Watching the Oscars…
My friends irrespective of whether they liked or hated or ignored the movie Slumdog Millionnaire, were all thrilled that it swept the Oscars last night! I guess it would be mainly because the presence of so many Indians was overwhelming. Many American responses on NYTimes fumed about “foriegners” taking away all the awards. We were so all over the red-carpeted place!
Anyway, here’s what I really liked about last evening -
8 out of 10 is a great score any Oscar night.
The kids. And the interviews they gave – unforgettable!
The crew of Slumdog conducted themselves beautifully throughout the evening. Especially the kids and Frieda and Dev. They were all so excited and yet so down-to-earth and gracious under the spotlight.
Danny’s speech was extremely humbling. The fact that he goes up their to receive the Best Director’s and remembers and mentions a choreographer’s name that he had missed on the credits and then apologizes speaks volumes about the character of this man. And his words for the people back in Bombay and India “you dwarf even this guy” moved me immensely. (I think he said “this guy” and not “the sky” 
This selflessness and humility was seen again when Frieda and Dev kept bringing the kids in front while giving their own interviews.. it was absolutely beautiful! They kept urging the cameras to include the kids in the spotlight, they all looked like such a close-knit family.
Resul’s speech was very well delivered too. He started off the first few seconds all nervous which showed a very human side of him. But when he picked up, he was an absolute delight to hear!
I liked the way AR Rahman’s name was pronounced!
And here’s what I didn’t like -
Looking at other nominations now I think the movie Slumdog Millionnaire was really mediocre. Some others on earlier posts have pointed this and I now agree. I also think some movies from Bombay have been so much better than this.
Rahman should have been given the entire stage and the entire song along with Sukhvinder. Jai Ho and O Saya shouldnt have been clubbed with another song in a totally different beat and style and it just wasnt working together. Anyway Rahman rocked!
Frieda was looking very beautiful but her dress could have been better… possibly more Indian? I dont know…
The less said about Anil Kapoor the better. He is a great actor and I have liked some of his performances. Last evening he was excited alright but he was answering questions not addressed to him! And then he started shouting into the camera something about I love Bombay Film Industry and I love you India… someone just had to pull him out! Did you notice Frieda and Dev shared a there-he-goes-again laugh?
Tags: AR Rahman, Danny Boyle, dev patel, frieda pinto, kreativevistas, Oscar, Slumdog Millionnaire, valli bindana, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Agree.. Anil Kapoor is a great guy but he embarresed us and made an ass of himself. I was releived that he did not get an opportunity to speak on the stage.
i loved wat resul spoke … u have not just handed me an award, u have handed me history…or something to this effect
I think AK has slogged his butt out over 30 years and if he wants to enjoy his moment under the sun by being a lil over the top (which perhaps is his natural persona), then so be it. Lets not be picky here
No disrespect to anyone but let Anil have his fun, he is one of the most versatile actors and he is the only face of mainstream bollywood cinema there on the stage, he is entitled to enjoy this moment.
Yes, maybe you are right. 30 years is a long wait to be up there.
sorry not a 30-year wait… for like the rest of them he wouldn’t have even expected to be there in the first place… so yes we shouldn’t pick on him. let us have him have his over-the-top fun
Alls well that ends well
For crying out loud, I am 100 % sure that Rahman got his acceptance speech written from some script writer. At Bafta’s & Golden Globes all he could mumble was “Unbelievable” .. “Unbelievable again !” .
Come Oscars, this guy gives a rousing “I chose Love & here I am” .. “Mere Paas Maa Hein..” and what not crap. Just shows how even the best & the most humble ones succumb to the “show” baazi. I wouldn’t have mind some heartfelt sincerity in his speech. Just like his music, he is now playing to the galleries. The music of SLD is mediocre at its best. It didn’t deserve the 2 Oscars that it got.
@Tatya Tope …Well the music was not anything great but awards work on relativity, so if you see the other nominations I think it deserves the award (its my personal opinion though)
@Cherish :
True, Agree with you .. Jai Ho was better than the Wall E track ..
But How Could Resul won when he was competing against Wall E in the Sound mixing category …
In wall E, sound was the soul of the movie .. It was not at all a deserving one …
@Tatya Tope
Both mother and love are recurrent themes in AR’s talks, so no wonder. It could be rehearsed but noway ’showbaazi’ as you say.
