DANISH OSCARS

Denmark won the Oscar for best foreign film at the awards ceremony last night. It was the third time that a Danish film had won, after "Babette's Feast" in 1987, and "Pelle the Conqueror" in 1988. Congratulations to Susanne Bier, who has made a string of good films in recent years, notably "Brothers" in 2004 and "After the Wedding" in 2006.

One oddity was that the English name of the film has been changed from "Hævnen" (literally "the Revenge") to "In a Better World". Distributors often do that with Scandinavian films, for reasons that I don't understand. The wildly popular Stieg Larsson book and film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is in fact titled "Men who Hate Women" in both Danish and the original Swedish. I don't know why the name was changed, when they translated them into English.

I repeat my comment from last year's Oscars, namely that it is extraordinary how few people who are professional actors (Colin Firth a notable exception) can give a simple speech, even when they know that they may be called on to give one if picked as the winner. The organisers apparently asked this year's winners to cut down on thanking Uncle Tom Cobbley and All, since it puts off viewers, who don't know who these people are. Natalie Portman had obviously not listened, since I was one of the few people on this planet whom she didn't thank for her Best Actress award.

Walter Blotscher