“God didn’t give me these talents and looks to just sit around being a model or being famous. I want to lead a huge charity organization. I want to lead a country, for all I know,” said one of the teenagers of The Bling Ring, when facing court.

Alexis Neiers was one in a bunch of L.A.-kids, who in 2008 and 2009 repeatedly robbed a string of celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, and Lindsay Lohan. In their own defense, they only robbed stars with a fashion sense, they’ve said. And who would be likely to be “dumb” enough to leave a garden door open. In fact, as guessed by Rachel Lee, the leader of The Bling Ring, Paris Hilton did leave her key under the doormat. However, speaking of which, the girls and boys did not display shockingly high IQ’s themselves, when posing with the stolen Chanel bags and Louboutin shoes on Facebook and bragged about hanging out on a regular basis in Paris Hilton’s private club room. Following their favourite celebrities on twitter, and through celebrity news, they would know if Hilton was hosting a party in Miami and Orlando shooting in New York.

“I was on a plane reading Vanity Fair, when I thought this sounds like a movie,” says Sofia Coppola in her softspoken, hesitant manner. Her new film The Bling Ring has just opened the prestigious side program, Un Cerrtain Regard here in Cannes, where she is introducing her film and five young stars to the press. Having spiralled out control, when an older guy left Hilton’s house with 2 millions dollars worth of jewellery in her Louis Vuitton tote bag, The Bling Ring robberies, led to arrests, convictions and a well-researched feature in Vanity Fair: “The Suspects Wore Louboutins”.

At the movies with one of my favorite directors

Sofia Coppola quickly got in touch with the article’s writer Nancy Jo Sales and bought the filming rights to the story that so eloquently adds to her previous works on questions of identity in general and current celebrity culture, in particular.

“I was trying to convey the style of the world we encompass,” she says om the series of collagelike scenes that constitute a frenetic, music video-aesthetic in The Bling Ring, with the 16 year olds working through designer goods, sniffing coke and photographing each other in glamourous night clubs, constantly uploading the images. In this natural habitat of A-list celebrities Kirsten Dunst and Paris Hilton make cameo appearances, one of the points of the film being, that our cultures iconic stars appear closer than ever before. So close you can almost touch them.

“The epicenter of this aspect of American culture is the pop culture, the reality shows, this is where the story gravitates from,” says Sofia Coppola, who does not hide that her film is a cautionary tale. When one of my colleages point out, that the real Bling Ring-kids are not too happy about the way they are portrayed in the film, she shrugs it off with half a smile:

“I’m not suprised, but it’s not a documentary. I’m not too concerned by their reaction. I changed the names of their characters. I definitely didn’t want to add to their celebrity.”

On the subject, Emma Watson and her co-star Claire Julien address the constant pressure of social media platforms, and Julien says: “You have to be on Facebook, and there is this constant branding going on … And you can’t not be part of it, because everyone else is doing it. It feels that if you don’t do it, you’ll fall behind.”

I have a soft spot for Sofia Coppola, her films as well as her sofisticated beauty, like a perfect porcelain doll, whose face has been accidentally slighthy squished before the finishing. But despite the massive goodwill I brought with me to the theatre the other night – Coppola and the cast were watching the film with us – I wonder why she has chosen to neglect structure for style, to the degree that she has in The Bling Ring. Being a master of structure, Coppola has made a conscious choice with her frenetic visual collage. Nevertheless, the superficial form makes it still more difficult to care about the film’s ultra narcissistic protagonists, as they grow bolder.

Anyway, watch it. The Bling Ring is a stylistically elegant and melancholic testament to a youth culture gone MEGA-wrong. With its hyperbolic, sadly realistic portrayal of the Me-me-me-generation on the cover of Time Magazine this week The Bling Ring affiliates itself with Hamony Korine’s delightfully provocative film Springbreakers, which when I saw it in Venice last year, made me feel like I was sucked into an MTV party after someone had drugged my drink, but … in a good way. In Springbreakers four school girls rob a diner, in order to go on spring break in Florida, where they become full fledged criminals, wearing pink signature costumes.