I thought the kids were amazing too!! They were the highlight of the movie and were awesome on the red carpet. How starstruck were they?? A.R. Rahman was top notch! His speech was amazing as was Resul’s. It is wonderful to see how humble they are. Really awesome for the industry.
tatya tope,get some life buddy,rehman deserve oscar more then any body else.Even the great marteen scorcees got oscar after 30 years, on remaking a foreign film
its same, like someone questioning gulzaar saheb poetry and lyrics
@ anurag
With a name like mine, It’s hard getting a life (whatever ‘life’ means).
As far as Gulzar sahab’s writing is concerned, i don’t think he ever sold his soul to the demands of ‘market’, which I feel Rahman has. If yu listen to Rahman of Roza & Bombay and compare that with his more recent works, then you will understand what I mean by that.
@ Cherish,
I still am not convinced that they couldn’t find more nominees to add to the poor list ! Has it been that bad a year for music in films ? If it is, then its quite sad (just like my life, anurag would say)
Abhishek,
Ok i absolve him of that charge. I saw the camera cutting to a very tense Boyle (perhaps he thought Rahman is going to flub his lines again)
@ anurag
post script : so this is to be seen more like a Lifetime achievement award rather that, just an award for SLD sountrack ! In that case, its so sweet of the guys at the Academy , to have done that.
Tatya, the point you could note is that, Rehman probably got Oscar for one of “His” weakest works.
If you look at Rehman’s body of work, and then look at this year’s oscar, you should realize how many oscars Rehman deserves in an open world. If there was to be an uniform and unified stage for judgement of music world wide which was functional too, both in its reach and effect, A.R.Rehman would have double digit awards to his name.
I hope these are times when we are being noticed and we should break the door open. Sudhir Mishra should have got an Oscar for Hazaron Khwahishen in an ideal world. Now is the time Indian film makers should make some movies with US producers on Indian subjects, go world wide and get truck load of Oscars.
I would wait for the day guys like Anurag Kashyap would have US producers and movies that compete in the Oscars directly in all categories.
@Tatya Tope
It is like india’s famous chef cooking at a desi restarant for goras… you would say he would have done better in his own restaurants in India even if it was liked by all the goras there….Its not his fault that he customised his dishes to suit the tastes of others… or it is rather not your fault too that you usually eat more spicy food…..
What the heck, if billions of his newly aquired fans liked it and thousands of his old fans dint…. where could be problems???? Is it with the thousands or millions or the master himlself?
What ever be the trick, he is reaching more stages now… Isnt’ it?
Again everything in this world is relative… something you dint like may have been a best piece for others… try respecting others taste, please ….
I think it was destined for SLD to make history… I am not saying that film was bad, it is a very good film but it was not so good to have got 8 oscars. Rehman saab deserves much bigger award then oscar, Its just matter of destiny that he got his dues through sld. I am fully agree that Rehman saab music in sld is not upto his own standards but it was written. It happened with Martin Scorsees for departed. Like every true Indian i am also very much proud of his work but i dont need western stamp for it. It would be more brighter picture if both Gulzar saab and Sukhvinder Singh had been there at oscars night. I read somewhere that sukhvinder is not happy with the treatment he got… One question strikes me that why the hell we Indians are so much crazy about oscars (specially Mr. Amir Khan)? Do we need stamp of west to prove our credibility? I dont think so.. and i am sure that had this film been made by an Indian Production house with Indian director, it could’nt have won a single nomination, forget about getting award. So why every time we sends our film in oscars to get insulted… and please dont call our self as bollywood…? I think we should call our self as Indian Cinema and not that secondary derogetary term bollywood.
The best part of the entire Sld M win was the speeches – esp that of Resul – Danny & obviously Rahmans.
@ tatya tope
Rahman is what he is today all coz of his mother, and it is but obvious he’d mention her.
As for the sound track being mediocre, have you checked out the sound track of the competitors? how can you judge it without having heard what the competition is like.
Very kiddish comments man!
tata tope
“So why every time we sends our film in oscars to get insulted”
U send stuff like Jeans, Paheli over much more deserving candidates, and then crib about being insulted.
On the occassion of AR Rehman winning two oscars, could some one please gift/release the country a original dvd of Dev D….
I know you might think me mad for relating this… but, that is what I have become and been thinking about it in what ever I am doing out here
Anurag, whyat problems do you have releasing it in UK?
