comment #1

actionman says ...

Opinions are like ace-holes; everyone's got one.

"Personally I felt like I had to pay unbelievably strict attention to understand what people were saying, and even then I feel like I missed half of it."

Um...huh?

comment #2

Sabina E says ...

He actually thought Slumdog Millionaire was "hard" to watch?

Um, no. a lot of ordinary folks that I know (who aren't into movies like I am) really like Slumdog Millionaire. It's the "sleeper hit" (if you consider it to be one), one of those crowd-pleasing movies that a lot of people enjoy.

I sure as hell don't see how "Slumdog Millionaire" is an "elitist" movie...

comment #3

actionman says ...

got this link from Tapley's blog:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jan/15/danny-boyle-shows

very interesting and astute piece

comment #4

swordandpen says ...

Does anyone think the "Slumdog" backlash is now reaching near-hysterical proportions?

Throughout its history, Oscar winners are irrelevant as to what movies stand the test of time, Which is why we talk about "Citizen Kane" today, as opposed to "How Green Was My Valley".

comment #5

jonshu says ...

the A students don't live in the village anymore ...

comment #6

MilkMan says ...

Anyone who has a tough time watching a movie as mainstream as Slumdog has the nerve to ask anyone to take what they have to say about anything very seriously. It's not like Slumdog is a Bela Tarr movie. Slumdog seems perfectly middle of the road to me and a typical choice for Best Picture as it offends no one and had the good luck to be released at a time when all things Sub-Continent are trendy. And it gets tiring listening to people conflate box office receipts with quality, as if that is the final word of what is good.

comment #7

Sabina E says ...

there's also a Bollywood backlash against Slumdog, because some of them are screaming how the movie portrayed India as "dirty and poor"... they want to pretend that poverty doesn't exist and everyone should be happy and singing in an escapist fantasy movie.

I hate Bollywood stars.

comment #8

twicks says ...

I thought it was a hard watch...mostly due to all the violence directed toward kids.

I'm no shrinking violet, but the unpleasantness of the electrocution scene, for example, pretty much prevented me from enjoying anything that followed.

comment #9

Sabina E says ...

@ actionman: yeah, that's the article I was gonna post here.

There's a former Bollywood producer, Mahesh Bhatt, who quit producing big budget movies because he was angry with how Bollywood has erased the existence of poor people in movies. so now he only produces low budget movies with "real" stories.

comment #10

Pete says ...

I would argue that an institution that hands out awards for "outstanding achievement" should, in fact, be "elitist" and "back-patting," much like the Pulitzers.

comment #11

Calraigh Bracken says ...

I agree with the idea of the disconnect, now more than ever it seems. But saying that Slumdog is ''a tough watch'' and aligning it with the idea that the Academy is some sort of elitist bastion, still, negates your whole comment Evan.The film is about as elitist as The Full Monty was. There are much better, more useful adjectives to describe the Academy. And they all should be variants on '' whatever is easiest and most convenient to watch''.

comment #12

George Prager says ...

What is wrong with "disconnects?" It's beyond me. THE DARK NIGHT is still a fuggin' superhero movie. A movie for 30 year-old 15 year-olds.

comment #13

Sabina E says ...

Yeah, it may be superhero movie... but it's still damn good and it's not really a typical superhero movie.

comment #14

crsryan says ...

The point is essentially sound -- Slumdog Millionaire has made less money than Space Chimps and there's no serious critic who thinks it's an important movie. They just think it's kind of fun and uplifting. It's only getting this kind of attention because Fox is so good at marketing it and playing into Academy-think.

comment #15

adaml says ...

"Slumdog a tough sit?"
"Hard to follow what people were saying?"

The guy's clearly only got half a brain.

comment #16

DarthCorleone says ...

Yeah, sorry. I vehemently disagree.

There should be some degree of disconnect. It shouldn't be a complete disconnect, because films do matter to the masses as pop culture, but I don't find the current disconnect nearly wide enough to be worrisome.

