Denmark
The Dance of Death, Arcola Theatre review - hate sustains a marriage in new version of Strindberg classicFriday, 08 July 2022
Rebecca Lenkiewicz's adaptation of August Strindberg's 1900 paean to the power of loathing over loving uses the now familiar trick of dressing characters in period detail while giving them the full range of the 21st century's argot of disdain and... Read more... |
Borgen: Power and Glory, Netflix review - Birgitte Nyborg is back, more fascinating than everFriday, 10 June 2022
Has there ever been a smarter television series than DR’s Borgen? It’s regularly compared to The West Wing for its twisty interrogation of government shenanigans – and certainly it pays to get to grips with the coalition-driven political scene at... Read more... |
MØ, Heaven, London review - snappy, sexy and energisedFriday, 20 May 2022
“I live to survive another heartache/I live to survive another mistake,” roars a sold-out Heaven. It’s a new song but everyone seems to know it. It’s not MØ’s most famous song but is the bluntest monster banger of the night, crunching four-to-the-... Read more... |
Album: MØ - MotordromeSaturday, 29 January 2022
Danish pop star MØ is as well known for her collaborations as her own music. Shining brighter than all of them is the globe-slaying, 24 carat dance craze "Lean On” from 2015, created with Major Lazer and DJ Snake, and, for a few years, Spotify’s... Read more... |
The Danish Collector: Delacroix to Gauguin review - fabulous art, not sure about the framingMonday, 29 November 2021
In Paris on a business trip in 1916, Wilhelm Hansen was no doubt typical of many husbands in confessing to his wife that he’d been a bit reckless in his personal spending (“You’ll forgive me once you see what I’ve bought”). But he was hardly typical... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Another RoundTuesday, 05 October 2021
Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen left me dumbstruck in the cinema in 1998 with its brilliant depiction of an incestuous, viciously glamorous family imploding over a family celebration. At the time, I hoped that my Danish mother never saw what looked, to... Read more... |
Album: Efterklang - WindflowersMonday, 04 October 2021
Although Windflowers showcases Efterklang at their most direct, its sixth track “Living Other Lives” is its most instant, most straightforward composition. However, the Danish art-poppers’ sixth studio album does not instantly makes its case as a... Read more... |
Shorta review - Danish police dramaSaturday, 11 September 2021
This Danish police drama attempts to tackle the country’s uneasy relationship with the immigrants it’s allowed into its cities over the last 30 years. The result is a somewhat clumsy attempt at fusing social commentary with the visceral thrills of... Read more... |
Riders of Justice review - revenge, coincidence and the meaning of lifeThursday, 22 July 2021
All events are products of a series of preceding events. Or is life just a chain of coincidences? And if so, what’s the point in anything? Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen’s brilliantly inventive, genre-busting black comedy starts with a bicycle... Read more... |
Into the Darkness review - disappointingly soapy Danish WWII dramaFriday, 05 March 2021
Can a film be both too long and too short? If so, Into the Darkness definitely fits the bill. Anders Refn’s long-nurtured family epic follows Karl Skov (Jesper Christensen, more famous as a Bond villain), a self-made Danish industrialist... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Marius Neset – TributesWednesday, 16 December 2020
This year of all years – surely – we need music which takes us to better, happier places. And the new album from Norwegian-born saxophonist/composer Marius Neset does that. It also gives us a bit more hindsight and context as to what his two... Read more... |
Another Round review - delight and despairFriday, 27 November 2020
You can practically smell the fumes coming off Thomas Vinterberg’s latest drama Another Round, known in Denmark simply as "Druk". Co-written with Tobias Lindholm, the story is anchored in a theory proposed by Finn Skårderud that humans have a blood... Read more... |
