Culture Round-Up: Harry, you’re a wizard … but watch your back

Nov 16, 2020

Wizards get a hard time, it seems. If they’re not left in the shadows by devious witches, they’re invariably bumped off and replaced.

Take Merlin, for example. It’s only in the modern renditions that he gets such a plum role, as in the original stories he met an early fate. A penchant for femme fatales sees him either killed or replaced in King Arthur’s court by a more glamourous counterpart such as Morgan le Fay or even the Lady of the Lake.

Then there’s Wizzard, the British glam group, who ended up being the eternal bridesmaid of Xmas number ones with ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’, initially playing second fiddle to Slade‘s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ at the first time of asking in 1973. Since then, 14 more bids for the top spot have ended in failure.

And who can forget the Dumbledore disaster caused when Richard Harris died in between the second and third Harry Potter films (we warned him not to trust Commodus). Michael Gambon, another British actor, but not quite as veteran as Harris, had to take over.

Mads bags top place at Hollywood table
Well, the same is happening again in the Harry Potter universe, as Johnny Depp is being replaced in the role of dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise.

Warner Bros asked Depp to stand down in light of his recent libel action against the British newspaper The Sun, and it looks like the chief beneficiary will be Denmark’s biggest actor Mads Mikkelsen.

Mads already confirmed his suitability in ‘Doctor Strange’

Mikkelsen has already pulled off a similar scary, silver-haired look for his role as the chief adversary in ‘Doctor Strange’, and his turn as the scar-faced villain in ‘Casino Royale’ will have also piqued Warner’s interests.

Colin Farrell was rumoured to be a contender, but was ruled out due to his work commitments on ‘The Batman’. Besides, Farrell had a minor but memorable role in the otherwise forgettable first ‘Fantastic Beasts’ film.

Filming on the third instalment has begun, and it is scheduled to hit cinemas in July 2022.

Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for Mads

First Willy Wonka, now ‘Parson’s Pleasure’, is it Roald Dahl day or what?
One of Roald Dahl’s best loved short stories, ‘Parson’s Pleasure’, details how a fraudster dresses up as a clergyman to convince country folk into selling him their antiques on the cheap. One day he discovers a Chippendale commode sitting in a kitchen covered in white paint … and no doubt Peter Kjelgaard at Bruun Rasmussen Kunstauktioner had a similar experience giving some walk-ins an evaluation of their living-room suite. Although the pair knew the designer was the esteemed Finn Juhl, Kjelgaard recalled to AD PRO, they had no idea they had a sofa and two matching chairs considered lost by the industry since 1939. The pieces, Kjelgaard informed them, are included in basically every major book on Danish design: a holy grail of furniture, confirmed Kjelgaard hours later, with an estimate of close to half a million US dollars when it goes under the hammer on December 10. And just like in ‘Parson’s Pleasure’, part of the furniture had been painted: the maple legs in black! With only black and white photos to go on, nobody knows what the original colour should be.

Interiors and posteriors: Vilhelm Hammershøi advent calendar launched
His fans included the British comedian Michael Palin and Austrian film director Jessica Hausner, and now Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) is being brought to an even wide audience thanks to a collaboration spearheaded by Statens Museum for Kunst, Den Hirschsprungske Samling and Bruun Rasmussen Kunstauktioner. They have enlisted the art historian Peter Kær to make an advent video calendar celebrating the artist’s works. It uses his 1901 painting ‘En stue i Strandgade med solskin på gulvet’ as the canvas for the windows, which explore aspects of his work, including pertinent questions such as “Why didn’t he ever venture outside” and “Why have his subjects always got their backs to us.” The short answer is “Because the man was a genius.”

Colonial era monarch’s statue was dumped in the harbour by activist
Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, a former head of the Institut for Kunst, Skrift og Forskning at Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, has confessed to throwing the royal academy’s bust of Frederik V into Copenhagen Harbour due to the colonial era monarch’s close ties with the slave trade. The 39-year-old told Politiken she was acting on November 6 on behalf of Anonyme Billedkunstnere, which commented that the action was necessary to “articulate the ways in which the colonial era is invisible”, even though it “still has direct consequences for minority people”. By & Havn recovered the statue later that day. Dansk Folkeparti deputy chair Morten Messerschmidt has called the action “vandalism”. The bust’s 18th century French sculptor Jacques-François-Joseph Saly was also responsible for the equestrian statue on Amalienborg Slotsplads.

Denmark loses another of its legends of the stage
Michael Bundesen, who was long considered the second best Danish male singer after Kim Larsen, has died at the age of 71. He first achieved fame as the lead singer of Shu-bi-dua in 1973 and, bar a four-year hiatus in the 1980s, they were ever-present in the Danish charts until 2011, when he suffered a blood clot in his brain. Two years later, the band called it quits for good.

Another reminder that Zlatko Buric is a Force Majeure in everything’s he in?
Filming has wrapped in Greece on Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s latest film, ‘Triangle of Sadness’, which stars Danish actors Vicki Berlin and Zlatko Buric, along with Hollywood star Woody Harrelson. Scheduled to hit cinemas next year, the film looks at hierarchies in the fashion industry – caused not least by the huge wage disparity between female and male models. Östlund’s career highlights include ‘Force Majeure’ and ‘The Square’, which won the Cannes Palme D’Or. Buric is a Croatian-Danish actor interviewed by CPH POST earlier this year, who is best known for appearing in both the Danish and English versions of ‘The Pusher’.

Bornholm hotel addition a sustainable way forward, claims designer
3XN/GXN is designing a new 24-room, CO2-neutral, climate-positive wing for the Hotel Green Solution House in Rønne on the island of Bornholm. All parties wanted an addition to the hotel that advocated a sustainable way forward combining good design and business.