Culture and Sports News in Brief: New board for Royal Theatre

EPL hopefuls Leicester City celebrate in Copenhagen while ‘The Look of Silence’ has its eyes on the Oscar

Dec 11, 2015

New board for Royal Theatre
Lisbeth Knudsen, the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Mandag Morgen newsletter, has replaced Stine Bosse as the chair of Det Kongelige Teater. An entirely new board will be installed to sit under her.

The culture minister, Bertel Haarder, explained to media that his decision to replace the entire board of the Royal Theatre is quite normal. Uffe Elbæk took a similar decision shortly after the previous government came to power.

The other departing board members are Anders Hjulmand, Henriette Schütze Mette Klingsten Peytz, Anette Abildgaard and Waage Sandø.

The new board will first convene on 1 January and remain together until the end of 2019. Knudsen is the former CEO of Berlingske.

Oscar buzz growing for ‘Silence’
The Oscar buzz for Joshua Oppenheimer’s ‘The Look of Silence’ is steadily growing.

Several bloggers are speculating it will receive an accumulative award that also recognises its sister film, ‘The Act of Killing’, which narrowly missed out for 2012. A similar thing happened when the final ‘The Lord of the Rings’ film swept up, as its awards were generally recognised as being for the entire trilogy.

However, bookmakers don’t think Denmark’s foreign language entry, ‘A War’, will make the final shortlist. It currently sits 12th on most lists at 20/1.

Banned for EPO use
One of Denmark’s top triathletes, Thomas Lawaetz, has been banned from competition for four years after testing positive for the banned substance EPO. Most recently, Lawaetz finished first in the 35 to 39-year-old age group in the 2015 Copenhagen Ironman, but this title will now be given to the runner-up, Lars Peter Bloch.

Coming with a vengeance
PokerStars has been granted a one-year sports betting licence to operate in Denmark in 2016. Considered the world’s largest poker site, its parent company, Amaya, would appear to be sizing up a move to enter the sector in Europe and to operate through the name BetStars. The domain name, BetStars.dk, was acquired in May.

Torrent site closes
NextGen, the country’s largest torrent site, has shut down, explaining in a statement it was doing so to protect its estimated 40,000 users, who mainly used the site to share files and download TV and films. “This is done solely and exclusively for your safety, as during the last few weeks NG has attracted much extra attention,” it noted. NextGen, a so-called private tracker site, had been in operation for four years. It was the country’s 225th most-visited site.

Foxes in the capital
Copenhagen-based fans of Leicester City (we know of at least one!) got a shock last week when the current English Premier League leaders decided to have their Christmas party in the Danish capital. The players fittingly dressed up as super-heroes, including all five Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Claudio Ranieri.