anyone want to anticipate slumdog millionaire with me?

i didnt see sunshine, so i dont know how he's been lately

but i am interested in this. i may go tonight or tomorrow. if lives up to hype....question is: modern (post 1975) indians write novels that inspire films like this, so why cant they make such "acclaimed" films on their own?

Sunshine is uh not good.

>so why cant they make such "acclaimed" films on their own?

(substitute "intelligent/non-formulaic" for "acclaimed") - to answer my own query: OH RIGHT, THEY ARE NOT - EVER! - ALLOWED TO SHOW POVERTY THAT IS UBIQUITOUS IN PHILMS DUE TO MARKET FORCES, for fear of getting the dreaded "art film" kiss-of-death label

ubiquitous around them..in films ... you get it

some exceptions. still pathetic that not a single indigenous filmmaker could adapt a best-seller to make this themselves as even "experiemental" producers avoidnon-masala scripts

Sunshine is excellent for the first 2/3

Yes okay, but the last third is Event Horizon level awful.

this movie is good, also i don't understand the first question, indian directors make tons of acclaimed films!

I almost hope this film is the same way. Heartfelt and life-affirming romance for the first 2/3rds, then schlocky horror movie for the last.

i've heard this is really good i'm looking forward to it

event horizon is a sweet fuckin movie

ya that movie is scary... better htan sunshine!

the last 3rd is almost always the worst part of any horror movie anyway. i liked event horizon, too.

it was surprisingly great,considering the fact that Boyle is the director.
smartly written, entertaining, kinda reminded me of "midnight children", though Rushdie's book is a masterpiece and digging many aspects of india, well this movie is mainly on the connection between India (past and present) and modern economy.
still, awesome.

I liked it ..... plot starts to get way too ridic after a while (so many coincidences ... and he loses her then finds her then loses her then finds her then etc. at least one too many times) but that's not really the point. I also thought it was kind of odd that they decided not to show how managed to get on the show! seemed kind of important ... and they show, like, every other improbable weird thing that happened to him

chase scene through the slum at the beginning was excellent

"it was surprisingly great,considering the fact that Boyle is the director."

He's made some crap, but I think Boyle's actually a pretty good director esp. if he gets a decent script to work with.

Saw this last night. Decent flick. But isn't it a bit early to be remaking Wall-E?

yikes, what crap. Not quite as appalling as Crash but close enough.

who didn't know the final Millionaire question after the first 20 minutes?)

Worst marriage of "form and content" I've seen in awhile. Wheee, a subcontinental poverty amusement ride!

Yeah it's really awful. The audience I saw it with audibly groaned at the last question. But for me, it was the VERY end which absolutely boiled my blood. And yes, while not quite as awful as the non-Cronenberg Crash, watch it take Best Picture just the same.

Why exactly was this so anticipated again?

Pretty quick about-face there, Kev.

Irony doesn't travel well over the interwebs. I hated it.

Gotcha.

wait, ANOTHER minstrel show beating a Gay Movie at the Oscars?

Better than any Spielberg film.

If a gay movie gets nominated for an Oscar just say it won the "gay Oscar" and call it a night.

is the movie subtitled or dubbed to english?

Sunshine is excellent for the first 2/3
― sad man in him room (milo z),

that was the only part I watched and I have sworn to never touch that movie again.

Now for a quick infomercial!
Join my facebook group I HATE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
-a lot of random people from Turkey joined this group for some reason

smackdowns:

http://culture11.com/article/34079

sappy, suspense-free, and packed with one-note characters, including a female lead who's more object than person....The best you can say about it is that it's stylish schmaltz.
Slumdog's best moments are the flashy, setpiece montages Boyle's created out of subconscious blasts of film and high-energy pop music, including several tracks by acclaimed international hip-hop act M.I.A. But briefly exhilarating as these sequences are, they're not movie moments, they're music videos, and they don't make a movie.

and AW:

http://www.nypress.com/article-18907-the-mis-education-of-a-millionaire.html

Uniquely British in its TV-influenced ostentation, Slumdog is directed with attention-deficit compulsiveness like so much product from England’s advertising mills.... Despite first suggesting that Jamal’s fortunes are the result of a) luck, b) cheating, c) destiny, it’s all a goddamn advert for TV culture....

Also uniquely British is the film’s blithe condescension about the dehumanizing conditions of the former colony. Slumdog absolves the white man’s burden with game-show flash and shrillness. Boyle’s response to poverty and degradation is to go pop: Dogme videographer Anthony Dod Mantle uses a festive range of colors that gives false vitality to the soul-deadening action. Teeming crowds, hustling con artists, smiley/treacherous child-abusers, ethnic rioters, outhouse jokes, chase scenes and gunplay are used for excitation and shock.
There hasn’t been a social drama this decadently over-hyped since City of God. Boyle plays the same game of pandering to liberal sensibilities while entertaining safe, middle-class distance.

saw the movie, loved it, recommend it to anyone
btw, the three musketeers and the hindu trinity - any allegory in this film? I find it highly logical that this is possible (even without looking at the facts)...

so this is more like "Millions" than "Trainspotting" I take it (I loathed Millions for similar feel-goody, slightly condescending stuff people are alluding to here)

hmmm. seeing this tomorrow for jewish xmas.

and once again, it's not easy to see right now but i have to recommend the pool, it's by an american director and set/filmed in india (in hindi). it deals with the poverty gap in pretty straightforward and unsentimental way and is basically amazing.

I enjoyed this fine when I saw it, but the more I think about it the more I dislike it.

First and best reference to Michael Slater in any major film.

Christ, Oscar buzz makes people go apeshit. It's a nice, non-earth-shattering little flick. It can't be more than 1/100ths as offensive as Frost/Nixon.

i liked the little kid sequences ok, but the grown up love story was seriously the worst shit ever.

It can't be more than 1/100ths as offensive as Frost/Nixon.

how so (i haven/t seen frost/nixon yet)?

(the / was a type but i decided to leave it)

I enjoyed this fine when I saw it, but the more I think about it the more I dislike it.

― chap, Wednesday, December 24, 2008 3:11 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

yeah pretty much this

I liked it alright but the fact that it has Oscar buzz is nuts

how was frostnixon offensive?

F/N and SM are of the same caliber stink.

F/N rewrote history. Nixon WAS NOT LIKE THAT, nor were the interviews like that.

what Morbs said.

at the very least SM has the only score released this year that I actually listen to on its own, on a regular basis. "Liquid Dance" FTW.

I'm fine with this one being knocked down a peg or two, but I do have to question what sort of movie some of the haters really want/expect? This is a POP movie, through and through.

TS: Bollywood minstrel show vs Nixon geopolitical porn.

Maybe I have lowered standards for what constitutes a minstrel show. I blame Crash.

I do have to question what sort of movie some of the haters really want/expect?

