Slumdog Millionaire

[john]

Saw this today...

Really just echoing the sentiments already shared, but the first hour is pretty terrific, if not at all revelatory.  Boyle shoots everything with such vibrancy and enthusiasm that it's so easy to fall in love with it all. It's truly alive, and it's had not to appreciate that.

Then everything just stops. All motion, everything, just gets weighed down by the need to conclude and connect every contrivance they've established.

Still, I was more invested in this than in Boyle's last two efforts. Maybe he should do something with John Hodge again.

[picolas]

spoils

this was sooo disappointing. it boggles my mind that this is tipped for best picture in the same year as the wrestler and so many other far more gripping films.. i found boyle's style too scattered/messy (and far too dutched). jamal was terrrrrible. one of the most self-conscious, immature performances i've seen this year. (probably just behind thandie.) the millionaire host jealousy sub plot was RIDICULOUS. the fact that all these answers came in the chronological order of his life was RIDICULOUS. the romance was RIDICULOUS. the decision to end it all on a goofy celebratory dance took the wind out of any dramatic momentum. (though i do support goofy celebratory end credit dances in general.) it's not a bad movie. it has its moments. but this is just a couple of shades above mediocre. c'mon people.

[Ravi]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123059568693241001.html

One Movie Composer Who Knows the Score
By BRIAN WISE

When British director Danny Boyle needed a composer to capture the frantic and violent hustle and bustle of Mumbai for his film "Slumdog Millionaire," he turned to A.R. Rahman, Bollywood's best-known composer, whose dozens of film scores span romantic symphonic themes, classical Indian music, and catchy pop confections. In India, Mr. Rahman is a megastar, having sold an estimated 100 million albums, or roughly the same number as Madonna or Billy Joel. Not only has he scored such Bollywood film classics as "Roja" and "Lagaan," but he has a growing slate of international credits, including the 2002 Andrew Lloyd Webber-produced London stage musical "Bombay Dreams" and last year's film "Elizabeth: The Golden Age."

Mr. Boyle's exuberantly paced story -- about an orphan from the Mumbai slums who gets a shot at winning a fortune on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" -- is a distant cry from Bollywood, where Mr. Rahman has worked for nearly two decades. "He didn't want any sentimental or sad stuff. He wanted only throbbing and edgy and pulsating sounds," Mr. Rahman said of Mr. Boyle's request to avoid emotion-tugging themes and maudlin arrangements.

"The music came as a kind of counterpoint actually," added the soft-spoken 42-year-old composer. "When there's something really serious happening on screen there was a fun soundtrack underneath. It would make the movie more enjoyable."

With its intoxicating Indian rhythms blended with Western hip-hop beats, the "Slumdog Millionaire" soundtrack has received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score, making Mr. Rahman the first Indian composer to receive such an honor. (Music from the film is collected on a new soundtrack release.)

Mr. Rahman said that after receiving Mr. Boyle's commission, he had just three weeks to study early DVD cuts of the film and compose the cues (the musical themes that correspond to moments in the plot). On two tracks, he quotes well-known Bollywood tunes, while in one of the film's most talked-about sequences -- the rousing chorus "Jai Ho" -- he pays homage to splashy Bollywood song-and-dance routines. Mr. Rahman also worked with M.I.A., the British-born, Sri Lankan-reared rapper to create "O . . . Saya," which is heard in a pivotal scene. "She speaks my language, but her sensibility is completely different," noted Mr. Rahman, who grew up speaking Tamil.

While a typical Bollywood music director may score up to 150 movies a year, Mr. Rahman limits his annual commissions to between five and 10 films (still a considerable number by Hollywood standards). In popular films like "Kadhalan," "Rangeela," "Dil Se," "Taal" and "Rang de Basanti," Mr. Rahman introduced styles relatively foreign to Bollywood -- including dancehall reggae, hip-hop, hard rock and Baroque counterpoint. Even so, he acknowledges that experimentation often bows to commercial pressures.

