You Can Take the Slumdog out of the Slums.. But You'll More Than Likely Toss Him Back In.

You Can Take the Slumdog out of the Slums.. But You'll More Than Likely Toss Him Back In.

It's been a while since it came out but in that time it made people cheer, Oscar swoon and now Blu ray and DVD owners spend their money. In the end, when it comes to Slumdog Millionaire, you can take the kid out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the kid.... and you'll more than likely put the kid back into the ghetto just as easily.

Yeah, I'm sure that's not how it goes but this story is pretty fucked up in general. Remember the cute little child stars of Slumdog? well after being paraded around Hollywood, handed Oscars, and interviewed by every vacuous journalist in the West it was time for them to return back to their life of crushing poverty and go away from the media spotlight.

So back to the slums for them and now they're back to the miserable lower class existence and suffering immensely. guess those bootstraps didn't hold too tight eh?

Slumdog Millionaire star falls ill
Slumdog Millionaire child star Azharuddin Ismail has fallen ill as fears grow about the psychological state of the two young Indian actors.
By Barney Henderson in Mumbai



Azhar, 10, spent the weekend vomiting and has developed a temperature of 103 degrees since returning home last week after travelling to the Oscars with co-star Rubina Ali, 9. He has been prescribed antibiotics by doctors, who said he is suffering from fever and exhaustion, but his condition has continued to worsen. Azhar's neighbours have also rallied round to build an 8ft by 5ft metal structure for him to sleep under out of the sun.

The families of the two child stars have said their children are not readjusting to life back in the slums after five days of glitz and glamour in Los Angeles.

Mother Shameem Ismail said: "It has all become too much for him. He is very ill and has not recovered from going to America and all the media interest since we got back."

Rubina's father Rafiq Qureshi said. "Getting used to life back here in the slum again is proving tough for her and she has not wanted to see her friends since she got back. She just wants to spend all her time away from the slum now and I just hope we get the flat that has been promised to us.":

Both the Mumbai housing authority and Slumdog's producer Christian Colson have said they are going to provide proper flats for the two families. However, as yet the families have been told nothing and remain in the deprived slum.

Azhar, cuddling his new pet guinea pig, said: "I am very sad. I feel sleepy, hot and sick all the time. I can't get to sleep here – there are too many mosquitoes and it is so hot. I just wish I was in America still."

Having flown in a plane, slept in a soft bed and used a clean and functioning bathroom for the first time in their lives at a five-star hotel, the kids say they have now realised what life is like on the other side of the coin and the reality of being back in the slum is hitting them hard.

"I don't want to live here in the slum anymore," Rubina said, wearing the dirt stained ball gown that she has not wanted to take off since Oscars night. "I don't want to sleep on the floor anymore. I want a proper bed and live where the air does not smell of poo. I have seen what it is like in America. Here, there is garbage everywhere, people get angry, swear and shout. I have realised how bad life is here. I just want to get out."

Social workers have called for the children to be placed in care and state that they need to be given protection – either from Danny Boyle and the film production company or the Indian authorities.

"I cannot believe these kids have just been left like this after being taken to Hollywood. It is bound to affect them psychologically," said social worker Sanjay Bhatia, who works in the slum.

India's Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhary is "appalled" at the beating that Azhar took at the hands of his father on Friday. Azhar was thrashed for saying he wanted to sleep rather than talk to a journalist who had offered money to his father.

you know kid, one minute you're the toast of the town and the next your living in hellish squalor on the street being beaten by your dad! Oh well, that's Hollywood for you. Milk those 15 minutes, kids.



Also, don't think that the movie didn't do well in the box office. This once doomed to direct to dvd film went to make millions. It's just a matter of Hollywood accounting, numbers get smudged all the time.

It's not like they weren't paid. These kids got paid like 3 adult yearly earnings in salaries and have trust funds set up for them. So there's probably some fucked up shit going on with how the money is being used. Which leads to the question on what happens when they die of an easily treated illness or starvation or exposure or something long before they turn 18.