I attempt to answer precisely that question here.

That is certainly a fascinating objection, and I love that you align Slumdog with Inland Empire.

denigrating this as a "minstrel show" would seem quite weird to all the Indians who worked on it, not least the um, co-director Loveleen Tandan (I just wanted another chance to type that name again, since "Loveleen" might be = one of the best ever) or Vikas Swarup, who wrote the orig. book

i finally found someone who read it btw, who says the book is pretty terrible and uncompelling. so don't chase it down expecting any further "depth" i suppose. but Eric is otm = this movie isn't aspiring towards that in the first place

I am preturbed to say the least that Loveleen Tandan's name probably won't be included in the Oscar nomination.

yeah. nevermind that she might have done the best parts - ie, when the kids are on-screen (as I'm assuming she was brought in when Boyle couldn't speak Hindi)

Didn't even realize Tandan was a she. The only Loveleen I've ever known in real life was a boy.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1965855744/nm0849164

Yep, now I see. In any case, I'm positive her role was probably fairly crucial and I'd love to see her get some recognition for it.

Boyle is pretty good at giving props to his collaborators, it won't be like that City of God fiasco.

If this is a pop movie, let's leave awarding popshit to the Grammys.

If A.R. Rahman wins an Oscar for his music, fine, I'll pretend it was for Lagaan.

yeah, works best with the kids. maybe that "pop" sensibility works best in that context anyway.

this movie was great! don't believe the anti-hype.

i'd rather die than watch this movie.

choose life!

This movie was a disappointment. I need to stop coming to movies with elevated expectations (i.e. believing the hype of my friends). See: Little Miss Sunshine, Benjamin Button, American Beauty (blech!!)

im not sure how good this is going to be but im def going to see it. at first i thought it looked like salaam bombay meets city of god but after seeing the schmaltzy trailer that might have been a bit off base. bit dissapointed its meant to have a bollywood number stuck in at the end though.

City of God is prety otm, only even more cliched.

I don't think this movie has any business in a conversation about the best movie of the year, but it was still quite enjoyable. It seems like a victim of its hype more than anything. And if it serves as a gateway movie for people to explore more of Indian cinema and culture, even if the film itself lacks depth, didn't Boyle do his job?

if it makes more people seek out films like salaam bombay or mr and mrs iyer, then cool.

i somehow doubt it will though.

i find the fact they have to sling in a bollywood scene a bit unnecessary though, as if every mainstream film set in india has to have something bollywood about it.

imho this was a straight up POS. offensive, even. not for any o_O cultural tourism/ ghetto voyeurism or anything like that, but because it cost me $9 to sit through some live-action version of some sub-Disney bullshit. whoever said the opening chase scene through Mumbai ghetto was awesome was otm, as were a couple of other early scenes, but the game show & adult love story plot was execrable.

saw it, loved it. it's a saturday night at the pictures not a fucking Rushdie novel. jesus jumped up christ...

it's a saturday night at the pictures not a fucking Rushdie novel

"the soft bigotry of low expectations"

But snobbery isn't bigotry of all, of course.

Jamal's ability to always find Latika in INDIA ffs reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer tries to find Apu's brother in the hustle and bustle and it takes him about one minute.

He finds her three times in about 16 years. Maybe a tad implausible still, but ...

I watched it jed_; it's pretty bad

It's a bit like The Shawshank Redemption, I thought. Both promise a great deal of gritty truth-telling, and maybe even some social realism, before taking you on a magic carpet ride. My favorite example of this was when ****SPOILER ALERT**** the girl is made to work for a pimp and, yet, the movie had to make clear through dialogue that she was being kept as an especially valuable virgin (can't have our ingenue become a real sex slave, only one of those rare and convenient virgin prostitutes that's being kept on the shelf until prince charming rescues her)

The movie reminded me of those scenes in "Dewey Cox" where Tim Meadows would convince Dewey to try drugs but only after preceding his pitch with "Nuh-uh, you don't want none of this shit, Dewey!"

this - and the author's conception of America - is funny:

http://greatbong.net/2008/12/29/slumdog-millionaire-the-review/

Yes yes I am being contrarian to get attention.

Yes yes I am too idiotic to understand a truly great movie.

Yes yes I suffer from a third-world siege mentality where I am offended by anything that does not show my country in a purely positive light.

If we can now move beyond these, then let us proceed.

And yes. If you have not seen the movie, then perhaps you are better off not going below the fold (though I try my best not to give away the ending) if you want to “experience” without any pre-knowledge this supposed masterpiece.

There is a difference between clever film-making and great film-making. Make no mistake, Danny Boyle is immensely clever. “Slumdog Millionaire” is made as an out-and-out “crowd-pleaser” through proper audience-targetting which is done in the same careful way the Chopras target the lovey-dovey high school/college crowd and the Anil Sharmas target the uber-patriots.

This crowd-pleasing is done through punching together as many stereotypes that Westerners have about India as is humanly possible. People live in garbage heaps. A character jumps into a huge heap of human excreta and without batting an eyelid comes running out covered in brown slime, as if its the most natural thing in India, to get an autograph of a star. The hero, a Muslim, sees his family slaughtered by Hindu rioters and sees along with it a rioting kid (presumably) dressed as Lord Rama, in blue paint and with a bow and arrow in hand, standing as a sentinel of doom, an image whose indelibility in the character’s mind becomes a principal plot point.

A character is booked on the flimsiest of charges and then he is beaten black and blue in a police station and given volts of electricity.

What else? Let’s see.

Child prostitution. Check.

Forced begging. Check.

Blindings of innocent children. Check.

Rape. Check.

Human filth. Bahoot hain sahab.

Call centers. Oh yes most certainly.

Destiny. Of course.

But wait. Do Hindu saffron-clothed Ram Senas not run havoc through Muslim slums? Do street kids not get taken in by beggar gangs and maimed? Doesnt rape happen in India? Are those slums specially constructed sets? Why do you, third world denizen, get so defensive about your own country? Chill.

Well yes these things do happen in India. However the problem is when you show every hellish thing possible all happening to the same person. Then it stretches reason and believability and just looks like you are packing in every negative thing that Westerners perceive about India for the sake of “crowd pleasing”. Because audiences and jury members “feel good” when their pre-conceived notions are confirmed. On the flip side, nothing disquiets a viewer as much as when his/her prejudices are challenged. So Boyle does the safe thing.

Let’s say I made a movie about the US where an African-American boy born in the hood, has his mother sell him to a pedophile pop icon, after which he gets molested by a priest from his church, following which he gets tied up to the back of a truck and dragged on the road by KKK clansmen. Then he is arrested and sodomized by a policeman with a rod, after which he is attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants, and then uses these life experiences to win “Beauty and Geek”.

Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the “American experience” and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie. At the very least, I wouldn’t be on 94% on Tomatometer and a strong Oscar favorite.

lol

super

why the fuck did salim sit in a bathtub full of money inside a locked bathroom at the end

this movie sucked

also this won best drama and best screenplay at the globes u______u

if you're gonna die it might as well be in a bathtub full of money?

poor Indians, they love to bathe in money.

gr80, you have 5 weeks to steel yourself for the same at the Oscars, guaranteed.

man. seriously??

yeah and heath ledger won best supporting actor even though he's dead.

heath ledger won best supporting actor even though because he's dead.

dare to dream, doc

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jan/15/danny-boyle-shows?commentpage=3

this guy needs to watch salaam bombay.

the showing i went to was almost sold out, in a huge multiplex theater. kinda crazy since it came out like a month ago

this was pleasant and i understand why people like it but it's hard for me not to hate a movie that has 10-year-old kids saying things like "i was always going to find you ... it is our destiny." also it looked pretty shitty, like the quality of the cinematography/media - blown up on the big screen the digital artifacts (?) were pretty obvious, especially in the who wants to be a millionaire scenes; some almost looked like they were shot on videotape. kinda ugly.

Yeah and loads of the night shots looked like they were shot with a really high ISO or whatever the film equiv is - really grainy and noisy. I figured it was intentional, maybe going for the opposite of hollywood gloss, but it just looked bad. Quite enjoyed the beginning but "the game show & adult love story plot was execrable" is otm.

I haven't seen this yet but it seems like the only people who find this movie offensive are white guys.

i didn't think it was offensive, just dumb and ugly

the score was enjoyable though

I think a movie that was like the one described just above would be pretty cool

xp, an Indian friend of mine (living there currently) said she liked it more than any other Bollywood film she's ever seen (except for Water).

yeah all the people i know who hate this are white dudes, almost all of the hipster variety. embarrassing or not all the Injuns i know - christ even my dad - seem to love it/take pride in it (and agree with that editorial that it's > than fantasy-laden, reality-ignoring Bollywood crap)

i don't know i'd call "Water," a Bollywood or even Indian film btw - it was selected as best foreign film to represent Canada! and considering all the production problems/protests they went thru over there..yeah i'm sure even Deepa Mehta would call it a "Canadian film"

I was just repeating what my friend told me.

expected not to but i really liked this. ending was corny as anything, but i didnt actually mind. i welcomed the corn. dev patels accent was a bit ropey, and he was quite limited wrt his expressions during the game show scenes... the whole thing should have been in hindi really as there were a few things in there that would have come off better in hindi and just sounded a bit surprising in english to my ears... but overall, good movie. glad i saw it. and the kids were seriously amazing (despite the OCCASIONALLY clunky line).

surprised hipsters dont like it more tho, what with MIA on the soundtrack and everything (paper planes sounded perfect for the scene it was used in IMO, save for the gun shots and cash register sound effects). one thing i would have changed is i would have had more indian music on the soundtrack personally, but it wasnt jarring.

i. hipsters have alright taste on the whole & ii. MIA is pretty 2007 by this point

xpost - i dont see why water isnt an indian film - it was indian/can financed, its in hindi, its set in india, thats pretty good grounds for counting as an indian film!

I don't know what's got into me recently: I had to 'wipe a tear away' at the end of Slumdog Millionaire, which is ridiculous and a one-off I thought, and then the same thing happened with Harvey Milk.

I seem to have reached dickensian levels of sentimentality in 2009.

Dickens is Hubert Selby compared to SM.

Dennis Lim:

I would contend that the movie's real sin is not its surfeit of style but the fact that its style is in service of so very little. The flimsiness of Beaufoy's scenario, a jumble of one-note characterizations and rank implausibility, makes Boyle's exertions seem ornamental, even decadent. Beaufoy has suggested that Mumbai itself inspired this narrative sloppiness: "Tonally it shouldn't really work," he wrote in the Guardian. "But in Mumbai, not for nothing known as Maximum City, I get away with it." This is a corollary to the all-too-easy defense that Slumdog is awash in clichés because it is an homage to Bollywood movies. The resemblance, in any case, is superficial. Some of Slumdog's melodramatic tropes are Bollywood (and Old Hollywood) staples, but the limp dance number that closes the film lacks both the technique and the energy of vintage Bollywood....

A slippery and self-conscious concoction, Slumdog has it both ways. It makes a show of being anchored in a real-world social context, then asks to be read as a fantasy. It ladles on brutality only to dispel it with frivolity. The film's evasiveness is especially dismaying when compared with the purpose and clarity of urban-poverty fables like Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados, set among Mexico City street kids, or Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, set in inner-city Los Angeles. It's hard to fault Slumdog for what it is not and never tries to be. But what it is—a simulation of "the real India," which it hasn't bothered to populate with real people—is dissonant to the point of incoherence.

http://www.slate.com/id/2209783/pagenum/all/

OTM

It's hard to fault Slumdog for what it is not and never tries to be.

OTM. Comparing this movie to Killer of Sheep is waaaaaay beside the point.

But what it is—a simulation of "the real India," which it hasn't bothered to populate with real people—is dissonant to the point of incoherence.

I agree with the idea that many of the plot points and decisions are unreal or fantastic, but how does one justify the idea that the characters themselves aren't real, or are less "real" than characters in other works of fiction?

the star-crossed lovers aspect (which pretty much defines the main kid & the girl) is pretty artificial

so it's about as real-seeming as other works of fiction that don't try to seem very real in that sense, mixed with the much more real-seeming depictions of poverty etc.

It's not a documentary, it's a movie!

Why does Dickens muddle up "Oliver Twist" with all those poor kids?

actually star-crossed lovers always have to die, I think.

I think Lim is saying the characters bear no resemblance to figures who would live in the milieu in which the filmmakers place them.

no foul Dickens comparisons, plz. However, OT is not a major novel of his (the first?) -- as my NYU prof pointed out, Oliver speaks the King's English.

yeah Shasta, it's a really bad, silly movie.

Yeah yeah, and Romeo & Juliet is far from Shakespeare's greatest works, but that doesn't mean it's not one of if not the most popular. Go fig, et al.

ok, Oliver T was Dickens' 2nd after Pickwick Papers.

no matter how stylized the plot, Dickens put more flesh on a character in 3 pages than this film manages to do with the whole gallery.

^i actually agree w/ morbs here - my issue with this movie was that i didn't really care about the fate of any of the characters really. esp. jamaal whose whole mission seemed like trifle to me. like i would stop being friends w/ someone who went to those lengths to reconnect w/ a girl

esp one who he stopped knowing at age 12 or w/e. i can't even remember ppl who i was friends w/ when i was 12, let alone risking my life for them.

btw i did like this cuz i can submit to sappy romantic stuff (also the kids were great) but to think that this is best picture is a little ridiculous

no foul Dickens comparisons, plz. However, OT is not a major novel of his (the first?) -- as my NYU prof pointed out, Oliver speaks the King's English.