"The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater," Mr. Rahman said. "You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing. However, the good thing about Indian cinema is because there are so many ragas in it, you can take a raga and make it a little bit funkier and people can relate to it. Half of the stuff I get away with is like that."

Mr. Rahman identifies with the rags-to-riches tale of "Slumdog Millionaire." "A lot of people write you off when you have an idea or something good to say," he said. "This is to give hope to those kind of people. Take the right road and you will definitely be there."

Mr. Rahman was born into a middle-class Hindu family that fell on hard times after his father, the film arranger and conductor R.K. Sekhar, died when he was 9. The young Rahman, who began studying the piano at the age of 4, began helping to support his family as a keyboardist for television productions. As a teenager he performed with Indian musical luminaries like tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and violinist and singer L. Shankar. These gigs led to a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, where he earned a degree in Western classical music.

Returning to Madras (now Chennai), Mr. Rahman worked as a jingle writer for an ad agency. A turning point came in 1991, when at age 25, he was hired to write and direct music for the Mani Ratnam film "Roja." The film and soundtrack became smash hits, and Time magazine listed it as one of the top 10 movie soundtracks of all time. Today, Mr. Rahman remains based in Chennai, although he considers Mumbai his second home -- feelings that intensified after the November terrorist attacks.

"We were all affected by that," he said, noting the many press events that he's attended at the Taj Mahal hotel, the site of one of the attacks. "For me, it was a shock. I could have been there with my family. Some of my friends had a dinner reservation there. Then 10 minutes before they heard the news they stopped going. They could have been victims."

Even as the Mumbai attacks signaled growing religious and ethnic strife, Mr. Rahman, whose family converted to Islam in 1989, sees music as having the power to cut across class and religious divisions. "When I listen to Bach or Beethoven, I don't see them as Christians," he explained. "And when people listen to my music, or that of [the late Qawwali singer] Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they don't see the religious element in it; they just see the spiritual element. At this chaotic time in the world, music can play a very important role as a spiritual force."

Mr. Rahman said that despite Hollywood's allure, he has no plans to leave the Indian film industry, although he's ready to work with any director who appreciates his music. In 2002, Sony Pictures hired him to write the score for "Warriors of Heaven and Earth," a costume epic by Chinese director He Ping that included songs in Chinese, English and Hindi. Coming to movie theaters are his scores for "Paani" (Water), by "Elizabeth" director Shekhar Kapur, and "19 Steps," an English-language martial-arts film co-produced by Walt Disney and starring a Japanese actor.

"It's very difficult to get a director who understands what you're capable of," said Mr. Rahman. "Danny Boyle was definitely good luck for me. He could get what I was trying to do, and in my own little way I could get what he wanted. So if I can get another director like that I would definitely love to work in Hollywood."

Mr. Wise is a writer living in New York and a producer at WNYC Radio.

[MacGuffin]

Danny Boyle Q&A
Director discusses the brilliant Slumdog Millionaire.
by Chris Tilly, IGN UK

Danny Boyle discusses directing his critically acclaimed new film Slumdog Millionaire, the rags-to-riches tale of an orphan's efforts to win back his lost love by appearing on the Indian Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.

IGN: When you initially heard about the project, were you put off by the Who Wants to be a Millionaire hook?

Danny Boyle: They didn't really pitch it. I don't think the agent was very interested, he said "It's a film about Who Wants to be a Millionaire?." But it was written by Simon Beaufoy, who had written The Full Monty, so you have to read a bit of that, at least, but I didn't want to make a film about a gameshow. But they didn't mention it was set in India, and they certainly didn't mention the way the gameshow was used in the story, so I was in after about 10 or 15 pages of it. I remember thinking, this is it!

And it's weird, it only happens occasionally that you get kidnapped by a script. You don't wait till you get to the end or anything, you can feel it happening to you. And when I look back at my decision, it's not based on the full story - the unravelling of why he's on the show - so I think it's based on the city. It's the set-up - meeting the kid, seeing him on the show, seeing him in the slum, and the city - those ingredients made me do it.

IGN: What was it like shooting in the city - did you feel out of your comfort zone?

