Danish Goodness

Remember the Danish gangster films from the Incredible Film Festival a while back? In English they were In China They Eat Dogs and its prequel, Old Men in New Cars. These films were in a similar vein to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; apparently many people thought that they were unnecessarily violent. Bollocks. They were necessarily violent.

Well, I think that's what I think. I haven't actually seen the films for years; it was hard finding DVD copies that had English subtitles, and I gave up.

Now a Dane I know (well, she's a half Danish and half Swedish) has sparked my interest in Scandinavian screen once more.

There is a cult thriller/horror mini-series called Riget that is set in a Copenhagen hospital and has been described as ER meets Twin Peaks. It has been released in English as a five-hour movie called The Kingdom, but it doesn't stop there: it seems Stephen King liked it and lent his name to an American adaptation, Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital.

Sadly, the DVD for the Danish work seems to be something of a rarity, and I'd really much prefer to see the original.

I need some film friends over here so that they can care, too.