The me-me-me generation, born after 1980, also called Millenials, is a generation “convinced of their own greatness”, “fame-obsessed”, and whose defining feature is their sense of entitlement, concludes Time Magazine, in case of The Bling Ring, the right to celebrity life.

“They just wanted to live that kind of life” says Emma Watson, who plays the character Nicki, inspired by Alexis Neiers, referring to the celebrity reality shows enjoyed by the Bling-kids, obviously by no means aiming to defend her charachter.

Take one look around the house of The Bling Ring’s favorite celebrity you need not wonder further who’s their role model in narcisstic behavior, when Sofia Coppola guides you through Paris Hilton’s real house. And, no, disappointingly, the pillows wearing her face in the living room are customized, not for sale.

I remember my English teacher trying to stress the significance of the novel and the symbolism of the valley of ashes and I remember her showing us the film with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow to build her case. But we had our own social hierarchies to attend to. It was our last year of high school.

Cheers. Chamelonic DiCaprio makes Gatsby come to life as a beautiful, damned romantic with great flaws. That's how we like our heroes.

Picking up Scott Fitzgerald’s novel again was quite a different experience. I reread it as I was writing a book on Mad Men and the enigma of Don Draper’s character. A figure that owns a lot to Jay Gatsby, the poor officer, originally named James Gatz, who loves Daisy, a girl “with a voice full of money” and goes away to redesign himself as a suiting suitor, in his mind a sofisticated billionaire.

One of the most celebrated American novels, The Great Gatsby has been adapted several times. About Herbert Brenon’s silent movie Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda wrote: “We saw The Great Gatsby in the movies. It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.” Apparently her reaction had nothing to do with her being the model inspiration for Daisy. A 1949 version twists the novel to a love story between narrator Nick Carraway and the superficial golf girl Jordan Baker. Jack Clayton’s film from 1974 is remembered mainly for Robert Redford looking good in pastels and seems old and stif. Particularly, compared to Baz Luhman’s spectacular new adaptaion. (I won’t bother with the tv version from 2000 with Paul Rudd as Nick Carraway).

Preserving iconic lines from the novel, but realizing the impossibility of conveying the poetic rhythm of Fitzgerald’s prose, the Moulin Rouge director has made a spectacular film, celebrating the novel’s subtle points with his aesthetically broady theatrical style. Slick montages convey the emotional giddiness of 1920′s New York. A hectic blend of elegant jazz age aesthetics and a felliniesque erotic madness make Gatsby’s parties breathtaking experiences, even from the back row of the movie theatre.

"Gatsby? demanded Daisy. What Gatsby?" Fitzgerald's mastery of subtext in dialogue balances Luhrman's excessive visual style.

Irresistible as Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio again demonstrates his wide range as an actor and audience seducer becoming the ridiculously charming dreamer who insists on repeating the past. Introducing the film to the press in Cannes he revealed to us a personal bond with his character:

”I approached it like a regular love story. I had read it in school and I remembered the partying, the boozing. But when I reread the novel as an adult I understood that it was about something else entirely. It’s a tragic depiction of a new kind of American who has achieved everything but lost his sense of who he is. It’s about a man searching for identity,” he said, surprisingly talkative and openly enthusiastic for a mega star at a press conference. And he added:

“I can relate to that.” There is a good chance new generations will too. And more so, because the theme of identity is equally stressed by a choice in Craig Pearce’s script: Where Gatsby in the novel is refused by Daisy’s parents, the Gatsby of the film becomes a victim of his own choices.

Baz Luhman’s The Great Gatsby is a daring, not entirely homogenous adaptation. But those of us who fall for it despite its flaws will have our hearts broken, love every second of it, and come back for more.

“My God! You must be really angry!” That was the first response Andrea Arnold got when her new film was introduced to the international press in Venice.

The heroine and the 'gypsy'. Andrea Arnold's interpretation of Emily Brontë's famous novel takes its depiction of class distinctions quite a bit further than the 1939 classic.

