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.

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