But Ratnakar,
Wasnt’ RDB far superior than SDM? even technically and musically and thematically? Agreed the end was depressing…..but for a story with a reflection narrtion, cant change the end… Isn’t it? And was universal too and representing current generation of India… What was the end result… It would have gone places, if it was made by Foreign Collaberation ….
For that matter RDB was also filled in with commercial elements? It was much inferior compared to Hazaron Kwhishe Aisi or such unnoticed movies…
hmm … my comments disappeared???
@Tatya Tope
//For crying out loud, I am 100 % sure that Rahman got his acceptance speech written from some script writer. //
So what ? There are millions of people around the world who rehearse the acceptance speech in their bathrooms, who will not even be in the same profession to win the coveted award… and here is a person who not only deserves this but much much more, why shouldn’t he take the help of a script writer (even if he had)… I don’t believe there is any showbaazi in it… He was just trying to be more presentable in front of the world audience… And I don’t think he sacrificed his humility in it…. Do you know the meaning of ‘Ellam pughazhum iraivanukke’ ? thats the tamil sentence he said at the end of his speech.
Rehman has made better music and got indian awards.Which i think should be good enough.Why is there a craving for Firang awards. Do they mean anything to us at all? The Movie is quite ordinary.
In fact last week i saw four movies… Luck by chance, Dev D , Slumdog and Delhi-6.The first and the last one were brilliant. Could not appreciate the ones in the middle.DevD was atrocious.
I also think Slumdog is insulting to indians in many ways.By denigrating our Hero worship etc.
Its like what the americans do before they enter a new market. Crouching tiger before entering China and now slumdog.
Ratnakar.. Thats is the defect in our selection jury that they send films like jeans to oscars but even our best of films like hazzaar khwahishen aisi and dharam etc… would have gone unnoticed in west..
@ Tatya Tope
Also, I think that a lot of what you call catering to the “market” is just old-people speak for “Why don’t you just stick to Indian classical music and not go for any of that new-age bullshit?” I admire Rahman for ALL his compositions, because they show me the man’s versatility. Even if Slumdog Millionaire is not his BEST album, it is still a damn good album. Just because you want to be all snooty about hip-hop, techno, electronica or jazz influences doesn’t mean that there aren’t connoiseurs who are probably extensively musically trained who can find something brilliant in EACH genre.
This is exactly like when Jagjit Singh asked Rahman to prove himself by composing a ghazal. He doesn’t need to compose a ghazal dude. If he can just compose a song that is heart-felt and touches people or makes people connect to it in some deeper way, his job is done. Just because the old man’s club of the Indian music scene fear they’re becoming irrelevant, A.R. Rahman doesn’t need to bend over backwards to reassure them. The guy’s already PROVED his mettle when it comes to classical tunes. What more do you want? Let the man grow and experiment. There’s a WHOLE world of music out there. I just have Dil Gira Dafatan on repeat right now, and I’m floored by the orchestration. The guy has found a way to incorporate Scottish and Chinese melodies in a song that reeks of a raw Indian-ness.
And even then, the poor guy has his detractors. Sigh.
Akash & Prem, depends on how we market it. To get your movies noticed by the jury, you have to go sit there at LA, market it, sell it. Sure HKA is a fantastic movie, but thats coz we in India are acquainted with the Emergency era and Naxalism, how many in the West know it. Thats where we need to go, talk to them, explain the context, the background. But to do that you need guys who are passionate about movies. You staff the selection comittee with sleaze movie makers like Vinod Pande and crap movie makers like Harmesh Malhotra, you cant expect better.
“Why is there a craving for Firang awards. Do they mean anything to us at all?”
There is something called as market value. Why do we need to export our goods to US or Europe? They can sell as well in India.
The fact that ARR is a genius is well known, and we dont need an Oscar to certify it. But getting the Oscar makes him better known.
Its like to people in the West, they say “Hery this new kid on the block, ARR sounds cool, lets hear him out”. So i guess that aint a bad thing.
And if its firang awards, we should not be sending our movies to Cannes, BAFTA, Golden Globes also.
Slumdog may not be Rahman’s best work but it deserves the two Oscars that it won. Jai Ho is a fantastic number, much better than the Wall-E song. Proud of his, Gulzar’s and Resul’s achievement. Regarding the acceptance speeches, I thought Resul’s was better than Rahman’s. His (Rahman’s) ‘Mere pass mee hai’ completely went over the heads of the audience. He also forgot to thank Danny Boyle in his first speech. Anyway, nothing wrong in being prepared, better than mumbling in front of world audience.