Brokeback Slumdog Millionaire Mountain!

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/02/20/nytfrontpage/20090220POD_7.html



Pictures of the Day, February 20

Rubina Ali, one of the child actors in "Slumdog Millionaire," prepared inside her Mumbai shanty to go out shopping. All nine actors who play the three main characters in three stages of their lives will attend the Oscars in Los Angeles this Sunday. The rags-to-riches story set and shot in the slums of Mumbai has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/20/slumdog-millionaire-kids_n_168485.html

"Slumdog Millionaire" Kids Will Attend The Oscars




Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, looks on while shopping for shoes in Bandra, suburban Mumbai, India, Friday, Feb. 20, 2009. Azharuddin played the youngest portrayal of Salim, the brother of the main character Jamal, in the Oscar-nominated film Slumdog Millionaire.  The child stars of the film will take their first airplane trip when they attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday.


by ERIKA KINETZ
February 20, 2009 06:42 PM EST | 

MUMBAI, India — In the slums where they live, goats pick over piles of trash and men kneel in the street to pray. But the young stars of "Slumdog Millionaire" were cruising Mumbai in an air-conditioned Toyota Friday, doing last-minute shopping and getting advice on the unimaginable: air travel.

The slumdog kids had just got the good news _ they were going to the Oscars.

"I feel very very very very very very good," 10-year-old Azharuddin Ismail said, sitting across from his home, a scruffy lean-to of tarps and blankets.

He'd never been on plane. He'd never traveled outside India. And, when pressed, he couldn't name any Hollywood stars he'd really like to meet.

Neither could Rubina Ali, his 9-year-old co-star and neighbor.

Both were plucked from the slums of Mumbai by director Danny Boyle to star in "Slumdog Millionaire,"  a rags-to-riches tale of a slum kid who makes it big. The film has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Azhar, as his friends call him, was cast as the hero Jamal Malik's brother Salim, and Rubina as the young Latika, who grows up to be his love interest.

All nine actors who play the three lead characters in three stages of their lives will attend the awards ceremony Sunday. "The kids are on their way to the Oscars! Everyone is very excited!" Boyle said in an e-mail confirming the good news Friday.

They include actors comfortable on the red carpet, like 18-year-old Dev Patel, who lives in London, and the glamorous Freida Pinto, 24, who has been praised in Vogue  as a new style icon. Others, like Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, who plays the young Jamal, live in India but did not grow up in the slums.

But for Azhar and Rubina, there was a frenzied scramble this week to get visas, passports and tickets after their parents decided at the last minute they wanted them to attend the ceremony, producer Christian Colson said.

Everything came through Thursday when the children learned they had their visas; their passports were issued a day earlier. Rubina was traveling with her uncle, Mohideen Khan, and Azhar with his mother, Shameem Ismail.

So Friday was anything but normal for Azhar and Rubina.

Around them the slum continued at its usual pace: Sewing machines thrummed from small, dark rooms. Women swatted flies from fresh-cut meat. Mangy dogs slept in the sun. Barbers sat in their barren shops, waiting for customers.

But Rubina and Azhar were chauffeured around in a Toyota Innova with leather seats, talking with a crush of reporters and visiting a local counseling center for some advice about how not to get sick in an airplane and how to handle themselves in America.

Rubina was all giddy smiles. "I'm very happy that I'm going to the Oscars," she said, as her aunt boiled rice for lunch. "I'm the only one of my friends who gets to see the Oscars. My friends are saying, 'Your fate is so good.'"

She said she plans to take a lot of photographs in Los Angeles to bring home to show her friends.

Her father, Rafiq Quereshi, stood by her side throughout the day, hugging her proudly now and then. He said he couldn't accompany her because he broke his ankle. "I wanted to be there," he said. He plans to watch the awards ceremony on TV.

Khan, who owns a shop that sells paan, a betel leaf, tobacco and spice chew, said he's not sure what he'll wear to the Oscars. Looking down at his faded shirt and trousers, he laughed, flashing teeth stained red from betel juice. "I'm thinking jeans and a T-shirt," he said.

Rubina packed her new clothes _ two pairs of jeans, two tops, and white shoes _ and watched her cousin paint fresh swirls of henna on her thin arms. She plans to get her Oscar night outfit in LA.

The filmmakers paid Rubina and Azhar for 30 days of acting work, gave the families a small monthly stipend and set up trust funds that the children can tap when they graduate from high school. Producer Christian Colson has described the trusts as substantial, but declines to reveal the amount.