It's a pretty enjoyable book, but I guess it's no Killer of Sheep.

and it seems there may be real-life exploitation as well as the aesthetic kind:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/4347472/Poor-parents-of-Slumdog-millionaire-stars-say-children-were-exploited.html

Silly me, I thought the movie would completely overhaul the economic realities of India.

that's not at stake.

Boyle and producers issue denial, etc.

The Hollywood classic ending (eighties):

They lived happily ever after, and they got to keep all the money.

YES, the glories of retro materialism. Folks who hate this movie just don't understand how game shows will make the earth flat, as Tom Friedman would belch.

Wow, someone should outlaw this movie.

This movie is worse than Barack Obama's presidency.

it's longer.

this movie is not as bad as Abel Ferrara's Mary, admittedly.

This movie is as great as the New York Mets in September!

XD

i liked this a lot but am really surprised at just how many awards its clocking up. very strange. the song n dance number at the end isnt meant to be a bwood routine in earnest though -its like an outtake.

sort of like the rest of the film was an outtake from Apu Goes Trainspotting.

nice comment from a news blog:

"it had the stunted mentality of poorly written musical but without any songs"

"sort of like the rest of the film was an outtake from Apu Goes Trainspotting."

um, no.

A slippery and self-conscious concoction, Slumdog has it both ways. It makes a show of being anchored in a real-world social context, then asks to be read as a fantasy. It ladles on brutality only to dispel it with frivolity.

yeah this was my big problem with the movie

me too, that says what i was trying to get across much more clearly.

I don't think it's quite as black-and-white as that. I think it shows brutality and how frivolity mingle, how one informs the other. It's sort of like the Gold Diggers of 1933 of the new world order.

i just wanted to recomend this film instead (if i havent already):
http://61.90.250.46/webboard/uploads/post-2860-1117649124.jpg

about the conveniently voiced "exploitation" Morbs linked to:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/29/child-stars-and-parents-h_n_162399.html

Child Stars And Parents Happy About "Slumdog Millionaire"

LOS ANGELES — The makers of "Slumdog Millionaire" have done more for the film's child stars than their parents ever could, the father of one young actress said.

Rafiq Qureshi, whose 7-year-old daughter, Rubina, appears in the film, said that the filmmakers enrolled his daughter in school and "are taking complete care of my child."

"Whatever a parent could have done, they have done much more than that," he said during an interview with AP Television in Mumbai, India on Wednesday.

The film, which has earned widespread accolades and 10 Academy Awards nominations, came under criticism this week after reports in British newspapers suggested the child actors weren't adequately compensated for their work.

Wow, this:
A slippery and self-conscious concoction, Slumdog has it both ways. It makes a show of being anchored in a real-world social context, then asks to be read as a fantasy. It ladles on brutality only to dispel it with frivolity.

...right, because films about people living in poverty and slums can ONLY be ponderous and serious, and everyone must be miserable in them. Nevermind the surveys that've said that the "happiest" (defined as most content w/ their lives) people living in Mumbai are actually livin in Dharavi!

If you can't accept what this film passes on as "fantasy," how can accept the idioms or conventions in any commercial Indian cinema, going back to Boot Polish or even Awaara ? Fucking bullshit...Lim (and Morbs!) should stick to the self-important agonies of Apu-Ray and leave dancing to the rest of us..

I watched this film as a fantasy/fable rather than a doc. It's a Danny Boyle film, not everyone in Glasgow is a smack addict with violent mates either.

What I liked about the film (esp. the bits with the kids) was the playfullness of it. Boyle didn't seem to bully me into feeling sorry for them. You may feel bad that they're living in poverty like that, but I didn't feel as if the kids feel bad about it, they're just getting on with it and making life a bit of a game, as kids everywhere do. The subtitles bouncing around the screen just added to that playfullness, and the chase through the slums at the start augmented this feeling for me.

All goodwill was destroyed after the Millionaire show ended. If they had stopped there I would have been happy, but they had to chuck in a montage. It was the only time I felt manipulated.

It may have been ragged on upthread, but I thought the film looked great, using Mumbai as a backdrop without it being touristy - really stunning imagery. The aerial shot of the slums during the chase scene was terrific, as was the kid dressed in blue as hindu god.

The call centre made me lol. Do Indian call centres really have classes on British minutia?

Vich, it all comes down to how well the fantasy elements are executed. Lagaan is hardly ponderous despite the themes of colonialism etc.

also, with very few exceptions... fuck dancing.

It's a Danny Boyle film, not everyone in Glasgow is a smack addict with violent mates either.

Trainspotting is set in Edinburgh.

Or Edinburgh even. Thank you sub-editor.

but filmed in Glasgow!

well, much of it was...

"I don't think it's quite as black-and-white as that. I think it shows brutality and how frivolity mingle, how one informs the other."

this and notenough otm.

it would be OTM if the frivolity in the movie was realistic in any way. fortuitous movie coincidence does not inform realistic brutality

You don't think any of the frivolity in the movie was realistic "in any way." I don't agree with that.

i believed the call center stuff. i used to work at a company that got taken over by GE, and the tech support line went to india. they all had to pick lol american-sounding names, like clint eastwood.

This call-center sequence was a little bit like hearing a standup comedian in 1983 riff on "If E.T. had landed in my neighborhood..."

also, with very few exceptions... fuck dancing.

You sad, sad little man.

Juul Haalmeyer troupe wd be one of the exceptions obv

Because the only good dancing is purposefully bad dancing that shows how stupid dancing looks, right?

(To be clear, I think the dancing at the end of Slumdog is pretty weak, even if the presentation is muscular.)

OK, I'm sure you know I just meant I'm not a dance aficionado.

or I was just flippantly answering Vich's assertion that I Hate Fun.

http://www.bard.edu/institutes/fishercenter/press/pressphotos/images/TheRedShoes.jpg

Just seen this. Great film, great story. Highly recommended. *review ends*

Did I ever mention that when it comes to fantasy careers I'd much rather be a dancer than a film director?

well make sure that your brutality and friviolity mingle in your fantasy career please okay?

They will mingle in my dance steps.

If you stay through the credits, you see the secret ending: police inspector glances up at corkboard behind his desk, realizes suddenly that Jamal's explanations are a pastiche taken therefrom, drops cup of chai; cup shatters, revealing "Latika" engraving on underside.

My favorite part is where a crew of policemen enjoy chatter and cigarettes while there's people on fire running down the street.

Finally saw this, and I enjoyed it. Funny that (polyphonic) invokes "Oliver Twist" cos a 1/3 of this really felt like it. I bet parts of the India are that poor but I also bet heroin addicts would crawl through a toilet to get their fix. Most times the latter seems more likely to me.