If the Academy Awards start completely kowtowing to public taste, what would happen to film as an artform? It would gradually become more watered down, more lowest-common-denominator, and less artistic. We need recognition for the films that push boundaries to keep the medium vital.

Stating that years from now 2008 will be remembered as the year of The Dark Knight does not really convey any useful information. It might simply be remembered in that manner because the most people saw it. Granted, it has a lot of critical appreciation, and I think it's a good movie. However, as far as keeping the art of film vital goes, it doesn't really add much to that mission.

comment #17

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

And apparently properly spelling film titles is *not* for 60 year-old 30 year-olds, George.

comment #18

Bart Smith says ...

The Academy and the critics taking steps to the middle to close the gap between them and the movie-going public is just about the worst thing that could happen. There has to be somebody demanding good movies from Hollywood, and clearly it isn't the American public that's making those kind of demands.

comment #19

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

So what movies kept "the art of film vital" this year, Darth? I have to say that's a very stringent qualification, and one the Academy has generally ignored over the years in awarding Best Picture.

comment #20

George Prager says ...

Sorry, CitizenKane. I don't have the lunch box sitting in front of me like you do. So it's spelled K-N-I-G-H-T? Can you double check for me?

comment #21

Mark says ...

Remove the notion that Sumdog is elitist, and the post may be on to something. Look back at the great 99 for instance. Most look back and think The Matrix and Fight Club instead of American Beauty and Cider House Rules.

comment #22

George Prager says ...

No one thinks of Cider House Rules. They probably think of MAGNOLIA and THE SIXTH SENSE. No one is thinking about THE MATRIX these days, and if they are, they aren't thinking, "Dude, this silly-ass movie should've won best picture!"

comment #23

Markj74 says ...

Slumdog Millionaire is the most populist film i've seen in ages. It was great fun, but is it really a Best Picture nominee? It is the most overrated film for a long time. Or since the Dark Knight anyway!

comment #24

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

George - Glad to see you're enjoying your E-bay purchase of The S-I-X-T-H SENSE lunchbox (complete limited edition with Haley Joel Osmont glory hole/ butter churner).

Careful with that sandwich. He eats dead people.

comment #25

DarthCorleone says ...

Mark>>

Fight Club was not a box office success. What public sentiment would the Academy have been appeasing? Yes, it's a beloved cult hit now, but if anything ignoring it is an example of the Academy's not being elitist.

As for The Matrix, it won Academy Awards. Granted, they were technical, but that's about the most a genre pic can usually hope for. So again, the Academy was not elitist.

If you're going to restrict your argument only to films that actually won one of the six major awards (e.g., American Beauty & Cider House Rules), the conversation becomes much less interesting. On that note, I think the Academy did a fair job of recognizing the spectacular year that was 1999 in terms of films that were both popular and critically acclaimed. All of the following received at least a nomination, and these comprise many of the films that make 1999 the great year (in terms of artistic endeavors and in terms of popular successes) that I consider it.

The Insider, The Sixth Sense, Sweet And Lowdown, Boys Don't Cry, Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Being John Malkovich, Election

I think that's a pretty good balance.

comment #26

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

"No one is thinking about THE MATRIX these days"

December 18th, 2009. James Cameron. Avatar.

You better stop posting, dude. You only have so many feet, and your mouth is full.

comment #27

George Prager says ...

For the record. CitizenKaned wrote a sentence that included the phrase "glory hole" and the name Haley Joel Osment.

comment #28

Sabina E says ...

ARRGGHH!!!!! did you guys just hear the news? There's going to be a remake of "East of Eden" which James Dean starred in!!

NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

comment #29

The InSneider says ...

"Which brings me to Slumdog., which is a very good film but a tough watch. Personally I felt like I had to pay unbelievably strict attention to understand what people were saying, and even then I feel like I missed half of it."

Um, I think we have different definitions of a tough watch. Rev Road is a tough watch. Che is a tough watch. Afterschool is a tough watch. They all have their rewards but you gotta be in a certain mood for each of them. You just need a pulse to be in a Slumdog mood. This guy's entire argument is borderline ridiculous. Wall-E is overrated. No one will remember 2008 as the year of Wall-E.

comment #30

George Prager says ...