News of the children's impending departure traveled fast, as a single, exciting word shot down the murky alleys: America.

"They are going to America, that's good," said neighbor Shakil Sheikh, 28, an auto rickshaw driver who said he earns 300 rupees _ about $6 _ a day. He was not quite clear about the benefits of a trip to LA. "We are very happy, but what did they actually gain in terms of money?" he said. "They stay in very poor conditions. They should be taken from this place to a good life."

His wife, Saira Sheikh, 22, who earns 1,000 rupees _ about $20 _ a month as a maid, giggled at the idea of America. "Who will take me?" she asked.

Dozens of wide-eyed boys, the same size as Azhar, vied for attention from journalists. They bared their skinny arms, begging to have stars drawn on their flesh.

Azhar's father, a rail-thin man who relatives say has tuberculosis and drinks too much, spent most of the day squatting outside his home issuing a stream of invective at anyone who got too close.

But even he managed a big thumbs up for his son. "Very very good," he said.

Shameem Ismail, Azhar's mother, said she's always dreamed of going to America. But her excitement was forgotten Friday in the crush of things to do.

"I am tired," she said, gripping her head. "I am suffering from a headache."

By afternoon, the crowd of journalists had thickened. Neighbors gathered around Rubina to watch her dance and sing for the cameras. Nearby, over 100 neighbors and reporters jostled around Azhar's house. Boys hung from a metal fence, straining to see.

Azhar jumped up on a wooden platform and gave a shout of joy.

There he was, a one-time school dropout clad in an old T-shirt and a pair of pink flip-flops, at the center of an ever-expanding universe.

"I am not a hero," he hollered. "I am only a small star."

Then his dad and mom pushed through the crowd and dragged him back home, into their shabby lean-to.

[serious crayons]

That is so unbelievably cute and poignant and sad. Thanks for posting it, John.

[Kelda]

Haing just ome home from India I can say that Slumdog Millionaire seems to capture India perfectly. I loved it.

Kerry - Bride and Prejudie is not a real Bollywood fi - it had UK Film 4 funding I beleive - so its a bit different from other Bolliyeood films. But I think you would very much like Slumdog - its not anything like any other Bollywood movie I've ever seen.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/arts/music/21rahm.html




‘Slumdog’ Fusionist in Oscar Spotlight


A. R. Rahman, in his natural habitat at the computer, works on five or six films a year, juggling several at a time.
He is a kind of national hero in India.

By BEN SISARIO
Published: February 20, 2009

A. R. Rahman knows how big a deal it would be if he wins an Oscar on Sunday.

One of the most prolific and successful film composers in India, he has three nominations, all for “Slumdog Millionaire”:  best original score and best original song, for both “Jai Ho” and “O ... Saya,” a collaboration with the Sri Lankan-British rapper M.I.A. (The film, by Danny Boyle, has 10 nominations, and last month Mr. Rahman won a Golden Globe for best score.)

“It would be a great honor,” Mr. Rahman said with characteristic diffidence in a phone interview this week from Los Angeles, where he was preparing to perform at the ceremony. “It would help me to do bigger things.”

Ask him what those bigger things might be, however, and he grows even quieter. Naming some Western directors he would like to work with, he sounds distracted, almost bored, as if the future is just too abstract to worry about.

“Baz Luhrmann,” he said. A beat, then: “Ridley Scott. I’m a big fan of Ridley.”


A. R. Rahman is one of India’s
most prolific film composers.

But when it comes to his music Mr. Rahman, who is 43 but with his cherubic cheeks could pass for less than 30, turns surprisingly chatty. His work has been in more than 100 films since 1992, and after scoring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bollywood-themed stage musical “Bombay Dreams”  in 2002 he enjoyed had a steadily growing profile in the West. One of the first major composers in India to embrace digital technology, he is in his natural habitat at the computer, and he maintains the manic, multitasking rhythm of a true 21st-century techie.

“I like to see a film and then start scoring it in my mind, while doing something unrelated,” he said. “You just grasp a film and start working, and something unpredictable comes out from a third element. The mind, the more active it is, the more productive it is.”

Productivity, along with a gift for golden melody and a cosmopolitan touch that reflects the new, globally conscious India, have given Mr. Rahman, who lives and works in Chennai (the city formerly known as Madras), a kind of national-hero status. “Rah Rah Rahman,” The Times of India  proclaimed on its front page after the Oscar nominations were announced.