Oh, and I did kind of wish this huge important Oscar-nominated internationally famous film about India that everyone loves didn't focus around Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Though I'm sure that will help with DVD sales in the red states....

the company behind who wants to be a millionaire produced slumdog too...

That makes sense! Yes this movie is a VERY effective commercial.

i dont think the book the films based on had anything to do with the producers though, so it wasnt like they thought 'hmm we need a film vehicle to promote our already hugely popular gameshow thats televised in a billion countries'. unless the author was that cynical and thought this might help him get a film adaptation ;)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/08/bafta-awards-2009-winners

I dunno about you guys, but I have a Pavlovian reaction to the Millionaire "tension" music. Enen if I'm not really watching the show, those chords get me going every time, even if I don't really give a toss about whether they get the £16k or not. I thought SD piggy-backed on that really well, and so for the final question, even tho I knew that he was gonna get the question right, the Millionaire music still got me emotionally invested. Maybe it's cheap manipulation, but it was such an original way or playing with emotions that I've got to take my hat off to it.

jesus christ what the fuck is wrong with some of you ppl, it's seriously like you only exist to be miserable

you are RIGHT!!!!

Morbs, right? Not pint-sized Mumbai shit-divers.

Not pint-sized Mumbai shit-divers (which btw EW)

But it's filmed in such a way that it's joyous!

(BTW, I really did like this movie, in case there was any doubt.)

I'd rather be miserable than a slumdog millionaire.

(Some people only like crowd pleasers when they don't please crowds.)

(Or, rather, actively displease crowds.)

(A la Benjamin Button.)

Milk is an excellent crowd pleaser, but it didn't do Eric good.

Milk patronizes its core audience way more than this movie (though I'll admit it's probably still a smarter movie).

I was ENRAGED at his brother after that scene and pretty much spent the entire rest of the movie full-on loathing him (despite the fact that he saved Jamal's ass several times).

I just saw this yesterday and was surprised by how much I liked it. Also I want to marry adult Latika.

Basically every time I thought it was straining credibility a little that dude would be SOOOOO obsessed with her, she would pop back up on the screen and I'd go "oh that's right, SHE IS RIDICULOUSLY UNREAL GORGEOUS"

standing & applauding for Stuart Klawans' pithy review in The Nation:

"Who wants to be Satyajit Ray? the subject may be poverty and social change, but the name of the game is fun, and its clues are child beggars, Bollywood, call centers and Taj Mahal--everything the average Westerner might know about India, short of Ben Kingsley in a loincloth."

everything the average Westerner might know about India

Ya, like how Satyajit Ray is the only filmmaker to come out of India, rite?

c'mon, the one who dealt w/ these themes that all but 0.3% of Americans can name...

what is the core audience of this movie aside from ADD patients who like their derivative fairytales with 15 (that's right, 15!) coincidences, and electrode torture?

Jim Emerson of Chi Sun-Times:

Not since "Crash" -- or possibly "Mississippi Burning" -- has a movie packaged brutality in slicker, shinier, tighter shrink-wrap. It's asphyxiating. You will never have to worry about what you are supposed to feel and when you are supposed to feel it because the movie will always feed you the answers, then smack you when it's your cue to emote. You can "surrender" completely to the experience (it demands nothing less), and you needn't worry that you will be given an idle moment in which you will be left to feel, or breathe, on your own. This is the kind of mechanical spectacle people like to call an "audience picture," but that's simply because it doesn't allow any space for non-autonomic responses. Don't even get me started on the schematic, dramatically flat structure (game show question followed by flashback to how how the contestant learned the answer)...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/01/oscars_no_comment.html

^ that is, Ray is the ONLY one all but a handful might name (Mira Nair might be second)

Ah, so Klawans is right because he can actually name an Indian filmmaker?

no, he's right cuz it's a crap viselike sadistic feelgood machine.

Re: Emerson

Not since "Crash" ...

Stopped there. Nothing compares to Crash. Certainly not this movie.

quel doctrinaire!

srsly why is it that the only things you ever say positive things about are spiteful, hateful rants

srsly not true.

(perhaps it just seems that way because movies are worse than ever.)

movie discussions surely are

yeah when "the chick was hot" is the #1 rallying point for most that are discussed here.

Certainly about as valid a comment on the movie as the idea that it resembles Crash.

Overall I think that's going too far, but the last half hour enters that airspace.

esp THE FUCKING THREE MUSKETEERS QUESTION

If you want to compare it to a soulless, hyper-jacked up, relentlessly cheery (and misguidedly so, given the subject matter) crowdpleasing Oscar juggernaut, then at least choose the correct parallel. Slumdog is the new Chicago, not the new Crash.

Well, expressed as an answer to "What was the character's motivation throughout the latter part of the story?"

(many xposts)

Slumdog is the new Chicago, not the new Crash.

You mean cuz the cast can't dance? :D

also Chicago (at least when done right, as in the film Roxie Hart) employs knowing irony, nowhere in sight in SM.

xpost No arguments here on that one. That scene's a triumph of momentum, not movement.

I didn't really notice because aside from not knowing good dance from bad, i just wanted to turn the TV off.

Are there ironic crowd pleasers?

whoa, whaidaminit.. TV?

'fess!

I saw more Oscarshit than I have in years bcz I got screeners. I plan on going back to not seeing Oscarshit now. (Based on the wise critics who hate it, I'm pretty sure I would not have risked $12 on it.)

SM, that is

I liked "Chicago" more than "Slumdog Millionaire".

I think that a story predicated on a former street urchin knowing almost every answer on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" due to his fucked-up childhood/quest for love is jumping up and down on the irony buttons, but maybe that's just me and the way I parse things.

Also, in more "Dan has the amazing ability to pay attention to movies" stakes, they said how he got on the show during the scene where he took over for his friend in tech support and tracked down his brother's number; according to someone they knew who worked the technical aspect of "Millionaire", if you dialed during a specific word in the host's "dial now to be a contestant!" speech, you would get on the show. (In true "Dan sometimes glosses over details when he's having fun" fashion, I can't remember what the word was but I do remember Jamal admonishing his friend for not waiting for it.) I also liked how they showed Jamal as an information sponge in that scene when he was serving tea during the call meeting and he was spouting off random British tabloid facts on command.

The movie was not at all plausible but it was very, very entertaining. I think getting pissed off at the final question shows severe hostility and contempt for the movie that must have started from the beginning of the movie; OF COURSE it was going to be a "Three Muskateers" question! Thematically, plotwise, what else could it have been?

Someone tell Jim Emerson he can read a book if he wants that kind of experience.

Also it is funny that people are picking at the plausibility of the Millionaire questions when 5 minutes into the movie a huge film star signs a (clean) photograph given to him by a child covered in human shit without batting an eye.

Stars signing autographs for a crowd often don't look at the people.

