Denmark
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... |
Queen of Hearts review - Trine Dyrholm stars as a stylish sexual predatorFriday, 06 November 2020
“Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: CPE Bach, Gershwin, King Frederik IX of DenmarkSaturday, 19 September 2020
CPE Bach: Complete Piano Trios Linos Piano Trio (C-Avi)13 piano trios squeezed onto just two discs is a steal, but we’re talking CPE Bach and not Schubert, and there’s the issue of whether these pieces are piano trios in the accepted sense.... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Aalborg: Northern Winter Beat 2020 reviewTuesday, 04 February 2020
U-Bahn’s second-ever live show outside their home country Australia took place in Aalborg, in Jutland, in the north of Denmark. They were in this congenial, routinely rain-sodden city last weekend for Northern Winter Beat, the annual festival of... Read more... |
Bowers-Broadbent, Theatre of Voices, Kings Place - grit needed in the oysterMonday, 13 January 2020
Not everyone who flocked to Day Two's evening concert in Kings Place's year-long Nature Unwrapped: Sounds of Life celebrations will have realised that they were catching parts two and three of a trilogy. The masterpiece had come earlier, in a 5pm... Read more... |
