Slumdog mania

I haven’t seen the movie so I don’t have an opinion on whether the movie is 10 Oscar Nominations worthy.  However when I read this, I have a gripe. I don’t mind reading a personal opinion as long as it is kept within the spectrum of the discussion and does not become emotional. Emotion clouds judgment and blurs the argument. First off, the guy who wrote this does not seem be giving any valid arguments against Amitabh’s comments. Because of his primary focus being degrading the actor. On the face of it, Mr. Bachchan simply seems to have expressed his personal opinion on the movie, which I notice among many people I know have seen the movie, tend to agree. It doesn’t look like this fellow thought at least for a moment that Bollywood or Mumbai does not constitute the entire nation’s film making ability.  The article concludes with a really ridiculous statement “they should be ashamed that it took a white man to show India how to do it.”

What the?????. Ignorant, ill-informed.

However good or bad the movie may be, if one looks at these nominations objectively, the voters (people who decide the nominees) are not publicly disclosed but it is reasonable to think (since that is the best we can do anyway) that an association formed by Westerners [1][2] will primarily consist of them. The choices they make would be the movies that they are able to relate to, the most. I seriously doubt if this set of audience is completely qualified enough to make a judgment on a global scale, where languages, sensibility and cultures separate the world into thousands of different factions, thus making a fair consideration an impossibility. This is my assumption/theory, completely subject to the test of veracity, which I welcome. As a corollary, I seem to get a sense that Slumdog resonates with the Western pulse and hence a bagful of nominations, although I can assert this only after seeing the movie.

I have seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button already and I would be surprised if it loses out on its key nominations (best picture, actor, director).