The trust fund is the best method for paying them though. You give them straight cash and you know their parents will be rolling over it on them. Spend it here and there and it'll be long gone before those kids even forget the taste of the sweet life in Hollywood.

There probably was a good reason to set up a trust fund in the first place. It's probably because the laws that govern child actor wages in California don't apply in India. If you didn't put it into a trust fund then you might as well kiss it all goodbye.

"I don't want to sleep on the floor anymore. I want a proper bed and live where the air does not smell of poo. I have seen what it is like in America. Here, there is garbage everywhere, people get angry, swear and shout. I have realized how bad life is here. I just want to get out."

See that? That there is just fucked up. If they held the Oscars in Detroit they never would of known the difference between India shit holes and America. I feel pretty bad for those poor kids. I was born and raised here but if I had been snatched up from India and taken to Hollywood for a week, given a fancy suit, good food and a comfy bed to sleep on for a week when I was kid I would have been pretty fucked up when they dropped me back at home, and I was only in poverty by American standards. I at least had a roof and a cot. I can't imagine how much that fucked with their heads.

Almost as bad as how much it'll fuck you up hearing that Jai Ho song playing in a loop.

At least you can tell who's the white folks you want to avoid..

Yeah, I liked Danny Boyle before this but this is either pretty damn stupid of him or just goes to show how ignorant the west is about imperialism to this day. Pick up a couple of brown kids, use them to make a shitload of money and a couple of Oscars then dump them back in the slum and forget about them.

I loved trainspotting but hey, I'm sure he plucked out that book from the library and then put it back once he was done with it as well. Though the library he put it back actually had a roof. Who even recruits child actors directly from the slums? Don't they have a million child actors in the UK and America to begin with?



These kids were promised apartments by the Indian government (Out of national embarrassment) are their biggest win from this and yet that remains to be seen when they'll get them. Who can blame these kids for feeling this way. They went to America and saw how people in the western world live. Their life in the slums will be 1000000% worse than it used to be. It's like giving food to a starving person and then snap it away from him before he's finished eating. It's cruel.

This feel good story of 2008/2009 just went sour with all this. I suppose the question is why doesn't Angelina or Madonna swoop in and adopt them already? Makes you wonder what happened to all the slum kids who were in City of God?

Wrestling With The Oscars

Wrestling With The Oscars

Another Oscar blog? I know, bpring! I didn't even see most of it and here I am writing two pieces on the subject. It's only fitting that I do a wrap up to my previous blog. Looks like I was wrong about some of my picks. Oh well. Don't blame me, I didn't even give them to you in time to piss away your $20 in the office pool.

Rourke losing for the wrestler seems to be the only upset for the night from what people expected the outcome to be. I have to say, I'm very surprised about it. Mickey Rourke gave the best performance of the year by far, definitely deserved the win over Penn. I'm an ultraleft liberal too, I spent dozens of hours campaigning against Prop 8, wrote many blogs against it as well, but Rourke gave the better performance; just because you're a liberal doesn't mean you automatically have to flock with fanatical reverence to whichever performance or film has a liberal political theme, guys.


Talk about an Oscar make-over! Move over Monster!

But I'm not going to hate too much on Sean Penn. MILK was a good film and I don't follow the holy gospel of Team America World Police that states that actors should just shut the fuck up and make word sounds and action movements for the picture show. His "You commie homo lovin' sons of guns" was pretty comical and he has the right idea. I guess I just think going through the transformation of putting on all that muscle to look like a wrestler fit the Oscar quota of transforming yourself in order to get a statue. All Sean Penn did was act flaming.



Gotta admit though, Rourke would have just thanked his small pet dogs who recently died. I mean check out his speech from the IFC awards. That's what sealed it. I bet the Academy saw that and said "Fuck this, let's change the votes around." Where as Spicoli went the full nine yards and said this:
"I think it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way,"


I'm pretty sure he's not making any political statements in that interview.. Ok, maybe to legalize it...

On the flip side, do you know how hard it is to act like a wrestler? Hell, they put on a show weekly. If you've never seen professional wrestling done right, you'd be missing out on some tough moves that they have to put on daily while acting the part of whatever role they are in the ring. Much like bad actors, there's bad wrestlers. Those end up doing these sorts of things in the ring....