But, she’s not really, she laughs. And when her phone went off during the press conference, the ringtone was Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

However, the British director has made an adaptation of Emily Brontës immortal literary classic, that not only downplays the melodrama so well known from William Wyler’s 1939 film, she stages an almost hyperreal version, where the characters’ agonizing life on the Yorkshire moors is depicted so authentically, that you can almost smell the villain’s breath and, worse yet, Cathy’s dead body after the lovers’ tragic defeat.

After having won an Oscar for her short film Wasp, Andrea Arnold went on to refine her poetic take on social realism with, most famously, Fish Tank, a sad, but beautiful tale of a 15 year old girl who lives with her mother, who is a drunk, and in desperate search for love lets her self be seduced by her new stepfather – Michael Fassbender in a career defining role.

So why Wuthering Heights? Why a costume drama, set in 1847? “Well”, she says, “I’ve always had a thing for the book. I won’t tell you why, though, ’cause that would be explaining too much and i want the audience to invest themeselves and I want the film to speak for it self”.

And the film does speak for it self. The story of the orphaned ‘gipsy’, that Cathy’s father finds and takes in, to her big brother Hindley’s disgust once again leads to unfilled love between the main characters, when she marries the rich neighbor Edgar. Just like the bittersweet separation of Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon’s lovers in Wyler’s black and white film.

"Oh Cathy!" "Oh Heathcliff!" "Oh Cathy!" "Oh Heathcliff!" Olivier's dark hero knew how to put it.

But in Arnold’s adaptation, the emphasis is put on the dark side of romance, on the destructive, even morbid, powers of passion. Meanwhile, her visually stunning film shot by Robbie Ryan, works more ambivalently when it comes to draw the character’s relation to the rough nature of the surroundings.

“There are also a lot of straps in the film,and a lot of strings being tied and tightened, and that comes from the book. It has to do with a sadomasochistic theme in the book. Also there are a lot of feathers te relate to Cathy. When Edgar comes to dinner it marks the beginning of her imprisonment, because they’re having a goose, and Hindley breaks off the bird’s wing. Afterwards she gives til wing to Heathcliff. At first we didn’t have one, but I insisted. I shouted “Get me a wing! I love using nature as a metaphor for how the characters feel,” she says.

Like the chained, white horse in Fish Tank, reflects Mia’s situation?, I suggest.

“Yes”, she says, but her smile is gone, “except that isn’t what it means. I find it so annoying when people overanalyse my films. So many people misinterpret that horse. Actually, I kept dreaming about that horse, when I wrote the script, and when I looked it up in a dictionary of dream symbols it said, that it is the dark side of the father. Wow that was amazing, given the material of the film!”

51 year old Andrea Arnold has a bigger pleasing gene than her films. Fortunately for both.

Having already stepped in it, I might as well, try to test another hypothesis I have, I think, not enirely convinced that she is not the least bit angry.

Is there any chance her rather brutal portrait of British social hierarchy can be seen in the context of the recent riots in England?

“I wanted the audience to feel the brutality that Heathcliff is exposed to. He is for not good to the dogs, so can we still like him, if he is not entirely good? Many young kids grow up in England influenced by violence. Can we still have sympathy for them, when their behavior responds to their upbringning? That really interested me.”

She may have traveled back in time, but there isn’t much of the traditional period drama in Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights. One can argue, how well the film’s morbid artistic nudity works. It definitely will provoke some Brontë lovers, who do not sit well with a film-maker of working class backgrund. Even if she has learned to speak more ‘posh’ as she says, because:

“No one will give you four million pounds to make a film, if you come in talking like you’re from the South of London,” she explains, offering off in her native tough, smiling again.

We were in Venice. Waiting in what used to be a ballroom in a palace by Canale Grande, to meet Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow and talk about Steven Soderbergh’s pleasantly terrifying international thriller Contagion.

Both The Killing and Borgen are nominated for Baftas in England.

