As most of you are no doubt aware, there’s a little thing going on in China right now called the Olympics, where athletes from all over the world come to compete and wear bright spandex. China has spared no expense in making this a massive must-see event, as demonstrated by their insanely complicated and breathtakingly beautiful opening ceremony that aired over the weekend. What I didn’t know ahead of time was that Chinese director Zhang Yimou is the guy who orchestrated the whole thing, and if you’ve seen some of his movies such as Hero or House of Flying Daggers, it should come as no surprise that he put this artful extravaganza together.

In case you didn’t catch it, there has been talk of a DVD release of the whole thing, but in the meantime you can watch it over at DanielPoon.com or on the official NBC website (but you have to install an annoying plug-in for the latter). You may also be interested in reading Roger Ebert’s thoughts on the 2008 Beijing opening ceremony. I’ve embedded below a short commercial for the Olympics that Zhang Yimou also directed.