Freelance cultural journalist, focusing on films and literature / Born and bred in Akureyri, capital of Northern Iceland /worked and studied in Reykjavik, Prague and other places for the last 15 years
Félögin íhuga að slíta viðræðum
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Ragnar Þór Ingólfsson, formaður VR, segir kjaraviðræður þokast lítið og að félögin fjögur, sem vísað hafa deilunni til ríkissáttasemjara, íhugi að slíta þeim.
Eyþór Arnalds, borgarfulltrúi Sjálfstæðisflokksins, gerðist í nóvember stjórnarformaður Suðurljósa ehf., sem skráð er í fjölmiðlarekstri. Umsvif hans í atvinnulífinu, meðal annars sem stærsti eigandi Morgublaðsins, eru enn mikil, þrátt fyrir loforð hans um að aðskilja viðskipti og stjórnmál.
Okkur er sögð saga um að þau fátækust...
The best (and worst) films of 2015 – Culture Smuggling
The best films of the year took place in Berlin and Oslo, Sweden and the Balkans, yet like most years Hollywood dominated the cinema screens of Europe. Still, it was the outsiders view of America that caught my eye this year;
KVIFF 2: A Girl and a Gun
“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl,” Jean-Luc Godard once wrote in his diary. Obviously the words of a heterosexual male – but there may still be some truth to it, a romance can be the driving force of a movie as long as another drama complicates matters – and guns tend to bring drama.
KVIFF 1: A Brand New Testament at an Old Film Festival
The Film Festival in Karlovy Vary brought together “progressive film workers from around the world” for discussions about “how the film arts participate in the fight for peace, how they contribute towards understanding and cooperation among nations.”
Jobs: the Movie
Steve Jobs tells a rather simple story of a machine that was born as a human being – and wanted to invent other machines like him – and find a way to make the humans love those machines. Jobs is a modern day Pinocchio ...
Fight Club: the Prequel
When you get to a movie theatre and realize that you’re vastly outnumbered by teenage girls you’re hardly expecting a spiritual prequel to Fight Club.
The Joaquin Show
Here‘s an irrational thought; Irrational Man is a lousy movie, worth seeing. The reason for that is simple enough; it features yet another stunning performance from Joaquin Phoenix – a performance that deserves a much better film.
The Signs of Hólmavík
Every town has it’s own specific peculiarities if you look close enough – but I didn’t have to look very hard in Hólmavík: there seem to be more signs there than people. Not only that – most of the signs really have a personal touch, some are actually really cool while others are strangely out of place or time. Like every single person in town had made their own sign to put up somewhere in town.
The Oscars – or (The Unexpected Virtue of the Movies)
Judging by the Best Picture Oscar nominees 2014 was the year of the biography. Both real and fictional. Sometimes a bit of both.
Five Takes On The Reykjavík International Film Festival, RIFF
One thing has long puzzled me about the Western genre: the films are set during an era where people from all over the world were moving to the new world, yet in Westerns everybody seem to be locals, speaking perfect English.
From Cannes To The Westfjords, And Back: We Chat With Grímur ...
I first met Grímur Hákonarson in 2012 at Skjaldborg, a documentary festival in the Westfjords. I was reporting on the festival for this very publication and he was on his way to winning the main prize for ‘The Pure Heart’, a documentary about an Icelandic country priest fighting the authorities.
Selfie Nation - The Reykjavik Grapevine
“The untamed, distant and cool Iceland”
“A few reasons why Iceland is the best place in the world”
Those are random headlines I spotted on Icelandic news sites the day I wrote this article. Both stories report on articles that appeared in the foreign media.
Ágætis Byrjun: Cloud of Ash, Raining Tourists - The Reykjavik ...
The merits of eating whale meat, Israeli-Palestine policies and whether the Vikings ate mushrooms. These are just a few of the things the two protagonists of new web comedy serial Cloud of Ash—hipster extrovert Atli and grumpy introvert Brogan—debate while working in one of Reykjavík‘s many puffin stores (the colloquial Icelandic term for tourist shops).
An American Nationalist at Airwaves
Do you remember when the government signed their coalition agreement last spring? I showed up, mostly to snatch some snacks (breadcrumb theory in action) and say hi to some old colleagues in the media. But as flat and ordinary as the wording of the agreement was one paragraph shook me from my slumber: “Icelandic national culture will be held in high regard, it will be nurtured and strengthened.”