ARRGGHH!!!!! did you guys just hear the news? There's going to be a remake of the "East of Eden" TV movie which Bruce Boxleitner starred in!!

NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

comment #31

Josh Massey says ...

"Personally I felt like I had to pay unbelievably strict attention to understand what people were saying, and even then I feel like I missed half of it."

That's exactly what I said after watching The Dark Knight.

comment #32

actionman says ...

I wish I cared about seeing Avatar.

comment #33

Sabina E says ...

after I watched "The Dark Knight," I had to go online and re-read the synopsis to make sure that I didn't miss anything in the movie.

Slumdog, on the other hand, was very easy to follow.

and George Prager, you are really a douche-bag.

comment #34

George Prager says ...

I wish I cared about women of color winning Oscars, Avatar, James Cameron, December 18, 2009, superhero movies, James Dean...

comment #35

Sabina E says ...

you are really a sad, sad man... hahahahahaha

you sound like you need a hug

comment #36

Luke Y. Thompson says ...

"The critics used to be a barometer for what people would like, but the disconnect is huge right now"

Nuh-uh. LAFCA just gave Best Picture to Wall-E.

comment #37

JHR says ...

Somebody needs to tip off Evan Boucher to the Peoples Choice Awards - I think that is what he is looking for.

comment #38

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

One suspects Mr. Boucher had his little rant in a desk drawer from last year and simply replaced the names of the films.

Only problem, it doesn't work with Slumdog.

Perhaps Mr. Boucher equates using non-white actors as some sort of elitist criteria, but the film is a pretty standard (yet highly effective and satisfying) melodrama. While the wife and kids were out, I took my 67 year old mother to see it and she loved it. I think there were only about 6 other folks my age in theater.

I have a feeling the aging members of the Academy are going to likewise respond to it.

comment #39

hunterd says ...

Insert my argument about how the Saw films are actually quite fascinating on a film theory level.

comment #40

hunterd says ...

So...Slumdog Millionaire doesn't deserve the Oscar because they talk funny? Jesus Christ, where do you live that you don't encounter people with accents.

Your argument is anti-intellectualism, pure and simple. And what's more, it's predicated upon a ridiculous pretense that you can somehow judge a movie's worth while a critic cannot.

Re: Kettle,
you're black.
sincerely, Pot.

What's more, Slumdog is easily the most audience friendly film to be a front runner for best picture in YEARS. Did you look at the PTA? It's been doing very, very well for itself. And for you to dismiss it because it doesn't come from a brand name (okay, Danny Boyle is a brand name to ME) with a 100 million dollar marketing budget (which is the main reason TDK and Wall-E could open as they did) is just ignorant on so many levels. Do you really wanna judge a film's merit based upon how much money it makes? Is Transformers 2 really going to be of more value than the new Todd Solondz movie?

Congratulations, you've somehow found a way to create ivory tower anti-intellectualism.

comment #41

Dan Revill says ...

If the Academy was going to go the elitist route, it would nominate Rachel Getting Married and/or Revolutionary Road for Best Picture. Both of which deserve more recognition than they are receiving. I would be pleasantly surprised if either got in.
Slumdog out of the probable nominees will most likely win, and the only film on my list that I prefer to it that may be nominated is The Dark Knight (if that wins, it'd be a small miracle).
I agree that 2008 will probably be remembered for TDK, only cos more people saw it than any other film.

comment #42

arturobandini2 says ...

Wasn't Three Kings from 1999? Did it really fail to snag a single nomination?

Slumdog was a perplexing movie to watch. It seemed very City of God-lite for the most part, but I agree that it can be a tough watch. There are about 30+ acts of sadism, and that adds up. No one may get a limb sawed off, but the blinding of a child was so sickening that I wanted to smack the dancing idiots who left the theater remarking that it was the feel-good movie of the year. In hindsight, the most disturbing thing about the movie is its retro-think message that money solves everything. Money won on a TV game show at that! Ultimately it imparted all the wisdom of a 1930s Busby Berkeley musical -- they should've been singing "We're in the Money" at the end instead.

