolute fits trying to white balance that thing. I heard this color scheme (sports were assigned colors like magenta, aqua, orange, etc -- very bright) was chosen because they wanted the games to appeal to the next generation. Because, you know, kids these days and their hipster colors. Or something.

[MK]

South Park did a rather silly (and potentially offensive if you don't know South Park) about the Beijing opening ceremony scaring the hell out of Cartman.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s12e08-the-china-probrem

[George]

I was a bit surprised that the Stones didn't get a guernsey, but the Sex Pistols did! Enjoyed most of it, but missed the opening bit about the bucolic village life. An Australian was batting for England in the cricket match. Accidental irony! Rowan Atkinson was his usual funny self, and the James Bond bit was excellent!!

[fullricebowl]

I really enjoyed the opening ceremony too. The whole industrial revolution scene was really impressive. My husband and I had just watched parts of the Beijing opening ceremony a few days earlier for contrast and we found the London version much more enjoyable. Great music, a lot less serious. I thought the country signs they used at the lead of each country as they came into the stadium was pretty clever too. Where the Beijing ceremony seemed to be showing a united front of power, amazing history, glorious civilization, I felt like London really put on a show that was somehow more realistic of what should representative of the UK. Agreed with the "self confidence" comment, they didn't need to define the country based on how mind-blowing their opening ceremony was.

These games are so addicting.. definitely going to be affecting the amount of sleep I get for the next few weeks..

Also.. was anyone else a little surprised that even the BBC announcers couldn't say anything about "Chinese Taipei" other than it was originally called Formosa?

[fox]

I was a bit surprised that the Stones didn't get a guernsey, but the Sex Pistols did! Enjoyed most of it, but missed the opening bit about the bucolic village life. An Australian was batting for England in the cricket match. Accidental irony! Rowan Atkinson was his usual funny self, and the James Bond bit was excellent!!

The Stones did get a look in. albeit non visual.  They were with medley with Queen and i think Mud,  But agreed, they are part of the iconic British image for sure.

[fullricebowl]

I enjoyed James Fallows's comparison of the two ceremonies:

The main theme would be, four years ago we saw a government intent on showing that it had arrived, by demonstration every sort of "hard" capability: power, precision, magnificence, mastery, control. This year we saw a system comfortable enough with itself to put on a show that was jokey, irreverent, and sometimes simply chaotic and weird. (Hospital beds lighting up to spell "NHS"?? Mary Poppins vs. Voldemort??) Other illustrations of the difference:
-the English schoolboy who sang "Jerusalem," complete with allusion to "dark Satanic mills," as compared with the young Chinese girl whose opening-ceremony song was lip-synched. The girl on camera was thought to be cuter, whereas the song we actually heard was from a girl with a better voice but who was deemed less adorable.

-the post-torch-lighting fireworks going off all over town, which were CGI'd into the telecast of the Beijing opening ceremony, versus apparently real ones in London. We had our doubts about those in Beijing even before the CGI news came out. We were living in a part of Beijing some of the fireworks would have been going off, but we saw nothing out our apartment window even as the TV screen was erupting in festive lights.

-the ethnic variety of modern London was built into the cast of Danny Boyle's opening ceremonies. In Beijing, the 56 different ethnic groups officially recognized as part of the Chinese human mosaic were each represented by a young person in ethnic costume at the opening ceremony -- but most of the people playing those roles were revealed later to be part of the >90% dominant Han ethnic group. (The U.S. counterpart would be the Swedish-American actor Warner Oland cast in movies as Charlie Chan.)

There is a bigger theme here, which returns to the main question about China I have been trying to figure out over the years. That is when -- or whether -- the people in charge of China's system will show the confidence that allows them to be something other than control freaks whose paranoia is at odds which much of the ingenuity, humor, and creativity that characterizes much of the Chinese population, and whose hyper-earnest "We are strong, look on us and tremble" presentation of national greatness to their own people and the world actually conveys the opposite message. When we can see a Chinese opening ceremony with their counterpart of Mr. Bean sitting at the organ or the head of state acting in a joke video (as Queen Elizabeth did with Daniel Craig), we'll know that the country has arrived.

http://www.theatlantic.com/james-fallows/

So where can we watch them online? cntv.cn is supposed to have them, but it won't work with my mac.

Got to download it, I also got mine via torrentz.eu

[Some guy]

Did you try youku ? or youtube if you are able to access it?

[AMonk]

Can you get this site ?

http://www.time4tv.net/2011/06/bbc-one.html

[ericthered]

I watched the entire thing on Tudou....good ceremony, I thought.

[The Local Dialect]

My husband (along with the Chinese internet) is all up in arms about the "mistakes" that the London Olympics are making. Deliberately targetting China, naturally. First, there was the whole flag fiasco, where there was a tie and they hung a Korean flag and Chinese flag vertically, instead of horizontally, with the Chinese flag on the bottom (totally intentional, it is the Opium Wars all over again y'all), now this picture has surfaced where somewhere they've got "Chinese" translated as 日本语. There have been a few other things too.

We actually got into an argument about this just now because I think the Chinese media is picking on the London Olympics because they don't want Beijing to be outshone or forgotten. I am sure that if we nitpicked every single Olympics there are a lot of mistakes that could have been made, am I right? Or are the organizers actually incompetant China-haters?

[ericthered]

I do believe those are mistakes...but you could argue from now til Kingdome Come and never, ever be able to convince the Chinese of this.

[Fozzwaldus]

My husband (along with the Chinese internet) is all up in arms about the "mistakes" that the London Olympics are making. Deliberately targetting China, naturally. First, there was the whole flag fiasco, where there was a tie and they hung a Korean flag and Chinese flag vertically, instead of horizontally, with the Chinese flag on the bottom (totally intentional, it is the Opium Wars all over again y'all), now this picture has surfaced where somewhere they've got "Chinese" translated as 日本语. There have been a few other things too.

We actually got into an argument about this just now because I think the Chinese media is picking on the London Olympics because they don't want Beijing to be outshone or forgotten. I am sure that if we nitpicked every single Olympics there are a lot of mistakes that could have been made, am I right? Or are the organizers actually incompetant China-haters?

yeah, I'd imagine there are probably a few more mistakes in London, just because nobody's going to be as meticulous as BJ to the point of sucking all the fun out the proceedings.

I think the most senstive issue is raging over Ye Shiwen, the 16 year old female swimmer who is winning golds left right and centre, and came in faster than Michael Lochte - the current fastest MAN in the pool... which is... incredible (in all senses of the world)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/31/ye-shiwen-200m-medley-gold

now, Chinese commentators are saying that there wouldn't be as much suspiscion about a Western athelete, and they're probably right, but Chinese swimming does have a LONG histroy of doping, even if there have been huge efforts to clean it up in recent years.

I saw an interview with the former Chinese team doctor last night who said 'A woman can never be faster than a man. If China has produced a woman that is faster than the fastest man then either she's been doped, or, China has produced through cutting-edge training a superhuman, in which case they should be awarded the nobel prize.'

Some of the commentaries have been somewhat mean-spirited however, and if I was the girl or the girl's family I'd be upset - innocent until proven guilty and all that. I'm not suprised that netizens would be up in arms about this.

That being said. My head tells me she's guilty.