Last Friday, I suggested that the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympiabe featured ahead of Olympics coverage. But I’ve changed my mind after seeing this montage created by L.A.’s Cinefamily (the gang behind the recently revitalized Silent Movie Theater) & Pimpedelic Wonderland for a 4th of July event last month. It clearly says everything there is to say about America, and it would certainly pump us up adequately for patriotically rooting for the U.S. teams. Plus, unlike like Olympia, it’s not made by Nazis; like Olympia, though, it has nudity!
The only thing possibly more appropriately American than this video is Entertainment Weekly’s new interviews with Barack Obamaand John McCain about their pop culture preferences, a feature that finally allows us to make up our minds based on things more fun than “important issues”. I don’t know about you, but I’d never vote for anybody who honestly thinks We Were Soldiersis the best Vietnam movie of all time. Thanks, EW, for keeping me from making a terrible mistake on Election Day.
I know it’s quite an obvious choice to feature part of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympiatoday, but I’m doing it anyway. I’ve personally never had the patience to watch any of the actual Olympic Games, but I have no difficulty watching the few hours of beautifully abridged footage presented in this two part film. I truly wish that every year’s games could have been shot by Riefenstahl — preferably without any propaganda parts, of course. I might now be more familiar with the world’s greatest athletes had Olympia been a tradition in the vein of Apted’s Up series.
Fitting for today’s opening ceremony, I’ve included the prologue. Why can’t they show this every four years prior to the live coverage of the Games? Because of the nudity? Because an alleged Nazi made it? Well, they still employ the torch relay tradition, and that was also devised as part of the Nazi propaganda for the 1936 Berlin games. And the Olympic rings emblem was reintroduced for Nazi purposes, also. So …
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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