Random Musings

Warning: This post is heavy on 2 word sentences. Most don’t make sense ;-).

Friday afternoon.
Code Freeze.
Bugs Galore.
Severity 2!
Slow Techmeme.
Ruby Red Grapefruit.
Silence = Sleep.
Monitor Staring.
Constant tapping of keyboards.
Gmail – Inbox.
Gmail – Inbox(1).
Report Spam.
Gmail – Inbox.
F5 on Techmeme.
Blinking Cursor.
Stationary Mouse Pointer.
Alt-Tab.
Ringing Phone.
Overheard Conversations.
Acting Busy.
People Crossing Cubicle.
1 Meeting Reminder.
Dismissed.
Google Finance.
Sleep.

:-).

My favorite musician won an Oscar. Yet I’m unhappy.

So, Slumdog Millionaire won 8 Oscards and A.R. Rahman (India’s favorite musician) won 2! Well, every Indian I know is celebrating and is feeling proud. Yet I’m not.

Slumdog Millionaire is what I would call a B-grade Bollywood flick. Even Lagaan, India’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film for 2001 is way, way better than Slumdog Millionaire. I guess it would have won an Oscar if the theme was based on baseball or Amercian Football rather than the lesser known Cricket (which is like a religion among us Indians).

Slumdog Millionaire depicts everything that is not India. Yes, there have been numerous discussions and debates on how the movie creates this image of India as a slum dwelling nation. But, personally, the movie itself is a big disappointment for me (and thousands of other Bollywood film followers) and I’m really surprised how the American movie going folks liked this movie. Is it because they like the so called ‘masala’, the rags-to-riches miracle – things that are so typical of all Indian movies?

That Rahman won 2 oscards is definitely a reason to celebrate but the fact that he won it for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is definitely a let down. Rahman is a great musician and he deserves many, many Oscars, but for ‘Slumdog’ not.