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Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 3:38 pm
by Reza
OscarGuy wrote:I mean the HFPA invited some guy (whom I've never heard of) who's apparently a big cheese in Bollywood to help introduce it.
Yes Shah Rukh Khan is a very ''big cheese'' in Bollywood.
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:53 pm
by Eric
Sabin wrote:And that "Jai Ho" bullshit at the end is lame-balls.
Production numbers are never, but ever lame-balls. Every movie should have one.
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:34 pm
by Sabin
A decade ago, if you had told me how bummed I'd be to see a David Fincher movie and a Danny Boyle movie butting heads for the Oscar...
Slumdog Millionaire did not get where it is because of the attacks on Mumbai. As it was conceived, Slumdog Millionaire is apolitical escapism that somehow managed to avoid any ties to contemporary woes. This is a movie that can have a woman get shot in the head during a raid and have it never mentioned later on. I'm starting to simply roll with it because it's not nearly as problematic as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which is a structural disaster. Slumdog Millionaire is Bollywood in the sense that A) it's a party, and B) it doesn't really etch out its characters to which I would say it exists as neither Americanized fish nor Bollywoodian fowl. And that "Jai Ho" bullshit at the end is lame-balls.
But it's going to win and that's mostly fine. A Beautiful Mind and Crash are worse.
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:36 am
by OscarGuy
Yes. I'm sitting on a set right now that I haven't 100% confirmed are good predictions. Plus, BAFTA announces Thursday, so I'd probably update again then and then again keep changing my mind right up until the day. I hope to have something new up today or tomorrow.
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:40 am
by Franz Ferdinand
Oscar Guy, will you be making any new updated predictions in your 81st Predictions section before the nominations are announced?
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:39 pm
by Zahveed
OscarGuy wrote:Sorry for trying to open an interesting dialogue.
That's what you get. I hope you learned your lesson.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:16 pm
by Damien
flipp525 wrote:Ben Kingsley is pretty much a douchebag of the highest order.
SIR Ben Kingsley, if you please.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 4:19 pm
by rolotomasi99
i think the game show component of the story is what will keep it from being completely foreign to many academy voters. if the main plot was based around some sort of specific cultural element (like the fate of widows in india as we saw in WATER) maybe this film would have no chance, but since it centers around "who wants to be a millionaire" it seems more accessible to the retirment-home segment of the academy.
Edited By rolotomasi99 on 1231795371
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:32 pm
by flipp525
Ben Kingsley is pretty much a douchebag of the highest order.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:27 pm
by OscarGuy
People are more interested in trying to find ways in which the words I say are wrong and no one actually wants to discuss the matter in more general terms. So, you guys have fun tearing apart my thoughts on the matter with nitpicky little factual corrections. Sorry for trying to open an interesting dialogue.
Edited By OscarGuy on 1231792568
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:21 pm
by Big Magilla
OscarGuy wrote:Gandhi had Candice Bergen, John Gielgud, Edward Fox, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Martin Sheen, etc. And even Ben Kingsley was British...
Actually Ben Kingsley, whose birth name is Krishna Bhanji, is half-Indian and half-British.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:18 pm
by ITALIANO
By now - and frankly not only now - nothing can prevent Slumdog Millionaire from winning the Best Picture Oscar. It will be this year's Marty, or Rocky, or Chariots of Fire - one of those little, uplifting movies about little, uplifting people which, once in a while, win a (usually undeserved) Best Picture Oscar. It's not a masterpiece, I'm sure that even most of the members of the Academy who will vote for it know that. But in such a year (a year in which even a movie like The Dark Knight will come close to a Picture nomination) I don't see anything else that can stop it. So Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (and Best Supporting Actor) wont surprise anyone come Oscar night.
Ok, so Oscar Guy wasn't exactly crazy when he predicted two Oscars for Kate Winslet - that word was best applied to Big Magilla and his 12-or-more-Oscars for Benjamin Button. He was just plainly wrong. The Oscars arent the Globes, where, as others have pointed out, such a thing has happened in the past - and, by the way, without any influence on the Oscar race. Now, of course Kate Winslet is a much, much better liked actress than Sigourney Weaver was back then (or is now), and this year's Best Actress category definitely isn't as tough as it was in 1988, so she WILL get one Oscar. But the Globes' outcome will certainly make many in the Academy realize that this embarassing double triumph could happen even at the Oscars, and I guess that they will want to avoid it. (They like Winslet, but she isn't Eleonora Duse or Garbo or even Meryl Streep).
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:36 pm
by OscarGuy
Gandhi, an entirely British production filmed in India, but starring a mostly British cast felt more British than foreign. Not to mention the fact that Gandhi was a biopic epic and Slumdog is nothing like it, so not really an apt comparison. And from the quote you selected of my original post, I think you may be misunderstanding. When I say Non-English, I'm really referring to the fact that some members of the cast probably spoke English (Joan Chen and John Lone), but other than Peter O'Toole, there weren't really any non-English characters.
Gandhi had Candice Bergen, John Gielgud, Edward Fox, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Martin Sheen, etc. And even Ben Kingsley was British...
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Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:28 pm
by rolotomasi99
OscarGuy wrote:Will the Academy really reverse its long tradition of ignoring minorities in film? The Last Emperor is really the only film that I can think of that had a cast (or least characters) that was entirely non-English. Maybe they think of India still as a former British Colony.
worked for GANDHI.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:53 am
by OscarGuy
But both Dances with Wolves and The Godfather, Part II are distinctly American films. They chronicle American events in American locations. So, The Last Emperor isn't the only predominantly foreign-lingo pic to win, but it's really the only one that is also distinctly foreign.
And The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is hardly a downer. It's a bit melancholy, but it's contemplative nature is about living life to its fullest whether in forward or reverse. But if WALL-E were nominated, it might deflate some of that Slumdog "inspirational" tendency of late. I don't know that it would win, but it could pave the way for other features to come out ahead.
Of course, the Academy is never filled with foresight. Slumdog will not be considered one of the great winners. It won't be one of the worst either, but it will fall into that middle ground of films that people liked at the time, but looking back don't seem to represent the best of anything and might just wonder "that actually won Best Picture??" Like The Sting or The French Connection, Chariots of Fire or perhaps even Shakespeare in Love as a more recent example.