A Review of The 2004 Olympic Opening Ceremony

As is normally customary in the Olympic games, the Opening Ceremony is suppose to be an artistic and very elegant pageant displayed by the host country, normally with the intent to educate those from other countries whom have come to compete.

And as such, I will review all the artistic aspects that I have witnessed.

The first part of the opening ceremony my Art History teacher would love to death. It depicts the origins of the Greek culture and displays them in what must be the most beautiful example of living paintings I have ever seen! For those of you that do not know what that means, a living painting is when actors and actresses dress up in costumes specifically colored and designed to look like a painting or a statue. This is a common thing you see in theme parks, most noticeably in Walt Disney World's Epcot. However, the display that I saw tonight blows what Epcot has right out of the water. Hell, it even blows some major Broadway shows out of the water! Simply put, each float represented a different art style from the primitive to the Bezintiene to Classical Realism, and each float represented some key part of Greek history that happened during that art period.

Then the most amazing laser/light show closed this act.

In an artistic representation of the future, as well as a symbolic representation that at the very molecular level all humans are the same, a giant hologram of a DNA strain was projected in the center of the stadium. From up all the close-up shots, all you saw were the laser beams and the mist that engulfed the stadium floor. From the wide shots, what I saw blew me away. I saw, for the first time ever, an open-air hologram projection that looked solid and almost tangible. The entire time, I was yelling "How did they do that?! How in the world are they doing that?!"

Needless to say, I expect this technology to be in the aforementioned theme parks within the next 10 years... or at least in the Tokyo Disney Resort in the next five.

Before the lighting of the torch, Bjork sang one of her artsy ballads. I'm not a fan of Bjork's music, for one, but I wasn't aware that her fashion choices is what made her notorious to anyone that is a fan of popular media. (Something about a swan dress at some awards show.) In any event, that preceding knowledge ended up being another mind-blowing moment for me. The main part of her dress is over 30,000 square feet in material, and was designed to cover the entire stadium floor after The Parade of Nations. Why? From the blimp shot, her dress, when unfolded, made an image of the world. This was thanks in part to the placements of the athletes after The Parade of Nations. That is definitely a one-time dress.

Overall, I am blown away with the presentation. They out did Sydney, and Hong Kong has a rather high bar to reach for in four years times. I look forward to the closing ceremony (AKA The Olympic Party) with the hope that it will be just as beautiful and ten-times more fun than anything I've ever seen televised. I will not be watching any of the events. Why? During The Parade of Nations, I realized one truth.

If you play any kind of summer sport and play it well, chances are high that you will be really up there on the hottie scale. Why do they always pick the good looking athletes to be the ones carrying their nation's flag?