Winter Olympics No Video Thread

[SirDuff]

I wish they would go back to Roots - or anyone else! I think Canadian Tire/Mark's Work Wearhouse could do better than the Lululemon stuff ;-p

My husband was a torch bearer in 2010 and we now have a tradition of always watching the Olympics with his torch.

I thought that The Bay also did a good job (but, of course, they are now gone).

I entered the lottery to carry the torch in 1988 (Calgary). It said that the torch weighed about the same as two boxes of cake mix, so I ran around carrying two boxes of cake mix (in my defense, I was about 8...and a weirdo). I was not selected.

 

[citruscurtis]

.... really good commercials ...typed Italy in 2018 into phone, my AI knew exactly what I was going to ask

Love will keep us together... Olympic workout for my Superbowl smile

 

[_19disnA]

I wondered the same thing about having Mariah sing during the opening ceremonies. Thought she might be Italian but apparently from the articles I have seen wasn't really clear why she was selected over someone actually from Italy. I thought the announcers did a good job to let us watch the ceremony without having to constantly talk. The times they said something was to help explain what we were seeing which I thought they did well.

 

[Deb]

I wondered the same thing about having Mariah sing during the opening ceremonies. Thought she might be Italian but apparently from the articles I have seen wasn't really clear why she was selected over someone actually from Italy. I thought the announcers did a good job to let us watch the ceremony without having to constantly talk. The times they said something was to help explain what we were seeing which I thought they did well.

I actually thought they did a poor job of keeping us informed. I don't need/want them to talk constantly during the artistic portions, but I didn't really feel informed about what was happening. And during the parade of athletes I really expect them to talk more about the countries and the atheletes

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don't need/want them to talk constantly during the artistic portions, but I didn't really feel informed about what was happening.

I tend to like a balance. The main part of the opening ceremony is a representation of the host country's culture and sometimes it's so different (if talking about US audience en masse) that you really feel lost so a bit of explanation helps give context and yet at the same time if there's too much talking for the purpose of explanation you get taken out of the ability to just watch and take it in. For Italy I felt more people can connect artists, ancient history and opera even if one doesn't explicitly know who such and such is.

And during the parade of athletes I really expect them to talk more about the countries and the atheletes

That was I think a deserving criticism because one of the commentators, by coincidence I think, had visited multiple of the countries and so it ended up feeling like an uppity travel vlog than a chance to just give a snippet of what is a feature of the country.

That said I give two considerations here:
1) Countries that had very few athletes there so their walking time was very short. It doesn't take long for 4 people (sometimes it was only 2 people) to walk (and only 1 or 2 of them being the athletes competing)

2) The different locations with the athletes walking in the different locations presented I think a production limitation as they had to switch quickly between the feeds. Sometimes there's really only seconds to give to talk about a country as they are walking before another country is coming in.

I know it's normal and all, it's expected, but I really could do without the going to the US group of athletes before it's their turn to walk much less multiple times. I think going to Jamaica is like the loving inside joke so that didn't feel like any harm but I don't need to see US just standing there in a group multiple times before they walk even if they did a split screen presentation so you could still see what was happening live with the other countries.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I thought the opening ceremony was mid-level for me, it wasn't something that had me super wow'd but I still enjoyed certain parts.

Loves the painters tubes from the ceiling and the effect of the fabric coming down to mimic paint. My favorite part was the homage to the first winter Olympics. I loved how they did it and the old time feel they captured that well. I liked the progression into the decades after that including the 80s feel but felt after that it dropped off and ended flat.