Saw this yesterday afternoon. Very good movie. Great directing
and casting. Very sobering look at growing up in India with some
of the shots of the slums there and what kids are subjected to.
There are a few scenes with subtitles but most are done in English
in case that was turning you away from seeing this one. It will be
interesting to see how this movie is treated when awards season
comes around. I don't think this movie fits the usual big studio
mold but it is certainly worth considertation.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

"Slumdog Millionaire" may be this year's "Pan's Labyrinth", or "Life is Beautiful". A movie from overseas, directed by--oddly--Danny Boyle ("Sunshine", "28 Days Later", "Trainspotting"), that transcends where it's from. Forget the subtitles, forget the fact that it takes place in Mumbai. This is a story about people that we've seen in our own backyards--even if they are tucked away in the bad neighborhoods. We've seen the rags-to-riches stories.

And in this case, like in our sometimes, we blur the lines between our heroes and our villains. Who is the villain in this story? It centers around two brothers, Jamal and Salim, who could be mistaken for Cain and Abel at times. Salim being the Cain character--looking after his younger brother, but in a violent way, taking the money while Jamal takes the heart. But both want the same thing--happiness. As they grow up together, through the slums of India, manipulating lazy tourists and taking advantage of their own bad luck. Jamal never forgets a girl that they allowed into their "posse", though Salim wants her out of it since it seems to cloud the road that he's trying to pave--which is riches.

It turns out, Jamal is the one who winds up in the basket of riches, when he's on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". But because of jealousy and envy, the host (who had won the most before our beloved protagonist), thinks the kid is cheating, and has him arrested.

That's basically how the story begins. The movie weaves in and out of the past and present, of Jamal and Salim's modest beginnings, to their adolescent lives where things get a little stickier, and illustrates a side of life in India that maybe we Americans don't always see (they've got their own version of South Central, for example). But by the time of the climax of the film, we get a good idea of what this film is about--

There are two kinds of destiny. There's the destiny that fate gives us, and there's the destiny that we make ourselves. Obviously the former sometimes helps the latter. But, in the case of Salim, there is the case of being the victim of the latter--while in the case of Jamal, there's the hero buried deep in the former. Or maybe it's a bit of both.

Either way, this film hits on all cylinders of character development, and by the time we get to the final question for our guy, Jamal, we can't help but root for the guy, and we want destiny to work out for him.

This is simply one of the best executed films of the year, and it deserves the accolades it is getting. It should get some awards, but it shouldn't be forgotten--this isn't a flavor of the month. This is a film to cherish, even if some of the logic doesn't always work.

out of

Saw it twice this week and it has quickly jumped into my top 20 of all time. I had little knowledge of the subject matter of this movie before watching but think ANYONE who is even remotely interested in movies has to watch this film. Thought it was just the flavor of the month with all the hype I've been hearing about it but it exceeded any expectations I had built up. I actually enjoyed the movie more the 2nd time around (for reasons I won't post because it could be a spoiler). One piece of advice though when watching for the first time is to make sure to identify which brother is which by name and look throughout the movie and how they act. Jamal is the younger brother who is on the show at the beginning. I didn't pay close attention when I watched it first and that took away from part of the main story for me since it wasn't clear which brother was which when younger. 4 stars for sure and a must watch for anybody. Don't watch it with kids though, there's quite a few squirmish moments.

I saw the prequel..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw

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Just saw it tonight. Great flick. Had heard "overrated" but I disagree.

This movie is basically just an updating of nineteenth-century Horatio Algier "rags-to-riches" stories in which poor people miraculously ascend to great wealth as a result of their pure hearts. This is a highly individualistic conception of social change, one that is greatly inferior to the idea of collective struggle put forward in Milk. There the protagonist's pure heart is not rewarded with social advancement, but is punished with political assassination; still, the movie can be seen as a triumph because Harvey Milk was inextricably linked to a greater social movement. His story, in other words, was not rooted in the idea of escaping his social milieu (as is the case with Slumdog), but in changing the meaning of it. To me, Milk is a far superior movie because it refuses the impulse to de-collectivize social marginality, reminding us that lasting change is a product of communal, not individual meaning.

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what i did like about "milk" was that it gave life to not just him, which is what most biopics do, but to the movement itself.

but "slumdog" was a crowd pleaser, and those will typically win out. had no problem with it winning best picture. it was effectively executed and had a lot of heart.

What an incredibly touching movie.

In hindsight, the one thing I'd like to see more of, would be this....

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The name's Rockmore. Beef Rockmore

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