The krona is dead. Long live the krona.
I’m afraid that the sate of our currency (the Icelandic krona = IKR) can best be expressed/explained with this video:
Gerard Butler beats up a paparazzo – Finally!
Gerard Butler kicks paparazzo ass according to the Icelandic yellow press.
All I can say is FINALLY!!! Gerry has been way too cool and controlled given everything that has been going on around him. Even the Icelandic yellow press has this!!! But those silly journalists mention 300 and Tomb Raider, but forget to mention that he co-produced Wrath of Gods!… and, yes… played Beowulf. The article reminded me of the stories of how he used to fight all the time as a teenager, back when he first met Tony Curran (see the long interview on the Wrath of Gods DVD) The only thing this will do is raise his profile. I’m not sure he needs more attention though. He’s everywhere these days. I thought the in-flight version of Nim’s Island was better than the one I saw in the Chinese Theater.
Nim's Island on Icelandair
End of summer
Lighthouse at Grotta, Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. End of summer 2008. (click on the photo to see a bigger version)
Really feels like it’s gone. Hope I get one more trip into the mountains though.
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- Lighthouse at Grotta, Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. End of summer 2008.
iPhone comes in handy
Sunset, Reykjavik, Iceland August 27, 2008. iPhone comes in handy when i don't have a real camera on me.
The Big Party Weekend
The big August long weekend is here. Thousands of people are camping out at these big drunken orgy festivals, but not me. I went for a hike around Ölkelduháls and Reykjadalur (Steam Valley). If you ever get to Iceland you should try to find this place. At the top of the valley you find the source of Reykjadals-river, actually two sources, one hot and one not so hot. Where those two meet is a very popular bathing spot.
Horses, mares and foals
This time of year I don’t want to be anywhere other than in Iceland. I feel sorry for those of you who have to tolerate the heat and humidity of New York and Toronto, or the scorching heat of New Mexico and California… (you know who you are). Just to torture you I have to post these pictures I took last week. A friend of mine needed pictures of his new foals. Here you go:
It took a while till the mares trusted me. They are very protective of the young ones.
Location scouting
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- Location scouting in Iceland
Location scouting on the edge of Reykjavik at midnight. Love those white nights. The hope is that we’ll be able to make a short film here in the fall.
Location scouting in down-town Reykjavik
It’s not until you look sideways, till you turn of the main street and into the back alleys that you see the real city. There is a feature film to be made here and we found the perfect location for it, Shadowville, down-town Reykjavik.
Bjork in the park
A well timed concert. Right now we are in the middle of an economic down-turn. It is quite possible that the unemployment rate in Iceland will rise from the current 1% to 3 or 4% in the coming months. Many people are demanding that we start building more hydro dams so we can build more aluminum smelters to keep more people employed and to raise our GDP. This is the time that we need Björk and Sigur Rós to remind us not to destroy more Icelandic natural treasures because of short sighted greed. I got there too late for Sigur Rós, but Björk was fun as always.
Solstice in the north of Iceland
Just had one of the most fund nights ever (with no woman involved that is). We left Reykjvik harbor last night at 5pm. My friend JoJo invited me along to film his gig onboard the Delphin Voyager. After the concert we sat up at the Panorama Bar on the top level of this gigantic cruice ship with guitarist Alfredo Fernando and watched the WestFjords as we sailed north in the midnight sun. After all this was the longest day of the year and we were up by the Arctic Circle. Those Germans know how to have fun. 10am on a Saturday morning. As we sailed in Eyjafjordur, towards Akureyri, they brought out the beer and the liverwurst an danced their way around the top deck of Delphin Voyager.
Sabor a mi – surprise on a cruise sip
One of the first people I met on board the Delphin Voyager was Alfredo Fernando, a Scottish/Chilean musician who lives in Germany. The first thing that came to my mind was, this guy must know one of my favorite songs – Sabor a mi. Alfredo and I ended up at the Panorama bar till 5am, watching the sun not set up by the Arctic Circle as we sailed past Hornstrandir and the rest of the Westfjords.
Halli Hansen – the one and only
I created this video when Halli Hansen drew the winner of the CUT!2008 VIP pass winner. The winner, Liz Drogula, couldn’t use the pass, but for some reason the video became viral among her friends. When I removed it from the WRATH website I stuck it on YouTube, so for those of you who haven’t seen it… here you go.
JoJo and The Boss
This is my friend and neighbor JoJo. Few people have as much charisma as he does.
JoJo is a street musician. He played in the streets of Copenhagen for 12 years. One day Bruce Springsteen walked past him. JoJo called out “Hey, Boss! Don’t be so stuck up. Come and play a song with me”. Springsteen kept walking and then suddenly he turned around and asked JoJo if he had a spare guitar. They ended up playing 3 songs together. By the second song JoJo was singing along in harmony. After the second song Springsteen said “This guy knows my songs better than me”. After three songs they hugged and Springsteen walked away. Someone had a video camera. That night this video was on Danish TV and the next day there were pictures in every paper. JoJo became an instant star in Copenhagen.
Lights Out!
Just posted the “lights out” part of the 1 hour interview with Gerry on YouTube. We did this interview in the middle of the night, a couple of days before the end of the Beowulf & Grendel shoot. I am usually very much ‘in control’ when doing interviews, but this time I couldn’t help myself. It’s hard to explain how absurd this was, especially after having gone through months of hardship up there in the mountains. Gerry had been putting the interview off for a few weeks but when we finally got going the generators broke down in the middle of it. By the way, I just read about a new YouTube trick. You just add &fmt=18 after the URL to play the video in higher resolution (have to be on www.youtube.com for this to work)
Midsummer Night in Iceland
I can’t help it. I don’t want to sleep when the night sky is like this. I took these pictures around 3am close to my house. See here on Flickr.
Midnight Sun in Iceland. © JonGustafsson.com
The Taxi Driver From Pakistan
Icelanders have been making a bit of a splash in Danish busines lately. Some people say that the Danes are a bit sensitive over the whole thing. I went drinking in downtown Reykjavik with a friend last night. The bars were packed as usual. My friend told me about his recent trip to Denmark. The Pakistani taxi driver told him that he loves Icelandic people, not for their hard work and for what they have been building up in Denmark, but because they are now so hated in Denmark that they have “taken the pressure of other immigrant groups”. Anyway, we ran into a journalist from one of the TV stations.
He asked if he could get to see Wrath Of Gods because he has heard so much about it. He is hoping that it will restore his faith in the Icelandic documentary world. It is true, we have a very poor documentary tradition over here, and a very limited knowledge and understanding of what a documentary is. We need to make more documentaries in this country.
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