Slumdog Millionaire -- The Best Movie of 2008

[Edmund Kattak]

Ok, now I just finished watching the entire film. Fantastic! Ultimately, it drained the full range of emotions from me. A truly great piece of filmmaking that's hard to believe it only cost them $14 million to make.

[Monterey Jack]

Ok, now I just finished watching the entire film. Fantastic! Ultimately, it drained the full range of emotions from me. A truly great piece of filmmaking that's hard to believe it only cost them $14 million to make.

Well, $14 million to us is a hell of a lot more in rupees.

[AndyDursin]

Ok, now I just finished watching the entire film. Fantastic! Ultimately, it drained the full range of emotions from me. A truly great piece of filmmaking that's hard to believe it only cost them $14 million to make.

A phenomenal film Ed. I'm surprised so few folks I know online even saw it, given the reviews and also how well it's doing at the box-office. But hey, if people don't want to watch great movies, it's their loss.

I loved it.

[Edmund Kattak]

Ok, now I just finished watching the entire film. Fantastic! Ultimately, it drained the full range of emotions from me. A truly great piece of filmmaking that's hard to believe it only cost them $14 million to make.

A phenomenal film Ed. I'm surprised so few folks I know online even saw it, given the reviews and also how well it's doing at the box-office. But hey, if people don't want to watch great movies, it's their loss.

I loved it.

This movie achieved what so few films brought into this country can do - make you connect with the characters and central story without having to explain their condition or culture or dumb it down for the audience. At it's core, it's a love story, but it's really much much more. At times, I felt like crying - ultimately cheering at the end.

Many of the scenes often seemed surreal to me (the early chase sequence when the young Jamal and his brother flee the police through the poverty stricken streets and alleys of what was once Bombay. It's not often that film comes along that can trigger the full range of emotions (sadness, fear, happiness, anger, and joy).

What makes this work better for me is the lack of familiar faces - the use of unknowns, which many, I believe, aren't even actors. Kudos to Danny Boyle - whom I never got into as a filmmaker before this film. He nailed this one.

[Monterey Jack]

Funny how white people always cite "misappropriation" when it comes to making movies with minority casts, but a pair of black filmmakers doing a movie with an all-white cast, like the Hughes Bros. did with From Hell, was not commented upon at all almost 25 years ago. If you told a black filmmaker they couldn't make a movie with a mostly/entirely white cast, they'd (justifiably) call you racist for suggesting it, and yet white people feel guilty and dirty if they make a movie with even one black, brown or Asian face in the cast. Slumdog Millionaire remains a great film, and the fact that it was made by a white, British filmmaker doesn't change that fact. It is NOT a cinematic form of "blackface" for someone of a different ethnicity, gender or sexual preference than the majority of the characters on the screen to write or direct the movie.

This attitude is killing cinema.

[AndyDursin]

Exactly...is he giving back his Oscars too?

[Monterey Jack]

Ang Lee, a Chinese filmmaker, made a wonderful movie set in India (Life Of Pi), but he has to turn in his Best Director Oscar, yes?

Oh wait, it doesn't count if a POC filmmaker makes a movie about a different POC culture, or about white people.

[AndyDursin]

An even more on point argument: