Me as blogger: rubbish. Sorry about that.
In defence I was ill at the end of last week and scarcely did anything from Wednesday to Sunday. Back at work Monday and its been go go go.
What I SHOULD have been blogging about was:
* Desperate Romantics (wasn't it a hoot?!)
* Doctor Who costume and companion pictures
* Widening participation and the need to encourage 'pushy parents' (cannot begin to express my issues with the discussions so far)
* Bookshelves (from the coverage about James P rearranging his)
* the Swedish version Wallander (why did they need to remake these with Kenneth B? I like KB but they seem to replicate the originals so much I can't quite see the point... oh but there are those subtitles... *sigh*)
5 comments:
Still find Ken B's better than Swedish version. Okay, Swedish Linda much better than British Linda, who doesn't even appear to be a cop, and indeed the supporting cast are much better (and allowed more screen time) than British cast. But British version has Ken B, great design and some fantastic photography, whereas Swedish version is just gloomy. It also seems to deal better with emotions, surprisingly, whereas Swedish one seems a bit repressed.
Fundamentally, though, I think the problem is with the source books, which if they're anything like either the British or the Swedish adaptations would drive me nutty with their stupidity. Either that or Swedish police techniques are about 30 years behind ours, which seems unlikely.
Gloomy? possibly. And I do think there is an air of 'set in 1985' about the Swedish version, despite the phones.
I guess what I was trying to convey was that the Swedish version mostly seemed to be with a more anonymous lead than the esteemed Branagh(though Krister Henriksson could be the Swedish equivalent of De Niro for all I know). I just don't know how much is to do with the source material and how much the actors.
And the palette of cinematography - what is the TV equivalent? - may just as easily have been affected by seasons as by tonal decisions by the director/filming crew.
Maybe. Most of the episodes seem to be in the dark in the Swedish versions, while Ken B seems to have picked Summer, where it's all beautiful flowers and meadows and inlets. I think I wrote about Ken B's version:
"And Sweden does look very lovely on Wallander. There's the lovely countryside, full of lovely yellow flowers, and there's that majestic coastline. Everywhere's lit nicely, thanks to the Swedish production team. Even the police station is beautiful: it looks like the interior of Copenhagen airport rather than somewhere police-type people work."
It's basically the Beeb's version of Morse, and does for Sweden what Morse did for Oxford. Whereas I think the Swedish version doesn't feel obliged to make Swedish people come to Sweden so just goes for the more obvious "it's a dark story so let's set it in the dark". It may be the pick the wrong time of year to film, but even during daytime, it all feels dead miserable.
Not sure what you mean about 1985 - the Mastermind episode they showed back in December was all about hacking computers. Not very 1985.
As for Krister Henriksson, he's a "professor of acting" and has 80-odd credits on IMDB, so I'm guessing he's big in Sweden, although his Swedish wikipedia entry ain't big, so I'm guessing he's not a star except for Wallander.
Here's what I mean: the opening to Sidetracked for Ken B; the opening to Sidetracked for Krister H
Oopsy. That was from another series of Wallander adaptations from four years earlier!
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