Caity Weaver on the plans for London’s Olympic opening ceremony:
Before 40-foot-Voldemort appears, “about 100” children will be wheeled out on hospital beds to perform “a choreographed ‘bed dance,'” which sounds quite sexy but probably is not. To these one hundredish beds will be added a dozen more “giant” ones, on which will dance/frolic/be such beloved storybook characters as The One Hundred and One Dalmatians’ dog-skinning villain Cruella de Vil. Then and only then will 40-foot-Voldemort himself arrive, rising up from yet another giant bed in the middle of the stadium. To recap: All the action to this point has taken place in some sort of bed.
What annoys me out about these games isn’t the militarized security or crazy brand-protection laws, which were predictable. It’s the pervasive amateurism of the creative work. From the “Blowjob Lisa” logo to the “Amiga-era 3D Modeling Tutorial” mascots to the “Duct tape lettering on dollar store window” typeface, we now progress–allegedly!–to a battle of the brands fought under exclusive license from Warner Bros. and Disney.
Inane surrealism is what you get when there is no heart, no vision, and no story to tell.
Update: Never mind! It was mostly cool.