I think that a story predicated on a former street urchin knowing almost every answer on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" due to his fucked-up childhood/quest for love is jumping up and down on the irony buttons, but maybe that's just me and the way I parse things.

Well, the very first "million pound question" reached (but passed on) in the UK edition was "Which county cricket team has their ground at Chester-le-street", was an easy one for me as it's 2 miles from my wife's home town.

So, each question could be 'the only twelve things that a person knows'

Well, the very first "million pound question" reached (but passed on) in the UK edition was "Which county cricket team has their ground at Chester-le-street", was an easy one for me as it's 2 miles from my wife's home town.

That's easy for anyone with a brain

yeah, but the contestant took the half-mill.

Loser

Jim Emerson he can read a book if he wants that kind of experience.

this film does impress ppl who don't expect much out of the medium.

Plausibility is not a serious objection, or the one most people are making.

Ya, clearly my problem is I don't expect enough out of cinema.

I'll let you know after my Ms 45 / Mommie Dearest double feature (someday).

Taking the Slum Out of ‘Slumdog’
By MATIAS ECHANOVE and RAHUL SRIVASTAVA

NY Times

Mumbai, India

IT does not take much to galvanize protest against a movie in India, but few thought the word “slumdog” would cause so much anger — especially as hundreds of Bollywood titles translate into much worse slurs. We had to pay attention, though, when friends from Mumbai’s sprawling Dharavi area joined hands with those demonstrating against the Oscar-nominated film “Slumdog Millionaire.” The Indian media widely reported that the outrage was over the word “dog.” But what we heard from Manju Keny, a college student living in Dharavi, was something else. She was upset at the word “slum.” We could not agree more.

In truth, the movie never claims to be a portrait of Dharavi, though some of the most spectacular scenes were shot there, including depictions of the anti-Muslim riots of 1992. The director, Danny Boyle, constructs a cinematic slum out of many pockets around Mumbai. The opening sequence has children playing near the airport, being chased by policemen and ending up — in a moment of pure Hollywood magic — a few miles away in Dharavi.

The imagery represents what most middle-class residents of Mumbai (and now all over the world) imagine Dharavi to be. The urban legend of its squalor has taken root because few Mumbaikers have ever been there — just as most Manhattanites still avoid stepping anywhere near Bedford-Stuyvesant, that beautiful neighborhood in Brooklyn. Times may have changed since the mid-’70s, when the community worker Barry Stein described Bed-Stuy as the “largest ghetto in the country,” but prejudices die hard, in New York and India.

Its depiction as a slum does little justice to the reality of Dharavi. Well over a million “eyes on the street,” to use Jane Jacobs’s phrase, keep Dharavi perhaps safer than most American cities. Yet Dharavi’s extreme population density doesn’t translate into oppressiveness. The crowd is efficiently absorbed by the thousands of tiny streets branching off bustling commercial arteries. Also, you won’t be chased by beggars or see hopeless people loitering — Dharavi is probably the most active and lively part of an incredibly industrious city. People have learned to respond in creative ways to the indifference of the state — including having set up a highly functional recycling industry that serves the whole city.

Dharavi is all about such resourcefulness. Over 60 years ago, it started off as a small village in the marshlands and grew, with no government support, to become a million-dollar economic miracle providing food to Mumbai and exporting crafts and manufactured goods to places as far away as Sweden.

No master plan, urban design, zoning ordinance, construction law or expert knowledge can claim any stake in the prosperity of Dharavi. It was built entirely by successive waves of immigrants fleeing rural poverty, political oppression and natural disasters. They have created a place that is far from perfect but has proved to be amazingly resilient and able to upgrade itself. In the words of Bhau Korde, a social worker who lives there, “Dharavi is an economic success story that the world must pay attention to during these times of global depression.”

Understanding such a place solely by the generic term “slum” ignores its complexity and dynamism. Dharavi’s messy appearance is nothing but an expression of intense social and economic processes at work. Most homes double as work spaces: when morning comes, mattresses are folded, and tens of thousands of units form a decentralized production network rivaling the most ruthless of Chinese sweatshops in efficiency. Mixed-use habitats have often shaped urban histories. Look at large parts of Tokyo. Its low-rise, high-density mixed-use cityscape and intricate street network have emerged through a similar Dharaviesque logic. The only difference is that people’s involvement in local development in Tokyo was seen as legitimate.

Building on what exists, rather than clearing it for redevelopment, may preserve not only the character of a place but also its economic vibrancy. In Dharavi, it would allow all residents to leverage their most precious asset: a place to live and work. Slum-rehabilitation projects in Mumbai often end up creating new slums elsewhere as they increase real-estate value in the places they redevelop.

In the movie, when the protagonists return to their childhood haunts, they find that multistoried apartments have replaced the old decrepit structures, giving the impression of urban mobility and transformation. What the camera doesn’t reveal are the enormous shantytowns hidden behind those glistening towers, waiting to be redeveloped all over again.

In many ways, Dharavi is the ultimate user-generated city. Each of its 80-plus neighborhoods has been incrementally developed by generations of residents updating their shelters and businesses according to needs and means. As Ramesh Misra, a lawyer and lifelong resident, puts it: “We have always improved Dharavi by ourselves. All we want is permission and support to keep doing it. Is that asking for too much?”

Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava are affiliated with the research collective Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research.

soundtrack is awesome but i dunno that i ever need/want to see this given hype/descriptions i've read despite being interested in the underlying sociological issues

also: i hate it when individual films sweep awards shows.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_boo

I didn't get as far w/ my second SM song parody:

O Danny Boy-le
Mumbai, Mumbai is calling...

For all its flaws, Slumdog was the most vibrant and original of the nominees. Better than Benjamin sodding Button anyway.

good ad quotage-style line.

Morbz's fave politican = Morbz's favorite film critic

The purpose, of course, was to spin -- or guide -- the journalistic guests on the speech to Congress. But one participant tells me the president began by talking about "Slumdog Millionaire," the India-based film that cleaned up at the Oscars.

Obama said the movie reminded him of the years he spent in Indonesia.

In another revelation, the president disclosed that he has napped briefly on the Oval Office sofa.

wtf, slow news day????

From one corporate-produced fairytale to another...

There are worse films, and politicians.

xp

BREAKING NEWS: President naps on Oval Office sofa

BREAKING NEWS: Morbius can't help it

jumping in the shit?

I don't think it's far to zing Morbs for making Obama zings when others are expressly asking him to.

Understanding such a place solely by the generic term “slum” ignores its complexity and dynamism. Dharavi’s messy appearance is nothing but an expression of intense social and economic processes at work. Most homes double as work spaces: when morning comes, mattresses are folded, and tens of thousands of units form a decentralized production network rivaling the most ruthless of Chinese sweatshops in efficiency. Mixed-use habitats have often shaped urban histories... In many ways, Dharavi is the ultimate user-generated city

Slum 2.0 then?

nausea-inducing, in a way. 'homes that double as work spaces', uh-huh. 5 gets you 10 the writer likes deleuze.