“He has a rapper from Tanzania working with him,” Mr. Boyle said, “and fulfilled a mutual desire to work with M.I.A., part Sri Lankan, part London, part New York. Add the house-music disco beats sweeping Bollywood dance lately and you have a real moment of fusion.”

Mr. Rahman works on five or six films a year, juggling several at a time in various stages of completion. While unheard of in Hollywood, that pace is common in India, and Mr. Rahman has made his share of modern classics, like “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India”  (2001), beloved by Indian and Western critics alike, and “Dil Se”  (1998).

“Slumdog,”  Mr. Rahman said, was created in relatively luxurious circumstances: “I kept three weeks aside. I moved to London and did the whole score there.”

Even by the musical-sponge standards of Indian film, Mr. Rahman has been an especially curious fusionist. The son of a film composer, R. K. Shekhar, he grew up with a record collection that included Indian music and rock; two favorites were the American country singer Jim Reeves and Walter Carlos’s landmark electronic album “Switched-On Bach.”  (Born A. S. Dileep Kumar, he changed his name to Allah Rakkha Rahman when he converted to Sufi Islam in his early 20s.)

Mr. Rahman was playing professional sessions by age 11 and soon had a rock band. He received a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music in London, and upon his return to India began composing commercial jingles. His first film was “Roja,”  and his sophisticated approach quickly revolutionized Indian film music, said David Novak, an ethnomusicologist at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

“He’s sort of the Peter Gabriel of the Indian film industry,” Mr. Novak said. “He shifted things from a simple East-West mode to a multicultural, global mode, where India and its regional musics are part of a palette of sound from around the world.”

Mr. Rahman’s crossover to Western audiences has not come without bumps. “Bombay Dreams”  was a success in the West End, but on Broadway it closed in eight months and never recouped its $14 million investment.

“I’ve long been impressed by his talent, and I’m so pleased that Hollywood has recognized it,” Mr. Lloyd Webber said. “I’m just disappointed that Broadway didn’t get it when he and I did ‘Bombay Dreams’  there.”

An Oscar would certainly raise Mr. Rahman’s profile in Hollywood, and commentators in India and in the West have said that recognition for “Slumdog”  could help legitimize India’s film talent in general. Only two Indians have received Academy Awards: Bhanu Athaiya won in 1983 for best costume design in “Gandhi,”  and the director Satyajit Ray was given a lifetime achievement award shortly before he died in 1992.

But Mr. Rahman said he does not view the awards as a referendum on Bollywood, and indeed wasn’t getting his hopes up about the contests, in which his competitors include Mr. Gabriel, Danny Elfman and James Newton Howard.

He didn’t have an acceptance speech ready, he said, and his days in Los Angeles before the awards were packed with activity, including a performance of “Jai Ho” on “The Tonight Show”  on Thursday, meetings with various directors and record labels, and filming the video of a Pussycat Dolls remix of “Jai Ho.”

“I like to work fast,” he said.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Child actors from the movie "Slumdog Millionaire."

 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto.

(I saw them in an interview, together, the video posted somewhere on line, just before the film was to open in the States; he was definitely abashedly admiring her, and she was almost aloof. Look now--she is in love, and so is he. She has broken her previous engagement. She is 24, and he 18. We shall see how long it lasts, but while  it lasts--lovely!)

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

‘Slumdog’ Wins for Best Original Score
ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)
to: A.R. Rahman, “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight)


“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire”  Named Best Original Song,
ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (Original Song)
to: Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar


http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/



February 22, 2009, 11:10 pm
Less Glamour, More Significance
By A.O. Scott


A scene from “Slumdog Millionaire.”

The wins that “Slumdog” has racked up in some of the less glamorous categories— editing, cinematography and score — may be the most significant, since they recognize some of the film’s novelty. Its look, its pacing and its sound are not like the competition, and indeed not like a lot of commercial American movies. And yet it is an entirely accessible movie, not so much self-consciously exotic as effortlessly, eagerly eclectic. So the fast editing, the eye-popping colors and textures, the songs and the music may be, to some audiences and Academy voters, a bit unfamiliar, but they obviously work, extending the vocabulary of what we sometimes parochially think of as mainstream moviemaking in some exciting new directions.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Danny Boyle Wins Best Director
Danny Boyle wins the Oscar for best director for “Slumdog Millionaire.”
ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
to: Danny Boyle “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight)

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

‘Slumdog’ Takes Best Picture

“Slumdog Millionaire” takes best picture.

“Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), A Celador Films Production, Christian Colson, Producer