Olympic "controversies": my take

Because I know America has been waiting for my commentary on these important issues.

First, the "faked" fireworks in the opening ceremony, where giant footsteps gradually led to the stadium. I watched that part and I thought the commentators made it clear that the footage that was being shown was animated and not "real." I guess they could have said something like "Attention people! You are looking at fake CGI fireworks! Do not be deceived!" It seemed pretty clear to me the way they did it. Besides, the rest of the fireworks displays easily blew away (pun intended) the footsteps.

Second, the little girl who lip-synced a song. Who was the director of the opening ceremony? Zhang Yimou. What's his day job? He directs movies in China. What do Chinese movie directors do all the time? Overdub their actors. Particularly those directors who direct in Hong Kong, because basically anywhere in Hong Kong is too noisy to record live audio. And, taking it even farther, there are supposedly some Hong Kong movie stars whose real voices have never been heard in their films, because while they're attractive enough, their voices aren't all that hot. Or for instance, Jet Li, whose Cantonese was apparently pretty bad and got overdubbed in most of his movies because of it. So, since everything gets overdubbed anyway, why not just use someone else's voice? My point is that it's not unheard of to do this in Chinese film, so it's not surprising that a Chinese film director would do the same thing in the opening ceremony.