In the movie, when the protagonists return to their childhood haunts, they find that multistoried apartments have replaced the old decrepit structures, giving the impression of urban mobility and transformation. What the camera doesn’t reveal are the enormous shantytowns hidden behind those glistening towers, waiting to be redeveloped all over again.

I'm not sure that glistening towers as unequivocal symbols of progress is really what that scene is getting at, seeing as he's sitting up in the scaffold with his nouveau-rich brother who is the henchman of a millionaire gangster. Just saying like.

I liked it alright but the fact that it has Oscar buzz is nuts

seconded

the fact that it has Oscar buzz is nuts

Really? Seems to me it ticks many of the Academy's boxes - it's big storytelling, epic, sentimental and redemptive. A less unlikely winner than last year's, for sure.

I feel like the ppl saying "I can't believe this got Oscar buzz!" haven't actually paid attention to the movies that get Oscar buzz.

Agreed.

true, fair enough.

but doesn't alter the fact that I didn't think it was that great.

How many Oscar movies are actually that great? I mean, look at fucking "Shakespeare In Love"!

Or how Nicole Kidman's fake nose in "The Hours" won her an Oscar for something that should have garnered Razzie after Razzie after Razzie!

i mean 'that' great in general, not 'oscar' great. if yer follow.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/1103/slide_1103_17537_large.jpg

Rushdie:

""Now (the old) sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead.

"In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion.

"But for a first-world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/salman-rushdie-novels-film-adaptations

"Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion."

I don't think this is at all true, actually.

Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion.

I'm not so sure about that.

Haha xpost.

I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion.

are we sure about this?

oh shit i'm third in line!

I've seen a shitload of indian movie growing up and a lot of them paint america as a pretty horrible place

i dunno i feel like i've read a lot of criticism of von Trier's US trilogy of movies on the basis of him never having been there.

for example, happy indian family has a son move to america, come back, and suddenly he's a huge alcoholic who beats women all the time

"i dunno i feel like i've read a lot of criticism of von Trier's US trilogy of movies on the basis of him never having been there."

Haven't you also heard a lot of praise of von Trier's US trilogy.

yes, but the same with Slumdog.

So what's the big double standard here, again?

that's what i was kind of saying, that the criticism isn't valid because any director who makes a film about somewhere he's never been is opened to criticism over that.

Also the issue with von Trier's isn't so much that he's never been to the US, but that he doesn't want to come to the US and he actively despises it. That's a touch different.

this may be obvs and dumb but boyle went there to make the film and von trier's never been here, right?

well he's scared of flying so he wouldn't have much luck if he wanted to go.

take a fucking boat

anyone read the new yorker article on mumbai slums?

"Sunil knew nothing of the movie that ends with an airport-slum boy finding money, love, and fame. However, he might have recognized one of that movie's conceits: that deprivation may give a child a certain intelligence. The other conceit-- that a child's specific miserable experiences might be the things to spring him from his deprivation-- was the lie. It was the movie version of the electrified fence. The women who had been manicured and exfoliated and blown out would linger at the (Slumdog) premiere past 1 am, then head to the after party at the JW Marriott. They could relax, not just because the film about the slum boy had a happy ending but because the boy's suffering had been part of the solution."

this is why i didn't go see it-- i watched the trailers, read the criticism, and heard about it from friends, and the entire thing just made me feel a bit disgusting inside.

the (lack of) politics of this movie >>>>> the politics of, say, Born into Brothels

The other conceit -- that a child's specific miserable experiences might be the things to spring him from his deprivation -- was the lie.

The film is pretty straightforward about this being incredibly unlikely, miraculous, predestined event, and not a commonplace one.

lol i haven't seen this movie yet nor i have i read that entire rushdie article, and you guys are probably right that an Indian film director wouldn't be torn limb from limb for blah blah blah, but this

Now (the old) sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead.

is true and very much an irritation that i've heard indians voice. i'm not sure what to do with it, tbh; not saying the movie shouldn't have been made, but

/predictable rushdie-stanning

okay now i'm reading the rushdie article and i wish it were a polemic on slumdog but it's actually long, rambly and about adaptation. it has a high words:ideas ratio. :-/

No wonder Padma dumped him.

looooooool right, i imagine he's insufferable in person. i am only a stan-from-afar.

"people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism"

This applies to virtually everything though. It's certainly not specific to Slumdog.

yeah but the west-east dynamic...well it's there enough to irritate people in the east, at least.

It's an inevitable thing, particularly when you're dealing with entities that have colonialist ties. I would not go so far as to say it makes the artistic endeavor invalid but it does cast some nasty connotations on the end product; the trick is getting those connotations to work for the story. I think that by making the entire thrust of the story be about unlikely destiny, a lot of the problematic stuff in the movie made the transition from "this is how Mumbai REALLY IS" to "this is a hyper-exaggerated fantasy version of Mumbai". It built upon the central narrative conceit rather than detracting from it; it sign-posted a lot of assumptions/stereotypes about its characters as being unrealistic rather than saying "this is what these people are like", and still at the core there remained a very human, relatable story about a young man who really really really really wanted to get with this unbelievably-bangin' chick.

i have to stop opining about movies/books i haven't seen/read on ilx. i admit that the thought of seeing this movie makes me tired. anyway, for some more context on what rushdie's referring to, here's a passage from katherine boo's recent new yorker article about the mumbai slums:

In India, "Slumdog Millionaire," a British film whose credits included Bollywood stars, would not be universally admired. In Bihar, slumdwellers greeted the opening by threatening to burn fifty-six effigies of the director, whose movie title equated human beings with dogs. A media-mad politician in a neighborhood close to, but nicer than, Gautam Nagar, pressed the dog point with a lawsuit, hoping to force the filmmakers to change the name. He thought "Slum Dash Millionaire" would be more polite. Many educated, successful Indians disliked the film, too, but not because it slighted the poor. Rather, they thought it slighted the increasing affluence and prominence of their country.

The West did seem to make a fetish of the Indian poor, even as the official poverty rate was falling, from thirty-six to twenty-seven percent in a decade. Sunburned tourists ventured forth from five-star hotels to take eight-hundreed rupee, four-hour slum tours. Madonna took a slum tour, too, though hers was free. In every room of Mumbai's new Four Season Hotel, housekeepers placed a copy of "Shantaram," a romantic novel set in the city's slums, in a bedside drawer, in lieu of a Bible. Perhaps this Western fascination had something to do with sheer numbers: India still harbors a third of the world's poor. But Western status anxiety could not be ruled out entirely. While the great powers struggled, only sixty years free of colonization, continued to boom, with sufficient entrepreneurial energy and human potential to threaten the traditional global order.

