Ondskan – Evil

January 29, 2012 By 1 Comment
erik

"Oh my god, I'm sure that's Danny Saucedo", I thought to myself as I watched the SBS-2 screening of the Swedish film "Ondskan" ("Evil"). A bit of Googling and the IMDB indeed confirmed he was an uncredited "bully" in the film. The scene in which he appears, which is about a third of the way into the film, portrays ritualistic bullying in a Swedish private school in the 1950s. At the heart of the film is the character of Erik Ponti, who lives with violence both at school and at home, where he is also beaten by his step-father. Arriving at the private school at the age of fourteen … [Read more...]

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Easter Sunday

April 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Scene from classic Swedish film, The Emigrants

As we have a six year old in the house, and as it was Easter Sunday (read easter eggs) no one had much of a chance to sleep in this morning. For a six year old, Easter lacks the excitement of Christmas Day, but the idea of an Easter Egg Hunt is still enough to get him up early. For the rest of us, it's been a day of doing nothing much at all, though we did watch a couple of movies together, includng Bran Nue Dae which emerged as a family favourite. Although I've been "wanting" to see it for quite some time I never have gotten around to it, mostly due to the limited cinema release, and … [Read more...]

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Movies and Shows

March 20, 2011 By 1 Comment
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

"The subtitles don't exactly match the text", I whispered in the ear of my friend Grant. "And isn't it great that we can recognise this?", he responded. We were sitting in the Dendy Cinema at Newtown watching the third and final in the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson. Grant has read the books in English, and I'm about half way through a chapter in the first book in Swedish (it's taking a while). Both of us have been learning Swedish for some time, and both agreed it was a bit of a breakthrough moment in terms of understanding Swedish. "Swedish films with English subtitles are … [Read more...]

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Swedish Fest on TV

October 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Program on SBS TV Australia about rituals, including Sami animism in Sweden

Oh my goodness, we've had a Svensk-fest on SBS television over the last few days. There have been a few films and one documentary which I've noticed with a Swedish connection. It all started with the film Harry's Daughters which I tried to "get into". As the film's title implies, it's about a man who has two daughters. They're both expecting babies around the same time. One of the daughter's gives birth to a child, while the other is still-born. I have a vague recollection about seeing it before, and not really getting into it. And I didn't really get into it when it screened again on … [Read more...]

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Darling – en film av Johan Kling

October 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Darling - Swedish Film

There was a really beautiful Swedish film on SBS-2 tonight which I stayed up to watch. At the centre of the film was an unexpected, albeit brief friendship between an older man and a younger woman. The younger woman is, for most of the film, quite an appalling character. She's the stereotypical Gen-Y. When she is sacked from her job for not paying enough attention to customers and for taking too many personal calls at work, she responds with "It's not my fault if they don't buy clothes, and it's not my fault if my friends call me" (or words to that effect). While at the same time … [Read more...]

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The boy who loved schlager

September 12, 2010 By 2 Comments
Girl who played with fire movie poster at Dendy, Newtown, Sydney

Grant and I went to see "The Girl Who Played With Fire" at the Dendy in Newtown, this afternoon. It's the second film in the Stieg Larsson "Millenium" trilogy that has already screened on Swedish TV, but which has been a cinema release here in Australia. I found the first film quite hard work - perhaps because I first saw it in Swedish without English subtitles - but absolutely loved this one. Although it's about two hours in length, it flew by, and I never found myself distracted. The plot concerns the planned revelation by the "Millenium" magazine of sexual exploitation traffic, … [Read more...]

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