Becoming prime minister does not exactly boost Birgitte Nyborg's marriage in Borgen.

And yet, the cool British BBC journalist that I’d just met, was much more interested in talking about the Danish tv show The Killing. So what if Gwyneth was wearing a pink Michael Kors dress? She wanted to know about that female detective in that sweater.

A friend of mine just came back from Holland, where he’d been approached by fellow psychology professors who, independently, wanted to hear about the Danish tv show Borgen. Another aquaintance was recently met by the same curiosity by a family in Oman.

Our reputation may still suffer from the Muhammed drawings and the years of progress for the Danish far right party’s politics. But – finally – there’s a little something to be proud off with new Danish tv drama.

The show about the both political and personal challenges of Denmark’s first female political leader does not only have fans in number 10 Downing Street – despite his political beliefs, quite different from the fictional Birgitte Nyborg’s, David Cameron returned his thanks with a handwritten note, when he received a dvd with the first season of Borgen, saying how much he enjoyed Danish tv drama “when putting his feet up after a long day of hard work”.

The rumor of the show’s qualities have reached the highest temple of pop culture – Vanity Fair. The May issue of the magazine is dedicated to television, the ultimate sign that tv fiction is now not only much better than movies, it is – maybe – about to become just as glamourous as well.

Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue is famously glamourous. Watch out for tv to take over!

Television certainly has an impact. Even if Borgen did not directly influence the following election which actually gave Denmark its first female leader, it is – in the words of Vanity Fair’s renowned editor Craydon Carter: “the best evocation of the nexus of politics and journalism that I have seen in some time”.

It has been some time now, that I have answered: “Can I say Sopranos?”, when asked the question, we film critics love to hate -  ‘what’s your favorite film?’. My view of America is shaped by The Wire. And I’m in the process of writing a book on Mad Men. The quality of the best American television shows is mindblowing.

Yet, surprisingly, also Danish dramas resonate abroad.

Making the writer the star, and obeying the principle that the crime show, love story, political drama, whatever, should be of an educative quality and in essence stimulate democracy were two defining decisions made by DR, which is behind the most successful Danish tv drama.

This, however, does not explain why Borgen’s creator Adam Price when receiving an award in France, was met by some 50 journalists from leading media, who wanted interviews.

Rather, the growing hype around Borgen seems to stem from the show’s focus on two major modern dilemmas: family vs. freedom – and social welfare vs. personal freedom.

In other words the sticky stuff, that (seemingly and hopefully) more and more modern democracies deal with. The questions of equal rights between the sexes – and what I call the economics of modern family life when both mom and dad want careers, but not au pairs. And the question of individualism vs. social awareness and responsibility.

Of course, there may be a simpler explanation.

The other day on a trip to London, I read a feature in Sunday’s The Independent on a new trend – the increasing number of sex scenes in tv shows. The two first seasons of Borgen has, maybe, three sex scenes. As far as I have been told, they are all featured in the show’s American trailer.

VENICE, SEPTEMBER: I have to learn to stop blushing when adressing George Clooney at the press conferences. That will be an imperative. Next year, that is, because for now the damage is done.

Clooney is an excellent performer who always charms the press in Venice with his jokes, sarcastic comments on celebrity culture and distinguished taste in movies.

We have both been regulars for at least five years at the prestigous Italian film festival on the Venice Lido, but this year I am not so much smitten with Clooney’s abilities to wear a grey suit and – even more, of course – to spellbind a difficult crowd with his trademark charm, and his relaxed attitude to fame. And this is while others, such as his friend Brad Pitt, have been left almost petrified faced with the demands of what was supposed to be the cream of international press, but who at times morph into scary masses hungry for fresh celebrity. As when the Coen Brothers presented Burn after reading, calling it the third film in their trilogy of idiots, and a Spanish tv-journalist asked Brad Pitt run after her, and an Italian guy dropped his pants and declared Clooney his love. While other journalists demanded news on the then newborn Pitt-Jolie twins. And thus involuntarily confirmed the Coens’ theory that we live in en era of idiocy

The brilliant cast from The Ides of March.

