Slumdog Millionaire

I had read about Slumdog Millionaire when they had screened it at the Dubai Intl Film Festival. I downloaded this film and watched it a few weeks back. Although it was a fun film, I cannot for the life of me imagine why this film won the best film Golden Globe and why it is nominated for the best picture film at the Oscars.
True, I haven't watched all the other films that have been nominated or that have been omitted, but anyone who has watched slumdog will agree with me on a few points.

1. The acting/ dialog delivery was sub-par. Dev Patel was not at all apt for this role. If you look at actors like Ben Kingsley, Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, etc etc.... all have had impeccable dialog delivery and accents in their films, whether they had to play a Mahatma Gandhi, a gun slinger in Arizona, a Publicity Agent, a Stepford wife, French Royalty or even a bunch of Pirates. Dev Patel did not look or sound at all like anyone who has lived in Indian slums his whole life.

2. The story....OMFG....What slum kid who gets a gun says "The man with the Colt 45 says shut up"??? - And from that incident, Jamal figured that Samuel Colt invented the revolver??? (The "gunmaster G-9" bit was genius, albeit a bit much... considering that you need to be a mithun fan to know about that.)
Apart from that, the blind beggar boy identifying the 100$ note... yea right! The KBC host making fun of a chai-walla on air - a bit much to believe. In understand the aim was to make the audience hate Anil Kapoor's character, but it can be done in other ways.

I guess there are many ways to poke holes in this film. Lets get tot he bottomline. Does it entertain? Yes it does. But when you watch even fantasy films like Pirates of the Caribbean, or The Dark Knight, you realise that actors in "non-real" films make so much of an effort to be true to the character, and a slumdog millionaire gets nominated for an oscar for that sub-par execution and acting. If you look at the other films that got nominated - Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, The Reader, you will notice that all of these films has a best actor or best actress nomination. Some awesome films like The Dark Knight, Revolutionary Road, Changeling, The Wrestler have been left out from the best picture category and it is really appalling to see Slumdog get a nomination while these other are left out.

With all due respect to ARR, the music of Slumdog is barely average. His work in Hindi and Tamil films has been miles ahead of the stuff he has done here. Even in this category, the Academy managed to leave out the Bruce Springsteen song from "The Wrestler".
I must admit, I have not seen all the films mentioned above, but I will have watched them all by this weekend. And if I stand corrected after that, I shall post again and hail Slumdog as the king. As of now, I feel changeling is miles ahead of slumdog.

An afterthought to the post - WTF was the bollywood song & Dance picturisation of Jai Ho all about??

Happy New Year

Well, its been a not-so-great new year for me so far. An uncle passed away, the company I work for is in deep shit and the best friends are Rs. 10/minute phone calls away.
But hey, tally ho...chin up and all that jazz. It can't get much worse, can it? Oh man, that's just tempting fate! But wat the hell, I've been in a job I hate that pays crap, for a while now. Maybe if I lose my job it'll be a good thing. But the good thing is, I'm not wallowing in self-pity and depression. Sure things like these bum you out. The key is to have distractions. Friends are always around if I ask for them, my family is great, life is good.

Having said that, I feel the lack of something. Its not something I can put my finger on. But its one of those "feel nahi aa rahi" phases. I'd put it down to the 10 hours of dreary clerical work everyday. But I know thats not it. I have always been good at leaving the drudgery behind at office when I leave. I now find myself being intolerant of people, being a lot more sarcastic (as if i wasn't sarcy enough already) a lot more disinterested in people and things around me, enjoying time alone at home more, finding comfort in episode after episode of 'The Office' and 'How I Met Your Mother', without ever feeling the need to have a set of Barney, Marshall, Ted, Robin and Lily to fall back on. I don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing. (Yea i know i'm being contradictory now... coz earlier i spoke about having friends when i need them etc etc.... but thats the state of mind I am in) But thats what I feel right now.

Of course there always are exceptions. People who don't feel the sarcasm and don't see the irritability. That could be because either they are so close or special to me that they are above this. Or they don't matter enough. Its those in between who get caught.

I don't know why I'm overthinking this. Maybe its just that everything is happening at the same time and thats what is getting to me. Or maybe I'm just getting old.