Boyle: Yes, absolutely. But you do it for that reason, because your comfort zone is not a good place to make a film in, in my opinion. You should get out of your comfort zone as much as possible, you shouldn't have a clue what you're doing, ideally, and yet be able to make sense of it somehow. That's the kind of equation you want.

With a film in India, you have to hire people. I made a mistake on The Beach. I took hundreds of people from here who knew how to do it theoretically, and it's not the right way to do those films, especially nowadays. You have to try and build a film from the inside. So we took virtually no one, and got a Bollywood crew. They are the people to deal with, and they are the people that make the film feel like it starts to belong. Now it doesn't quite belong there, because the culture is different, and there is a Britishness about the film - I think its realism - that gives it its British flavour.

Because our bedrock, mine and Simon's, is always realism. That's what we start with. That's how we judge everthing - do you believe that person would be doing that job at that moment? You judge everything like that as a British director - that's the culture we come out of. But then it kind of moves on and picks up more of the culture of Bombay, which is coincidence; which is melodrama; which is this extraordinary passion for life; which is violence and beauty at one and the same time.

IGN: Did you have to be careful of striking a balance between plundering the culture, and yet remaining respectful towards it?

Boyle: Yes, and you have to work your way through that, it's a really good way of putting it. Because you are an outsider, and you've really got to get people to trust you, and you have to build that trust over a long period of time as you prepare. There are certain key people that you make that relationship with and they basically become your co-directors.

And I can only credit one as co-director, which is the casting director Loveleen Tanden, because the first assistant director, for Guild reasons, you can't credit him as the co-director, nor the sound guy, but those three people made the biggest difference for the film. Normally, it's your cinematographer, or your designer, or your lead actor, or your writer - that key relationship. But for me on this one it was those three people, local people on the crew from Bombay.

IGN: What's the reaction been like from people in India?

Boyle: It hasn't been released there - it's released on January 23 in an English-language version and a version dubbed fully into Hindi, which they're preparing at the moment. So far the reactions have been very good, which is amazing really because you're very nervous about it. But it's a very generous place.

It's like America - they're much more open-hearted than we are here, everything's on the front foot. The violence as well, when it comes, which is scary. But it's a much more open place, we are much more careful and considered about things. There it's all about the heart - if you feel it, you say it, and it's out. They see their city depicted and they love it, so we've had a very good response so far.

IGN: The film is receiving incredible critical acclaim wherever it has screened - are you able to enjoy that?

Boyle: Well it's better that it being the other way round! The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success. You never relish it and I think that I'm quite happy that I don't relish it, because I don't feel that comfortable. It's not something that I settle into at all.

And I've had it a couple of times, with Trainspotting, and with 28 Days Later, they were big successes, in different ways. I always think, when there's stuff that people don't like, I always say that if I have another success, I'll enjoy it more, but you don't really.

It's wonderful for the film. The great thing with film is that it doesn't have an ego. It's just a film. Everybody that makes them has an ego, and the problem with awards and stuff like that is that it always affects the egos, and everyone gets stained by it in some way. And that can be fine and very innocent, but it can be horrible as well. So I don't feel that relaxed about it, but it's very nice.

IGN: Finally, with the year ending, what have been your favourite films of 2008?

Boyle: I'll tell you a couple I've seen recently that have just been extraordinary. I saw the Swedish vampire film, Let the right One In, and it's fantastic. Sometimes you see film and you get really jealous, and that one was just fantastic. I also saw Waltz With Bashir, and that was excellent. I saw Hunger, which was brutal. I saw two films virtually back-to-back, Hunger and The Wrestler, and they were both brutal films about the human body, but in weird, different ways, and both of them were amazing. So that's what I've liked recently.

[Redlum]

I wouldn't call the coincidences in this film RIDICULOUS. I see this film as the indian Oliver! and it has plot twists and characters similar to any Dickens story. It's like the Carol Reed Oliver meets the David Lean one.

I suppose the brutality and cruelty in the first half of the film kind of sets it up to be taken more seriously than where it was headed, though. The romance stretched it for me a little but it wasnt so bad.

