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Slumdog Millionaire Takes Home 8 Oscars
Ben Burtt was robbed of his overly deserved Oscars for the sound on Wall-E, and Heath Ledger's Joker unsurprisingly got a posthumous statue, but the big winner for the night was Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire with Picture, Director, Song, and five others. Go ahead movie nerds: talk amongst yourself.
I was wondering that myself. My girlfriend made me sit through part of the Oscars last night and at one point some clueless celebrity started gushing about how the Oscar is the "most prestigious award in the world". Really? More prestigious than the Nobel prize? More prestigious than the Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross?
Give me a fucking break. I'll never understand the fascination that a lot of my countrymen have with Hollywood and the culture surrounding movie stars/other celebrities.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Movie nerds are among the largest classes of nerds, dude.
In that clueless celebrity's world, it is the the "most prestigious award in the world." Do you really think she will ever get the Nobel Prize? Highly doubtful. Just let her enjoy her clueless life and go on with yours.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
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I dunno, I actually enjoy news articles like this sometimes. It's a welcome surprise from all the Linux zealotry/Microsoft bashing this site is used to.
Movie nerds are among the largest classes of nerds, dude.
Okay, fair point. But I just figured that /. was implicitly News for Technology Nerds; not other kinds of nerdiness.
We had this same argument during the earthquake in China over the summer. If you don't want to see this on the front page, use the firehose to mod it down. If you're using the beta index, mod it down so you don't see it. It's News For Nerds. Stuff that Matters. To many, this does matter. Not all of us participate in online forums (specifically that work doesn't block during the day) and it's nice to discuss it.
Just because this article doesn't pertain to your interests doesn't mean you have to come in and troll it. There's also many kinds of Technologies that go behind making movies from the start to finish.
I don't have any interest in the Mars Lander, but I don't go in trolling ABOUT THOSE DAMN NASAHOLES and how JUNIOR CANT READ GIVE THEM MONEY. Get over yourself and scroll down, it's not that big of an inconvenience to ignore one article.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Even more than the AVN awards?
What is this new trend for everybody who has any kind of interest calling themselves "nerds" or "geeks"? I heard some beautiful person on TV the other day describing themselves as a "Musical Theatre Geek". WTF?
My current theory is that this is a nice way of bragging that "I know loads about this". By saying you're a "geek" it makes it sound like you're being humble about it.
Seriously though, I was proud of being a geek/nerd when it meant being a computery person who is passionate about science and technology and who therefore sometimes seems odd to people who are not into those things. However, if the word "nerd" has come to mean anybody with any kind of interest, it seems a bit of a lame and meaningless term.
And yet it doesn't say Technology on the site header.
What would be appropriate content for the entertainment department in your opinion? I'm honestly asking here, as a movie/tech/gaming nerd I'm curious.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
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Why do you know when Brittany's tour kicks off? Hell, I didn't know she was out of the loony bin yet.
And I don't see why people are bitching about a thread about the Oscars. Plenty of nerds enjoy movies. If you do not like movies, you could simply NOT CLICK ON THE FUCKING ARTICLE. That's what I do when I come across an article that doesn't interest me, I don't read it (and therefore don't create a whiney post complaining about it either).
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Your point is very valid. But in this case it's not the director. Danny Boyle wasn't a bankable name, or, indeed, a successful director. Or indeed, a good director. He's a hack who steals ideas from other movies. Slumdog would have been much better with a talented artist at the helm.
Note also that he had an Indian co-director who's had absolutely no credit whatsoever.
No. In this case it's the producer who got it its success-- multi-millionaire Paul Smith, realty TV hack, and expert publicist. Cashing in nicely on India.
The Oscars are a bunch of MAFIAA types stroking themselves, and assuming (with the complicity of the media) that the entire fucking world cares about it.
When we give/get awards, it's in the family.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
The Nobel Prize awards would mean more if they were not given out until there was someone of worth to award it to. Instead they are given out regularly, as if the world continuously produces people worthy of the awards. The more often they give them out, the more it is like being one of the 40 million high school queens at the prom each year. Now, if there were only one prom Queen for all the high schools in the USA each year... now that would be special.
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I quite agree with you.
I actually lost any respect for the Nobel Prize a long time ago, shortly after first learning about them and being mighty impressed,
I went through the list of the laureates.
To my surprise, I did not find Gandhi.
Instead I found that he was nominated five times, but was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now I can accept the last omission, as that was within the rules of only living people being eligible and he was assassinated after being nominated for the fifth time, but I could never accept the other four times.
There have been many other problems with the awards and omissions of them, but I still feel that this was the worst blunder of them all.
It is not degrading. It depicts vibrancy, spirit, hustle and bustle. Have you actually seen it? For an interview with Loveleen Tandan, the co-director, see http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/oscars/article5772395.ece The crew that made the film very much seems to have lived and worked together as a team. Storytelling is universal and knows no boundaries, and movies are not tourism commercials. Have you seen trainspotting, a movie more in the director's backyard? I think it is pretty impressive that Slumdog went on to win Oscar accolades, and that those voting looked beyond their own backyard. I'll make sure to watch the movies you mention though.
Right? I sometimes don't think that people really appreciate Slashdot when it comes to that stuff. Overall, you'll get a better discussion and less bullshit on Slashdot than many other sites of this nature.
Some of it has to do with the fact that the readership for Slashdot has gotten older along with the site, and some of it is that sites like Digg.com have sprung up to pull away a lot of the kiddies.
It's not all roses here, but I continue to use Slashdot because you actually can get some decent discussions going here, and there's a lot of actually funny responses too.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The term "substantial" trust fund, coming from the same person saying that the few hundred quid the kids got paid is a lot because it is three times the average salary of someone living in the slum, doesn't mean much, does it? Also the trust fund will be available to the children actors only if they stay in school until they are 18. Too bad that until then they will be living on one meal a day in makeshift shacks, one can only wonder if they will last until their 18th birthday to enjoy the "substantial" amount of money that has been put aside for them. Interesting, that Fox doesn't setup funds like that for their child actors in the States...
Yes, let's all be merry and celebrate the distributor's generosity. The fact is, that the kids still live in tents while the movie is making copious amounts of money (almost 160 000 000 $ so far).
Also, the diffusion of responsibility is a wonderful thing: those guys made more, those guys made less, those guys just work here, those guys have mortgages to pay and those just followed orders.
The Oscars have nothing to do with the MPAA or RIAA. The Oscars are the entertainers themselves nominating and awarding themselves. The votes are from current members of the actors and director's guilds (unions) and other members of the entertainment industry. They have nothing to do with the AA's other than the fact that the actor's and director's don't get paid when you pirate.
Was Slumdog the co-creation of an Indian director who is not getting sufficient credit? Or is it a Western director degrading India for profit? Both criticisms cannot be simultaneously true.
The idea that Slumdog Millionaire "degrades" India is offensive. It implies that any movie that shows the negative aspects of a society is inherently degrading. Thoughts like that come from a perspective that we have to treat some countries like "special" children--keep them from all harm and make sure they wear their helmet and kneepads all the time. Give me a break. No one would be complaining if this exact same movie was set in the U.S., where there are plenty of slums and gangsters and game shows. That betrays a subtle racism of low expectations toward India. In comparison I do not recall similar outcry when Western filmmakers began to use Hong Kong cast, crew, and concepts to make movies.
India has slums and violence, as many, many Indian movies have portrayed. Note that much of the production and acting crew of SM come directly from the Indian film industry, and are happy about their work in the movie. Including the Indian co-director.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.