Word: film
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...Viewed as a whole, the top awards spanned genres that represent commercial moviemaking as it is, was and would like to be. The "is": The Dark Knight, which has earned more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office (in the process becoming the second highest grosser in film history, after Titanic), and which represents a big-budget action picture as only Hollywood can make them. The "would like to be": the message films Milk and The Reader, which hammer home Hollywood's liberal views on gays and its unslakable fascination with the Holocaust. And the "was": Slumdog. With...
...Hollywood nativists are rankled that the top prize and headlines went to a foreign movie, the feeling may be similar on the Indian subcontinent, where Slumdog's box office take hasn't even approached that of any robust local film. As pleased as they might be about the picture's international éclat, the folks in Mumbai also realize that the first "Bollywood" production to make a major impact at the Academy was written, produced and directed by Englishmen - subjects of the old Raj. In the 1980s, Gandhi, another film about Indians and made by colonialists, took Best Picture. This...
...biggest upset in the specialty categories was the Best Foreign Language Film win for the Japanese Departures, about an out-of-work musician who takes a job preparing corpses at a funeral home. It emerged victorious over, among others, the French school drama - and Palme d'Or winner - The Class (Entre les Murs) and the odds-on-favorite, Waltz with Bashir, the Israeli animated documentary. Both films had earned critical raves in the States. Nobody, though, was startled that the Oscar for Best Animated Feature went to WALL-E, or that Man on Wire was voted Best Documentary Feature...
...category. Indian TV anchors have been wildly ecstatic, but reactions outside newsroom are decidedly mixed. Some feel happy for Slumdog's Indian connection - especially for the awards for A.R. Rahman (best original score and for theme song Jai Ho) and Resul Pookutty (best sound mixing) - yet many feel the film was overrated. Critics opine the awards signal a belated acceptance of Bollywood's song-and-dance formula, but point out that this is a win for a western film, made by a westerner (British director Danny Boyle), for a western audience. (See pictures of Danny Boyle: A Life Behind...
...What is significant for us in India is that Rahman won two Oscars, and Pookutty won, too," says New Delhi-based film critic Vinayak Chakraborty, "This officially recognizes the power of the songs and dances of Bollywood cinema. It is debatable whether Slumdog is Rahman's best work, but it does give cognizance to Indian talent." In addition to Rahman and Pookutty, many of the film's cast are already celebrated, respected names in Indian cinema. Gulzar, who won the Oscar for best original song along with Rahman for Jai Ho, is a venerated writer, poet and lyricist; actors Anil...