"It is written" my ass.

comment #43

raygo says ...

If I remember correctly, Jane Seymour was pretty impressive in the TV version of East of Eden. And there was a time when network TV movies were ground breaking.

comment #44

hunterd says ...

Arturobandini2

It wasn't about the money. He didn't care about the money at all. He was on the show to find the girl. The money was immaterial.

As for the violence, it's an uplifting movie BECAUSE of the violence. The darkness is what makes you appreciate the sun. The movie made my heart overflow because of the scene where the eyes were taken out. Because of the electrocution. Because of the gunplay.Because they overcame it and survived.

Remember that you'll never have a funnier story than the one about the time you almost died, but didn't.

comment #45

Josh Massey says ...

Slumdog spoiler:

Arturo: I think it's pretty clear the movie wasn't celebrating the money, but rather the reconnection of the two characters. She was the only reason he went on the show, after all.

comment #46

JHR says ...

"In hindsight, the most disturbing thing about the movie is its retro-think message that money solves everything"

We are talking Slumdog, right? Not WALL STREET...

You got the totally wrong take home msg if you think it is about money solving everything...

comment #47

George Prager says ...

raygo, you are right. She was good.

I am glad that we are talking about SLUMDOG MILLIONIARE and not that piece of shit that everyone was talking about last year, what was the name of that movie again? With the annoying pregnant girl JUPITER...something like that. It had a lot of bad music in it and Justine Bateman's brother was in it playing a creep and Ben Affleck's wife was really annoying. Anyway, the movie really sucked and got lot of nominations for some reason.

comment #48

ZayTonday says ...

hahahaha you think Slumdog Millionaire is a hard watch? Seriously? Come back after watching Che and we'll talk.

comment #49

twicks says ...

Kids + violence is a cheap way to manipulate an audience.

Not saying it doesn't work like gangbusters sometimes (Newt in Aliens, the baby carriage in The Untouchables) but with Slumdog it was so oppressive it left a bad taste no amount of happy dancing in a railway station could erase.

comment #50

YND says ...

Sorry about your experience, twicks. I agree that kids + violence CAN equal audience manipulation. But there's also good manipulation and bad manipulation. Danny Boyle's an incredibly manipulative director. But so was Hitchcock, so is Scorsese... pretty much every great filmmaker. Never once did I think that SLUMDOG used violence against kids as a shortcut to avoid character development and an inventive narrative, which is when it becomes deplorable, in my opinion.

Kind of surprised you had such a hard time watching it. My girlfriend is a single mom and the most sensitive viewer I've ever known, particularly when it involves violence against children. (She had a really hard time getting through THE DARK KNIGHT because of the whole Two-Face-and-Gordon's-kid thing at the end.) And while she definitely was affected by the material in SLUMDOG, the overall effect of the movie more than outweighed the difficulty. In fact, she saw it twice, which I've never known her to do!

comment #51

arturobandini2 says ...

[SPOILERS]

Sorry, I didn't buy the uplifting love story angle of Slumdog for two seconds. Maybe I would have been touched had Jamal been blinded instead, Latika hideously disfigured, and still they overcame all odds to be together. Instead we had two very pretty, very bland actors portraying the adult Jamal and Latika, neither able to convey any of the psychic scars of their characters. Those brave, feral street urchins somehow morphed into Bombay Barbie and Calcutta Ken.

No, it was the adrenaline rush of fast, easy money that brought them -- and all of us -- together in the end. Without that prospect dangling overhead, Latika never would've mustered the courage to leave her husband a second time. (And pretty convenient that Jamal's bro just happened to hand her his cellphone on the way out the door, no?)

I do buy the argument that for there to be great joy, there must be great sorrow (as Obama is to Bush), but I didn't see much joy happening for the kid who got his eyes burnt out. He wasn't tap-dancing on the train platform at the end; all the rupees in India won't restore his eyesight. Though cloaked in pretty colors and thumping music, the movie was a big, empty downer for me. What can I say.

comment #52

MilkMan says ...