No, this year, at the 68th Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Venezia, George Clooney exceeds him self by joining the league of extraordinary American filmmakers. Featuring Ryan Gosling as Stephen, the odd idealist in politics, and a quickly rising press secretary of a governor, running to be the Democratic presidential candidate, The Ides of March depicts the mechanisms of politics, claiming that you if you want access to power, you leave your integrity at the door.

When facing a delicate dilemma regarding his loyality, Ryan Gosling’s Stephen hesitates a milisecond too long and before he knows it, he is en route to moral decay. Accompanied by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti as rival press officers and the Hollywood-newcomer, starlet Evan Rachel Wood as the far too innocent 20 year old intern, this is an intriguing and well-written moral fable, that has a great – and I mean great – deal in common with masterful Tv show The Wire. Clooney himself has balls big enough to play the Democratic presidential candidate, who in Stephen’s opinion is going to change the face of America, but who soon dissapoints by being far more flawed than his obnoxious opponent in the race for the Democratic presidential candidacy.

”I have been wanting to make this film for 4-5 years, but then Obama was elected, and the atmosphere was too positive. Now is the perfect time, I think, when cynicism rules above idealism. Think about this: We have the smartest most well-meaning guy in office right now and it is impossible for him to do his job,” said Clooney, who with The Ides of March, in my, opionion shows potential to join the league of extraorinary American directors.

Maybe that’s why he was serious at the conference, not needing his usual wisecracks – except for his favourite remark – ”We have time for one more question!” after five of the conference’s 30 minutes. A remark that always leaves himself and the audience giggling.

After a series of years, where it seemed the Venice Film festival, the worlds’ oldest, by the way, was struggling for it’s life, it seems that the headline of local newspaper Il Gazzettino was actually prophesizing when today it stated:

”Clooney ignites the film festival!”

Despite his success as a filmmaker, it seems forces are still keen for him to switch career. Once again the question came up, as it usually does, when George Clooney involves himself in worldly matters:

Do you have have plans to go into politics your self?

The short answer was no. The longer answer is to be found in The Ides of March.

It was only two weeks ago, that my five year old and I visited Copenhagen’s leading comic book store where I regularly try to turn him on to the comics of my childhood, and where he regularly admires the extremely expensive Star Wars figurines.

One of my favourite albums, of course.

I asked for news on Blueberry. The southern gentleman who turned North State soldier counted many a succesful mission always due to his highly unorthodox view on authorities and – of course – an understanding that the Indians are human too …

A ladies man, yes, if you didn’t mind the drinking, the gambling, the rare baths and the occasional trips to jail for disobedience. I didn’t.

At least when I was young and continually borrowed these stories from my parent’s comic book collection.

The last of Blueberrys adventures ended with him saving his life yet again after a dramatic shootout and the story has a lot more to it than that, because Jean Giraud’s western was a smart anthology of the old world meeting the new, featuring gritty realism along with an anti-hero on the level of Indiana Jones. And one of the western genre’s first of the sort.

Not so lucky with the ladies.

Good man. Bad Attitude.

“He finished it,” said the guy in the shop, “you know just in case”.

The case came saturday morning the 10th of March. Jean Giraud a.k.a. celebrated sci fi author Moebius has died and with him his characters.

Rest in peace Mike S. Blueberry and Jean Giraud, and thank you for giving me a taste for American history, if not for unshaved rebel liutenants.

The artist as a young man.

One of the greatest French comic book artists hopefully now rides on the eternal hunting fields – or is being celebrated in the kingdoms created by Moebius’ futuristic imagery.

This is a better time than ever, to forget all about the Blueberry movie that bombed so terribly despite having Vincent Cassel in the title role. In stead, why not make a new one? A worthy one.

Something that will give my son a taste for American history, other than the one ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far far away’.

Imagery by Moebius

You didn’t need to know the films to see nostalgia was the thing.

