Slumdog Millionaire Movie

Even as American audiences gush over "Slumdog Millionaire," some Indians are groaning over what they see as yet another stereotypical foreign depiction of their nation, accentuating squalor, corruption and impoverished-if-resilient natives. "Slumdog," which earned 10 Oscar nominations this week, including one for best picture, is set in Mumbai, is based on an Indian novel and features many Indian actors. Yet the sensibility is anything but Indian, some critics argue.

Determined to make the rags-to-riches drama "Slumdog Millionaire" as authentic as possible, director Danny Boyle reworked his film's first act, casting Hindi-speaking children from Mumbai's slums in two lead roles. Now his choice to put the impoverished 7-year-olds into the film has sparked a growing controversy that is threatening to overtake the movie's global goodwill.

Whenever there's an overwhelming favorite in the Oscar race, you can be sure, human nature being human nature, and the media being the media -- in short, an institution that likes to build 'em up and then knock 'em down -- that the overwhelming favorite will soon find itself fighting off a nasty backlash. That's exactly what's happening right now in the Oscar race to Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire," which in recent days has gone from beloved underdog to embattled front-runner.

After weighing the implications of bringing its youngest, poorest Indian actors to the Academy Awards, the makers of "Slumdog Millionaire" have decided to do so, and now expect the film's entire cast to arrive in time for Sunday night's Oscar ceremony. If the film wins the best picture Oscar, all nine of the youthful performers are expected to join producer Christian Colson on the stage of the Kodak Theatre.

"Slumdog MILLIONAIRE" is a film about the saga of an uneducated orphan who ends up winning on India's equivalent of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." But the story of the movie's release has unfolded more like an episode of "Deal or No Deal." When Warner Bros.

Danny Boyle has shown an affinity for switching genres, and Nov. 12's "Slumdog Millionaire" couldn't possibly be more different from the English director's last film, the sci-fi "Sunshine."

Danny Boyle wasn't yet done with the Taj Mahal, but the Taj Mahal was done with him. The British director needed to grab a few more shots inside the Indian landmark for his new movie "Slumdog Millionaire," a drama about the remarkable life story of an orphan from Mumbai's slums. Yet the production was no longer welcome. "The people who were helping us there," Boyle says, "didn't help us." Some directors would have moved on and made do with what they had in the can.

It's the movie Warner Bros. didn't want to distribute. And now everybody else wishes they had a piece of "Slumdog Millionaire." The Internet is filled with Oscar-obsessed pundits preoccupied by the tiniest bits of awards trivia and Academy Award prognostications.

Want to start a new country? Or put a fresh spin on an existing one? Well, after you've drafted a constitution and written the national anthem, there's something else you may want to do: make a movie. In the century or so since film was invented, movie making and nation building often have been parallel projects.

Let's face it, with the final song and dance for this season's Academy Awards just days away, most of us have a case of the blahs, as in we've heard so much about the relative merits of this film or that, the endless "blah, blah, blah" that swirls around Oscar season like a dense perfume cloud, that we are weary, bone-weary of it all. Still, if I may, a last-minute "blah, blah, blah" about "Slumdog Millionaire."