Thanks for saying that Wall-E is overrated, Inseider. I have been afraid to say it myself. But that's how I feel. I thought Horton Hears a Who had a much more interesting story and had better animation, too. I mean, Wall-E was fine, but 50% of that movie's subject matter was already addressed in Idiocracy, was it not? And for those who haven't seen it, Horton Hears a Who is one of the best psychedelic movies I have ever seen.

comment #53

EricGilde says ...

Someone who says Slumdog is a hard watch should watch more movies.

I actually thought Che wasn't that hard a watch, either. It's very LONG, of course, but that doesn't mean it's exceptionally difficult.

Irreversible is a tough watch. Birth of a Nation is a tough watch. The Next Karate Kid is a tough watch. Slumdog? Nah.

comment #54

DarthCorleone says ...

The Next Karate Kid is a tough watch.

EricGilde for the win!

comment #55

DarthCorleone says ...

One more thing: yes, the actual Oscar winners might ultimately be irrelevant in the annals of film history. But the nominees and the dialogue that ensues via the process of determining the Oscar winners and nominees are not irrelevant. They help keep us aware of the art of film in a way that automatically handing the award to the film that best reflects some sort of amalgam of popular and critical sentiment will not achieve.

comment #56

hunterd says ...

I donno, part of the joy is the reassuring nature of something like "fate" an affirmation that "everything happens for a reason" even the incredibly painful stuff.

It's a bullshit moral, frankly. But it makes for great cinema.

comment #57

lipranzer says ...

Man, I think SLUMDOG is overrated, and even I think Evan is off his nut. Okay, he thinks WALL*E and THE DARK KNIGHT are the best films of the year - fine. I don't agree, but I liked both films a lot. But because he's afraid of SLUMDOG beating the two of them, he calls it "elitist"? Hunterd is right; this is just another part of the anti-intellectualism that's been plaguing our country for a long time.

comment #58

the400blows says ...

"there's also a Bollywood backlash against Slumdog, because some of them are screaming how the movie portrayed India as "dirty and poor"... they want to pretend that poverty doesn't exist and everyone should be happy and singing in an escapist fantasy movie."

DeafBrownTrashPunk: That is exactly why I liked Slumdog--it was portraying the "real" India in a contemporary manner. Not the India that we think it should look like in our heads, which was done in such films like the Bollywood movies, Monsoon Wedding, A Passage to India, etc. There are a lot of reasons why people go see movies. For me, one of them is to see and experience another world and culture. Slumdog did just that. I don't think it was the best film of the year, but it was one of the best.

comment #59

byanyother says ...

The two movies that top the critics list this year are Wall-E and The Dark Knight. The critics AND the public loved them. Let's see if the Academy will.

comment #60

Bob Violence says ...

Throughout its history, Oscar winners are irrelevant as to what movies stand the test of time, Which is why we talk about "Citizen Kane" today, as opposed to "How Green Was My Valley".

Except How Green Was My Valley stands the test of time every bit as well as Kane (I personally find Kane more dated, although this is of course a lousy reason to dismiss a film). It's possibly the greatest of all Best Picture winners.

comment #61

byanyother says ...

How Green Was My Valley is a good. It is a really good movie. It is not a great movie.

comment #62

Howlingman says ...

I'm still missing the part where a movie with no recognizable names, no American faces, made by a British director outside the studio system, that was dumped by Warners, and yet has found an audience through word-of-mouth, is the "elitist" pick. Heaven forbid something made outside of Hollywood wins an Oscar or something.

comment #63

Bob Violence says ...

How Green Was My Valley is a good. It is a really good movie. It is not a great movie.

Agree to disagree, then. There's certainly a not-inconsiderable body of opinion that feels the Academy's decision in that case was perfectly sensible (even Peter Bogdanovich has taken that tack). It's hardly an example of Academy idiocy on par with choosing The Greatest Show on Earth over High Noon or The Quiet Man.

comment #64

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comment #65

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