Fashionable 1920's nostalgia by Tom Ford

Gwyneth Paltrow in a pure white Tom Ford dress and Angelina Jolie in black velvet Versace were among many female stars who literally embodied the 1920′s and 1930′s inspiration that dominated the 84th Academy Awards show last night.

Martin Scorsese’s marvelous Hugo travels back to Paris of the 1930′s and celebrates legendary filmmaker and magician Georges Méliès. And Woody Allen’s sweet and funny Midnight in Paris explores the French capital at the time of the sexy 1920′s of the avant-garde. But despite the grand old American filmmakers whose movies were nominated for best film alongside Steven Spielberg’s War Horse and Moneyball, which Brad Pitt produced, it was the actual French film that won.

Today, it may not come as a surprise that The Artist won the top prizes. It was rumoured to be the favorite since the nominations were announced.

When it was still cool that a French actor in a silent movie was nominated with Brad and George.

Still, the fact is rather astonishing, that a silent movie shot in black and white wins the top Oscar prizes, including ‘best actor’ for Jean Dujardin, a prize everyone thought would go to George Clooney for his performance in The Descendants or to Brad Pitt for his ditto in Moneyball. In fact, it was the feeling of many, that this was Brad Pitt’s hour.

Who's looking at you Brad?!

Recently, gossip sources speculated that Angelina Jolie was annoyed with his stealing attention from her directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey, when showcasing a bad knee and carrying a cane to the Golden Globes, where her film was nominated. Yesterday she made sure it was her leg the photographers would focus on by sporting a giant vent in her gown. Anyway, back to The Artist.

Dujardin beats the A-list actors

Set in Hollywood in the 1920′s and 30′s Michel Hazanavicius’ silent movie is in many ways a tribute to the past, channeling the glamour and grace of old school movie-making. But, there’s much more to The Artist than pleasure of nostalgia.

“So, why does a silent, black and white French picture win the Oscar for best film in the year 2012?” I was asked this morning on Danish Radio P1. To me the answer is obvious.

We enjoy advanced technology and 3-D effects that makes it possible to orchestrate great war scenes and digitally construct entire planets authentically. It’s not to much use however, if the script has no charisma.

Michel Hazanavicius wrote The Artist, when James Camerons Avatar was being advertised like a new miracle-drug. Sadly, the visually stunning film had a story, that felt recycled.

There are no words for the love between George Valentin and Peppy Miller.

One of the secrets to the succes of The Artist is that its producer Thomas Langmann gained access to Hollywood for the film’s shoot, and managed to get an American crew. Let’s not forget who votes at the Oscars. Why the Hollywood crew fell in love with the film, however, has to do with oldfashioned storytelling.

We may have come a long way since the era of silent films. When it comes to technology. But when it comes to telling a story and create filmmaking that speaks to our hearts, we can learn quite a bit from the masters of that era.

Another unforgettable love story.

A few months ago, I watched Charles Chaplin’s The Kid with my 5 year old son. He is up-to-date and saw Tintin twice, but he was spellbound by Chaplin’s silent classic. Great storytelling was the key to succes at the time of the little tramp, and it is now.

I may celebrate, that the fabulous Lady Streep finally won again. I may mourn that Michael Fassbender was not nominated for his unforgettable sexaddict in Shame. And I may feel a bit sorry for this years double losers George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who each went home with two unused speeches last night. But, I will never forget the year, The Oscar went to The Artist.

Contemporary tv-shows like Sopranos, Mad Men and The Wire has proved how great things can happen when you let the writer be the star. This years’ best movie is The Artist. But the story is king.

I remember crying my eyes out. I was, maybe, nine, when I read Herta J. Enevoldsen’s colorful dramatization of the English born Danish Queen Caroline Mathilde and the German physician Dr. Struensee and their tragic story of love.

Mads Mikkelsen reliving a dark Danish deed.

Their contribution to history was, nevertheless, not so much caused by the queen and her lover’s feelings for each other but by their veneration for Voltaire and the ideas of the enlightenment.