If you've ever seen a one trick pony happy in the field.. well then you haven't seen those clips.

So perhaps the academy should see not only how hard Rourke beefed up for this role, but how long he actually put into this character to get the wrestling moves down right.

Not only did the wrestler get hit with a steel chair when it comes to best actor, it also got the snub when it came to best song... Mainly because it wasn't nominated. It's part of two more snubs I failed to report in the pre-Oscar blog. Two songs got screwed out because of new rules that the song has to be IN the film and not the credits.

There were only three nominees, and none were Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler," the Golden Globe winner, or "Gran Torino," a Globe nominee co-written by Clint Eastwood. How is this possible, fans wondered, when there are two perfectly good slots going unused?

The answer stems from the complex system the Academy's music branch has developed the past few years.

The branch's several hundred members no longer list their top five choices, as they did for years (and as they do for best original score). Instead, they rate the songs on a scale of 6 to 10, with half-scores (say, 7.5) allowed, too. In order to land a nom, a song has to average an 8.25. (If more than five songs hit that mark, the five highest make it.)
....

Where this especially becomes a problem is when a song rolls over the end-credits. Two of the nominees this year (A.R. Rahman's "Jai Ho" and Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth") close their films, but there are important visuals to go with them. "The Wrestler" on the other hand, plays over a static black screen. The effect is to let the powerful final scene linger. But if you're judging the song based on how it plays in the movie, chances are you're not going to rate is as highly as a song that comes with snappy or affecting visuals.

As for the Clint Eastwood song... well, that one wasn't very good. I don't have many problems with Clint. I mean, the only lame thing Clint has ever done in his time on Earth is sing that song at the end of Gran Torino. Ok, so maybe he's also a self-described libertarian and registered Republican who outwardly supported Nixon, Reagan, Schwarzeneggar and McCain...



But still, the song he sang after Gran Torino was pretty god damn bad. But to snub the Boss -now that's just cold. The song was perfect. So what if it comes at the end when it goes to black. You have Slumdog with the dance number at the end. So the only difference is that The Wrestler lets it all set in and doesn't bombard you with a happy go lucky Bollywood ending credits? Please, tell me this song doesn't just pull at your emotions.

Yeah, I'm sure you're just in the corner crying right now.. How dare they exclude these two songs from the Oscars.


Look who got the prize!

As for Slumdog Millionaire. Don't get me wrong, I liked it. But now that it's so loved by all I guess I should take the counter position on the matter and hate it for the sake of being "different."

If you look at as a fairytale, its pretty good. Distant princess, poor orphan, defeating evil with magic. Unfortunately, it also falls into sexist stereotypes by making the love interest a sexual object who has no ability to control her own life and only finds happiness because a man finds it for her, poverty is treated as a magical condition instead of a place where you die of malnutrition, and in the end the hollowness of his victory in the face of overwhelming death and poverty is obscured by a fucking dance number.

So pretty much like any Bollywood movie.

I actually heard someone say this is an uplifting movie because, as they put it, "It shows that people in any situation can better their lives with a little perseverance."
How in the HELL could you get that message out of this film?


Where the hell are the droves of Feminist to protest this clear example of the MALE GAZE!

Did he even really "persevere" anywhere besides trying to get the girl? His brother did and became a random henchman, maybe that's what they were referring to? Most people in the world aren’t lucky enough to get on game shows much less win them. Most slumdogs stay slumdogs for the duration of their lives. If you’re lucky enough to be destined for something.


British Colonialism.jpg

Don't get me started on Benjamin Button. It is literally the same plot as Forrest Gump with an aging subplot tacked on and both films are garbage. It was nothing more than oscarbating drivel. It was far too long, even for Oscar pandering standards. I've already seen all that I needed to see in the trailers. Thanks for killing three hours of my life.

I suppose the best thing to come out of this years Oscars was Ben Stiller making fun of a certain Actor turned Singer.

Now that was funny.