Living beyond of the hype of 'Slumdog Millionaire'

Well now we are getting bored Agreed that the movie was Ok and but there is more to life than the Oscar expectations of this movie ! Check this out - ( I subscribe to the online version of NY times - just as a language reckoner rather than anything else and to read movie and book reviews ) one of the critics wrote "..Western film critics instructed the laity to 'see Slumdog Millionaire in order to better understand this benighted Asian metropolis".And, despite the temptation of easy available pirated DVDs, I waited for the official movie release, hoping for the full 'movie-going' experience.

Well, the positives first -

The kids ( especially Ayush Khedekar) was fab ! Lovleeen Tandon take a bow for selecting these kids. I liked Dev Patel - given he is a little goofy here and there but he does have his moments. It is shot very well - Anthony Dod Mantle's disarmingly honest camera and India has been captured the way Mira Nair did in Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding. It does have a Dickensian flavor and one leaves the movies feeling all is well in Jamal's life unlike some of the arthouse stuff where we walk out of the cinema even more frustrated and feeling helpless ! Simon Beaufoy's screenplay is far more superior than Vikas Swarup's novel which I found very trite and much like a one trick pony - every chapter has one answer !

The bloopers are many - you have already added some and let me also add some more

1. Which govt primary school in India teaches Dumas ?

2. Towards the end when Don song is blaring in the background in Javed Bhai's den - Kareena is dancing to the tunes of Yuva ?!

3. Jamal knows Samuel Colt invented the revolver because Salim's got a gun ? Since when did Mumbai goons leave 'khoda', 'samaan' and switch to 'Colt' ?

4. Since when did call centres serving customers in Scotland keep telephone directories of Indian cities accessible at the click of a button, where mobile phones are listed in telephone directories ?

5. How does the blind kid 'recognise' Jamal ?

Having said all this regarding the ever continuing debate about romanticising of poverty of amchi New York - this is what a western reviewer wrote on how the West would have reacted on a similar movie based in US - " Say an Indian director travelled to New Orleans for a few months to film a movie about Jamal Martin, an impoverished African American who lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, who once had a promising basketball career, but who -- following a drive-by shooting -- now walks with a permanent limp, whose father is in jail for selling drugs, whose mother is addicted to crack cocaine, whose younger sister was killed by gang-violence, whose brother was arrested by corrupt cops, whose first born child has sickle cell anaemia, and so on. The movie would be widely panned and laughed out of theatres."

Ok, if 5810 film aficionados finally decide that this movie needs an Oscar, I will shut my trap and change my spiel and start liking the film all over and meticulously find more things to praise it.

Saw 'Luck by chance' yesterday. Despite my irritated daughter who totally got bored and I had to walk out seven times with her for excuses of popcorn, Samosa, ice cream and susu , I still liked it. Maybe it could have been edited better and made a little shorter and the implausibe last five minutes where everything is about Konkan SenSharma who was just one of lesser characters in the movie till then - it is still worth one dekko !