Word: slumdog
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Oscar went international with a vengeance on Sunday night, as the underclass-boy-makes-good fable Slumdog Millionaire took home eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director (Danny Boyle) and Adapted Screenplay (Simon Beaufoy). In addition, three of the four acting prizes went to foreigners. For England's Kate Winslet, her sixth Oscar nomination was the charm after being named Best Actress for her role as a concentration camp guard in The Reader. Spanish enchantress Penélope Cruz won Best Supporting Actress for her fiery painter in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, making her the first Spanish actress...
...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 its skimpy budget ($14 million) and mongrel pedigree, it might seem like the odd dog out; but the movie is really classic Hollywood - not just in its inspirational story of a poor kid pursuing an impossible dream, but in its goal of keeping a mass audience entertained...
...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...
...host 50 years ago, cavorted and mugged for nearly 20 minutes when he was told the show had run short. This year, the Oscar show ended right on time. But the odds are that, 50 years from now, no one will remember much about it - except that the underdog Slumdog...
...pools could promote, in addition to the winners, any number of beguiling side bets. Who can pick the top five in the most categories - in order? How many votes will separate Sean Penn from Mickey Rourke? Does The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, seemingly left in the dust by Slumdog Millionaire, get three points for home-field advantage? What's the over-under on Melissa...