Enjoying Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair the other day, I admit I shed another tear. This time, however I didn’t cry for the melodramatic lovers.

I mourned the sight of Denmark’s only real mega star lose his head, and I’m not kidding. Being interpreted by Mads Mikkelsen with forceful, and an oh so very, very masculine elegance, Dr. Johan Struensee is finally granted his deserved rehabilitation on film, as well as by historians.

Whether or not Struensee and Caroline Mathilde were really in love, when they joined forces behind King Christian the 7th back, or whether she was an instrument for his political ambition, as suggested, his intention was to lead the Danes out of the sadistic feudal society and into modern age. And the we killed him for it. Shame on us.

“We know they had an affair. The romantic in me wants to believe that they were also very much in love,” Nikolaj Arcel said yesterday at the press conference in Berlin, where several journalists expressed their admiration for his film. And rightly so.

Whoops-a-daisy. Alicia Wikander's teenage queen has a baby with her husbands doctor.

Indeed, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard gives an incredibly strong performance as the king, rendering him at once a pitiful, sad soul and a grotesque, unpredictable monster. The manic depressive disorder, today’s historians believe King Christian suffered from, hadn’t been discovered at the time. Struensee’s medical treatment of the king seemed to consist of his role as a much needed older brother an advisor. To Mads Mikkelsen he’s not just a hero:

“In my eyes he is an idealist. And all of a sudden he gets this chance to climb the social ladder. Why should other people whisper in the king’s ear, if he has better things to whisper? His weaknesses are very clear and I liked that about him,” he says.

It is this ambiguity to Struensee’s charachter that makes A Royal Affair so compelling to me, aside from the film’s smooth fusion of stunning costume drama and a vivid realism expressed in the charachters’ attitudes and dialogue. With an added sense of humor.

If you think a young Danish queen at the time would be demure, think again. Why not complain about the king’s cock, if it is in fact dirty? Just because you happen to live in the 18th century?

Critics from Screen and The Hollywood Reporter praised the film, which is now rumoured to take one of the Berlinale’s top prizes.

Close to crazy. Mikkel Boe Følsgaard gives en extraordinary ressourceful performance as the young king.

Much to my amusement, and to Nikolaj Arcel’s, I think, the foreign journalists at yesterday’s conference kept asking the director, if he was inspired by for instance Marie Antoinette in France? No,” was Arcel’s answer. Rasputin in Russia, then? No.

The story of Caroline Mathilde and Johan Struensee is a unique part of our Danish DNA. Unfortunately, I have to add, having been reminded of how stupid the Danes were when unable to appreciate a timely hero.

Arcel’s film is an important reminder of the liberties we enjoy today. Which I am thankful to say, sometimes include great cinematic storytelling.

As several collections bore testimony to on the runways of last week’s Copenhagen Fashion Week, Pan Am, the show about chic stewardesses, exudes it’s newfound power.

By Malene Birger celebrates the 1960s.

Big Danish brands By Malene Birger and Baum und Pferdgarten both paid a tribute to the late 1950s early 1960s and even sported outfits in Pan Am blue.

Air hostess chic updated by Baum und Pferdgarten.

“Nostalgia – i’ts delicate, but potent,” says Don Draper in the episode The Wheel, and so not only does he sell his idea for a campaign for Kodak’s new slide projector. He also explains the main attraction of Mad Men, that has launched a craving for all things 196os, particularly in the fashion world. But why Pan Am?

The CIA recruits from these babes in Pan Am. Might have worked if the show didn't use the spy thing for melodramatic love stories and to prove just how tough these chicks are.

Casting Christina Ricci, the forgotten teen star of the 1990s, and dusting off romantic comedy’s oldest premise with a blond ‘runaway bride’ who becomes an air hostess, might have worked.

Karl Lagerfeld showed Chanel couture on a plane a few weeks ago. Just saying.