They're marketing it like Mama Mia in the UK - the film whose box office receipts and dvd sales have shamed my nation.

[Gamblour.]

This was good, but it's not worth a Best Picture or anything. I had never seen anything about Mumbai, so this revealed a lot to me, and it was beautifully shot at times, sloppy at others, and overall really predictable. And it's about ten minutes too long. It's just Juno all over again, but it's going to win.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

Other than employment, free movies and popcorn, the best part of working at a movie theater is hearing people stumble through movie titles or otherwise just make them up.  Synecdoche, NY obviously had the most butcherings pronunciationwise, but Slumdog Millionaire has yielded some of the most confusing/hilarious alternate titles by patrons who it seems go to movies to eat popcorn in the dark for two hours.

What makes these titles so great is the starkly unique premise that each of them presents.  I really wish I was making these up:

Scumbag Landlord

Millionaire Dog

Slim Millionaire

Slumlord Billionaire

Rich Slumlord

A Million Slumdogs

[Kal]

LOL those are great

Scumbag Landlord... some people really project what they want haha

[OrHowILearnedTo]

Millionaire Dog

[MacGuffin]

Slim Millionaire

[MacGuffin]

Indians don't feel good about 'Slumdog Millionaire'
The story of an impoverished street child in Mumbai, which has won 10 Oscar nods, is a stereotypical Western portrayal, Indians say, that ignores the wealth and progress their country has seen.
By Mark Magnier; Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Mumbai, India -- Even as American audiences gush over "Slumdog Millionaire," some Indians are groaning over what they see as yet another stereotypical foreign depiction of their nation, accentuating squalor, corruption and impoverished-if-resilient natives.

"Slumdog," which earned 10 Oscar nominations this week, including one for best picture, is set in Mumbai, is based on an Indian novel and features many Indian actors. Yet the sensibility is anything but Indian, some critics argue. They attribute the film's sweeping international success in large part to its timing and themes that touch a chord with Western audiences.

"It's a white man's imagined India," said Shyamal Sengupta, a film professor at the Whistling Woods International institute in Mumbai. "It's not quite snake charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour."

The story of an orphaned street urchin, Jamal Malik, overcoming hardship to win a fortune on a game show and walk away with his childhood sweetheart -- capped by a Bollywood ending of dance, song, love and fame -- provides a salve for a world beset by collapsing banks, jobs and nest eggs, some here say.

The film, which bagged four Golden Globe awards this month, was released in the United States days before Mumbai came under attack by a team of militants. That may have strengthened its connection with foreign viewers, analysts said.

Mumbai was an ideal backdrop for the international production, wrote Vikram Doctor, a columnist in India's Economic Times, since it is a "cutting-edge, if rather crummy, place" that has slums along with the sort of posh restaurants favored by the global glitterati. "Who, after all, is interested in unremitting squalor, sameness and sadness?" the column said.

"Slumdog's" mix of Indian and foreign talent, and English and Hindi dialogue, has sparked a debate here over whether it's an Indian or foreign film. It was based on a novel by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, directed by Briton Danny Boyle, best known for "Trainspotting," adapted by British screenwriter Simon Beaufoy of "Full Monty" fame, and acted by Indians and foreigners of Indian descent. Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros. are handling distribution in India.

"These ideas, that there are still moments of joy in the slum, appeal to Western critics," said Aseem Chhabra, an Asia Foundation associate fellow and culture critic.

Others, such as Shekhar Kapur, who directed "Elizabeth" (1998), argue that for all intents and purposes it's Indian. "What's most relevant is that 'Slumdog' is the most successful Indian film ever," he said. "It was directed by a British director and funded by a European company, but so what?. . . . Foreign crews are very common in Indian films now."

"Slumdog" cost $15 million to produce but has already earned more than $50 million in the U.S. and elsewhere. It saw its Indian premiere Thursday, in Mumbai, and began screening with the original soundtrack or completely in Hindi on Friday in 400 theaters in 81 cities.

