Today is my lazy-blogging day. That doesn't mean "I am feeling lazy, so I'll blog" kind of day. It means "I am feeling lazy to write proper posts, so I'll just steal stuff from my chats/emails and paste here" kind of day! :)
Anyway, I had seen Slumdog Millionaire last weekend and I was quite excited about it because of all the critical hype here in the US. A friend asked me about the movie today and I emailed her my views. Here is what I had to write (and I know it shouldn't be called a review at all.. just some thoughts about the movie)..
yes, I liked it. But not so much as to justify all the hype here in the media right now. It seemed like a very well made indian movie actually, in a lot of ways.. which means, it is a really good movie.. just not as "great" as I had expected... or maybe that is the effect of language.. it becomes a little difficult to empathize with the characters/situations etc if you feel a little awkward at listening to them talking in english... as in, they have done such a good job at shooting, casting etc that everything is absolutely correct in terms of the setting in india/mumbai.. thats why it just seems a little awkward to see them speak in english for about half the movie.. obviously, that is inevitable as it is a british movie.. and obviously it shouldn't matter to people who only see it as a semi-foreign language movie here and it wouldn't have mattered to me if it had been a movie set in africa where characters were speaking english... but it had at least some effect on how much I could believe the characters and situations, specially since a lot of scenes evoke in my mind some scenes from great movies where the memorable lines were in hindi... It just seems a little awkward to see a cop torturing a kid and talking to him and his own subordinate in english.. specially because all of them act really well and everything but the language is quite convincing... having said that, maybe i am underselling the movie a lot... it wasn't bad at all.. as I said, it is actually really good... just not so good that I think of giving it an oscar for best picture (which it is most likely going to be nominated for...)
I won't hesitate to give it the oscar for best original score though.. :P and I'm sure it will be nominated for that...
Hopefully this will lead to some more people discovering ARR!
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