Zhang Yimou's Magic

by Josh Gerstein
Fri, 8 Aug 2008 at 8:32 AM

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A pretty spectacular kickoff to tonight's ceremony. First, 2008 drummers banging on huge drums equipped with strobe lights. And a countdown in lights and fireworks. Then more than 29 "giants' footprints" or oval fireworks set off in sequence from the center of Beijing "striding" towards the stadium. When they arrived, "fairies" suspended hundreds of feet in the air floated down from the ceiling and Olympic Rings which lit up on the stadium floor appeared to peel up and rise into the air. They were on some kind of mesh.

The Chinese also put on a hell of a show. And the director, Zhang Yimou, sure knows how to conjure magic.

Next, a group of Chinese children in regional and minority costumes carried the Chinese flag in and handed it off to the People's Liberation Army honor guard, which, with suitable precision, ran it up the flag pole.

The first sour note of the ceremony: while the Chinese national anthem was playing, the costumed children raised their right arms in something close to a Nazi salute. I'm sure it wasn't intended to look that way, but I'm also sure that if Steven Spielberg remained as a consultant he would have headed it off. He bailed out of the project after getting what he regarded as inadequate answers to concerns he raised about China's sluggish efforts to end in the genocide in Sudan.

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