At the star-studded premiere, Boyle responded to criticism here that the film focused too much on prostitution, crime and organized begging rackets, saying that he sought to depict the "breathtaking resilience" of Mumbai and the "joy of people despite their circumstances, that lust for life."

For some, the underdog theme is not so much irrelevant as passe. Rags-to-riches tales dominated Bollywood from the late 1950s through the early 1980s as India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty.

With the nation's rising standard of living and greater exposure to foreign culture, Bollywood has increasingly turned its attention to relationships and other middle-class concerns.

"Within the film world, there's a desire to move beyond the working class and lower sectors of society," said Tejaswini Ganti, an anthropologist and Bollywood expert at New York University.

The ambivalence some Indians feel toward the movie doesn't preclude it from becoming a roaring commercial success in India, experts said. "There is still a fascination with seeing how we are perceived by white Westerners," said Sengupta, the Mumbai film professor. "It's a kind of voyeurism."

Many in Bollywood also have transferred onto "Slumdog" their hopes for an "Indian" Oscar after homegrown favorite "Taare Zameen Par" failed to garner a nomination. "Taare," about a dyslexic child who finds an outlet through art, was the latest in a string of Oscar letdowns dating to 2002.

Between rolls of their eyes, critics here point to other foreign depictions over the years that they consider inaccurate, distorted or obsessed with poverty and squalor, including "Phantom India," "Salaam Bombay" and "City of Joy," in which a Western doctor played by Patrick Swayze arrives to save India.

Some add that the criticism of "Slumdog" may be less about getting it wrong than its focus on issues some in India would rather downplay.

The world's second-most populous country after China has seen enormous benefits from globalization. But "Slumdog" raises questions about the price paid by those left behind and the cost in eroding morality, seen in the portrayal of Salim, Jamal's gangster-in-training brother. For India, this hits a nerve, after a top Indian IT outsourcing firm, Satyam, reported this month that it had faked profits.

"A lot of people felt it was bashing India, but I disagree," said Rochona Majumdar, an Indian film expert at the University of Chicago. "We're too quick to celebrate 'Incredible India,' she said, referring to an Indian tourism slogan. "But there is an underbelly. To say we don't have problems is absurd."

Salman Ali, 12, lives those problems. He's been on his own as long as he can remember, he said. Dressed in a ragged T-shirt, filthy pants and bare feet, he sleeps under Mumbai's Mahim pipeline, a local landmark featured in "Slumdog" amid the Technicolor water, toxic electronic waste and petroleum sludge. He earns a few dollars a week recycling garbage or begging on the nearby overpass.

Sometimes police beat him up, he said. And several times gangs have attacked him and stolen what little he has. Sure, he'd love to appear on a game show like Jamal did in the film and become a millionaire.

But however hard he tries to make money, Salman said, he never gets ahead. His dream is to become a Bollywood star one day. And whenever a film crew shows up to shoot amid the squalor, he tries to get their attention. But he said they never pick him. "Who wouldn't want to be a millionaire?" he said.

A few miles away, in the maze of alleys that make up Dharavi, Asia's largest slum and another backdrop for the film, some said the plot sounded too close to real life and therefore not interesting, whereas others said they wanted to see how it depicted their neighborhood.

Homemaker Lakshmi Nagaraj Iyer, 26, said she had trouble with the get-rich-quick premise. "I feel it's a wrong route," she declared. "We barely get by, but the answer is education and hard work, not a quick fix."

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

India's reaction helps reaffirm that this movie was not a documentary for me.

[SiliasRuby]

This was really really good but still I felt a bit underwhelmed. Not boyle's best.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

Wake up Xixax, I think you're becoming less critical and it grinds my gears!

This was really really bad.

[GoneSavage]

Pretty good movie, I had a good time at it but definitely not picture of the year. 
Did anyone else think the gameshow host looked quite a bit like Luis Guzman??  I can't find a good image of the host to post but it made me laugh throughout the film.  Also the main cop interrogator looked like an Indian Jeff Goldblum, just sayin.