But aside from the tired clichés, they call dialogue, it’s hard to believe the CIA, despite the troubled times of the Cold War, would have recruited these flight attendants and in every respect blueeyed chicks, as spies for their country. It might have worked, if the show wasn’t so desperate to be glamorous, in stead of authentic, like Mad Men. Pan Am reminds me of the romance magazines I used to read under the covers as a little girl, because they weren’t pc in the commune, were I grew up.

"Fashionable on any runway". The Pan Am Barbie from 1966, is now reproduced and writes the show's dialogue, it seems.

Pan Am has relatively high production value – it looks good. So would a Secret Agent Barbie, if Mattel would only make it.

Tv shows are so hot, they don’t even have to be good, to be trendsetters. Apparently, we go along for the ride. As long as they serve cocktails on board.

Big battles of the stars will take place on February 26th when the most celebrated buddys of the hour – Brad Pitt and George Clooney – will compete for the Oscars, being nominated for best actor for respectively Moneyball and The Descendants.

What Brad Pitt's complex character lacks in soul as a father, Terence Malick's Tree of Life has a plenty

With another good part in Terence Malick’s beautiful The Tree of Life, it could be Pitt’s chance, only Clooney is a better actor, and already bagged the Golden Globe this year.

Sadly, the Academy overlooked the man who above all deserves the Oscar this year Michael Fassbender for his precise and extremely moving performance as a sex addict in Shame. As a matter of fact, Steve McQueen’s Shame was shamelessly entirely left out of  this years’ Oscar race.

Instead, another high profile battle stands between big contenders Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and of course Woody Allen, all nominated for best film for respectively War Horse, Hugo and the delightful Midnigt in Paris. And two of the other titles nominated for best film – Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Moneyball were directed by filmmakers Stephen Daldry and Bennett Miller, who both made Oscarwinners – The Reader and Capote.

Midnight in Paris is an aphrodisiac. It makes you fall in love with Paris, literature and with Woody Allen all over again.

In England some people demanded refunds because The Artist is a black and white silent movie. Their loss.

Yet, hithertoo little known French director Michel Hazanavicius is more likely to win the Oscar for The Artist, which sets out to teach movie maker’s that you don’t need 3D to tell a compelling story. Michel H gives us the movie, we didn’t know we were longing for amidst the masses of not so special special effects movies.

Michelle Williams wins back respect for the unforgettable Marilyn. But can she snatch the Oscar from Meryl Steep?

Also exciting is the competition between Meryl Streep – whose performanece in The Iron Lady is unbeatable, but is challenged by Michelle Williams for her respectful portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. A performance that helps us heal our broken heart for the sweet, tragic diva.

The best director category also reveals that American cinema is alive and well despite the horrible qualities of commercial movie making synonymous with sequel-making. A relatively young filmmaker, Alexander Payne who made The Descendants and Sideways is an extraordinary filmmaker, and veteran Terence Malick is still a great artist. But this category should have found room for Clooney for his smart politcal drama The Ides of March. Instead Clooney has to settle for a nominations for best adaptation an all to quiet nod to a new, talented and risktaking director who deserves more than that.

Stephen Daldry adapted Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close from Jonathan Safran Foer’s touching novel on a boy who lost his father in 9-11. For his supporting part as the enigmatic grandfather Max von Sydow received a well deserved nomination. And for a Scandinavian, like my self, who – in vain – had hoped and wished that Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive would be celebrated for his creative and original direction or see the charming Danish comedy Superclasico nominated, it helps to see Sydow’s nomination. As well as the one Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Tomas Alfredson got for his stylish adaption of John Le Carrés, for best adaptation.

It's hard to know what hit you when you watch Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids. Until you realize that this particular romantic comedy is actually very very funny.

Surprising newcomers in the Oscar race were Rooney Mara with a nomination for best actress for her arresting delivery of Lisbeth Salander and Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, who got a nomination for their screenplay for the hilariously dirty comedy Bridesmaids, that this year redefined chick flick with a badass attitude.

May the best (wo)man win. Seriously.

Ps. Vote at the box office. Go see Shame. If you have the guts for that kind of caliber movie.

Check out more names and nominations on http://www.oscars.org/live/index.html