Still it wasn't just national pride that made prosperous Indians skeptical of "Slumdog." The film's squalid images didn't comport with the India they frequented. While official statistics told a story, true or not, about the dimensions of Indian poverty, it was getting harder than ever for the rich to gauge the particulars. Across the country, electrified fences, walls jagged with broken glass, security gates had gone up as inequality grew. This frenzy of fence-building was not just an Indian thing. It was as global as the crisis in garbage. And it reflected an uneasiness about a time that might or might not come in which information flowed so freely that, however little the rich wished to consider the details of the poor, the poor might fully consider the details of the rich. Not the fantasy contours of wealth long available on the television and on the billboards but the precise thing happening next door. The fences insured against a time when a scavenger in Gautam Nagar might learn that a shot of rare Scotch consumed in ten minutes at the Sheraton's ITC Martha cost exactly as much as he earned in seven hundreed fourteen-hour days picking up aluminum cans and used tampon-applicators, and find that information too much to bear.

The marvel was that the city didn't already look like a real-life version of the mad, insurrectionist Metal Slug 3, given that the poor far outnumbered the rich. This was the marvel of many great twenty-first century cities, including New York and Washington, whose levels of inequality now match those of Abidjan and Nairobi. Maybe they should have looked like Metal Slug 3. Instead, ingenious social construtions--democracy, charity, subtle and blatant articulations of caste, hope, electrified fences--were keeping things more or less in order.

As the local newspapers gorged on "Slumdog," a fresh statistic appeared on the inside pages: Mumbai had more reported burglaries than any other metropolitan are in the country, with the greatest concentration in Sunil's area, the western suburbs. Perhaps these thefts were one of the city's secret safety valves: small leaks that kept the whole contraption from exploding. To the private corporation now running the airport, or to the government running the country, the total value of the loss wasn't just a rounding error. It was a bargain. The occasional bit of German silver kept the boys of Gautam Nagar in vada pav. It kept one of the world's great, unjust cities in relative peace.

And buried in the article, her critique of the movie:

Sunil knew nothing of the movie that ends with an airport-slum boy finding money, love and fame. However, he might have recognized one of the movie's conceits: that deprivation may give a child a certain intelligence. The other conceit--that a child's miserable experiences might be the thing to spring him from his deprivation--was the lie. It was the movie version of the electified fence. The women who had been manicured and exfoliated and blown out would linger at the premiere past 1 AM, then head to the after-party at the JW Marriott. They could relax, not just because the film about the slum boy had a happy ending but because the boy's suffering had been part of the solution.

Wasn't the book (written by an Indian) called Slumdog Millionaire?

No, it was called Q & A.

Didn't they already make that movie with Timothy Hutton and Nick Nolte?

look, i don't think the reaction against the title is a particularly good critique of the movie, but it does bear witness to Indian sensitivity at being represented by the West.

Oh wait you weren't joking. Hah yeah I guess I can see where that change is kind of weird.

can i just o_O at this:

In every room of Mumbai's new Four Season Hotel, housekeepers placed a copy of "Shantaram," a romantic novel set in the city's slums, in a bedside drawer, in lieu of a Bible.

a little?

God, I really hated Shantaram.

so i saw this last night and was ready to feel some uncomfortable socio implications, but realized pretty quickly that it was 100% a throwback/fable/odyssey-type love story that quite intentionally does not say a single thing about irl India. then i liked it quite a bit.

^^^this was my point/reaction

it's also probably the best best picture winner of the 2000s

I finally got to the movie theater for the first time since November to see this - thought it was fun. As far as Hollywood-Does-Bollywood goes it ticked off all the right boxes - a little slapstick, a little action, a little love-story melodrama. Totally failed on the musical front though (that credit sequence was very blah compared to the awesome ridiculousness you get in yr average bollywood film). Do not care about Oscars, or what Salman Rushdie has to say (why do people still listen to that bozo?)

also seemed blindingly obvious to me that this movie had no pretensions to realism - in the context of transposing Bollywood's conventions onto Hollywood's it worked exactly as one would expect. Hollywood equates violence and poverty with realism - ergo if yr gonna make a fable, in order to make it convincingly "real" just throw in some scenes of shit and torture and voila mission accomplished. I was surprised that some folks (ie, my parents) complained about the violence in this but it all seemed like Charles Dickens sorta shit to me.

wow there seems to be a LOT of point-missing going on upthread. bad show morbz

but it all seemed like Charles Dickens sorta shit to me.

it all seemed like shit Charles Dickens to me.
when did I say realism?

you do realize, cad, that it is an Oscar winner bcz the Academy found that it says many powerful things about irl India.

sappy, suspense-free, and packed with one-note characters, including a female lead who's more object than person....The best you can say about it is that it's stylish schmaltz.

^^^you linked this review so I assume you think this is a legitimate complaint, but this is a reading that could apply to practically every Bollywood movie, so its like rejecting an entire genre out-of-hand because the reviewer doesn't want to accept the genre's central premises.

re: the Academy, who cares why they vote for anything, they're a bunch of retards

Xpost Hardly, otherwise the holocaust movie or the sensitive gay one wouldve won.

but they didnt have happy WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE THIRD MUSKETEER endings.

anyway I now look fwd to this thing being forgotten a la Crouching Tiger.

that's not a bad analogy - CTHD operates on a similar level (ie, Hollywood does Hong Kong) and was enjoyable for what it was, but I wouldn't say it was better than its source material or a great movie or anything.

you do realize, cad, that it is an Oscar winner bcz the Academy found that it says many powerful things about irl India.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, March 11, 2009 3:49 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

is there evidence for this or is it just lol ignorant voters cynicism? besides, i'm just statin' opinios, i have no idea why most people voted for it.

"anyway I now look fwd to this thing being forgotten a la Crouching Tiger". . . and virtually ever other movie ever (except for Munich which my children will be flabbergasted I didn't recognize the genius of.)

:P

Amadeus was also a good Mozart intro/finale for Academy members

Believe it or not, saw this for the first time tonight. I skimmed the comments above, and seeing as it gets jumped all over by...well, I'll just call them the usual suspects...I wish I could say I liked it. I didn't, though--not at all. It settled down some the last half-hour, but most of the rest I found almost assaultive. I don't think I've ever seen such a loud film; the theatre where I saw it (Toronto's Lightbox) literally shook at times. It was like I was seeing Earthquake or something.

Anyway, I'm enquiring about one song I liked a lot. Not one of the M.I.A. songs, I knew them; it's the song that plays when Latika makes her final escape from the gangster lord, after Salim gives her the car keys. It was kind of pop-discoey. There was no point in checking the end credits, as I never would have picked it out from a list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXOj4bUuzSg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXOj4bUuzSg