Slumdog Millionaire and the Fall of Oscars

It happened in ’96 and it happened again. The movie which deserved the award for best picture lost it to a relatively weaker competitor. In ’96 it was Forrest Gump and in ’09 it is Slumdog Millionaire.

Every critic seems to love Slumdog Millionaire to the core. Few even have gone to the extent of comparing it with Shaw shank Redemption. Such folks can be laughed at for their inane comparisons.

However, its been really difficult for me to know if I too have got offended by the movie like most of naysayers in India are or I unknowingly dislike this movie for showing Indian slums. As far I can remember I have never been a patriot. I never had any special love for India or Indians. Few may go to the extent to hate me. That’s fine with me. But before that I would like to make it clear that I don’t hate India or Indians. I just don’t have that connection one would expect from a citizen of a country. One thing I am sure is that it would be the case for me and my kind of people wherever they go.

What I failed to understand is that what is so special about Slumdog Millionaire except that its Indian faces this time around. Forrest Gump had a very similar track. Forrest too was an underdog. He too loved a girl whom he met in childhood by chance. Lots of things happen in the course of time. They both do the things not because they are sure they would win or they have planned to make big but because that's the only thing they thought they could do. They don't learn things to make progress. They use the things they already learnt. Both yearn for their lady love. And for your surprise they get it though the chances are 1 in a billion. Only difference between Forrest Gump and Slumdog Millionaire was the style of story telling.

So what am I whining about? Forrest Gump did win an Oscar and so did Slumdog Millionaire!

That is the sad part of Academy Awards. They never seem to have learnt from their mistakes. It just gets repeated over and over and leaves you with utter frustration. How many would say Forrest Gump would deserve an Oscar more than Shaw shank Redemption? When the academy awards were announced nobody said Shaw shank deserved it more than Forrest Gump. It took many years for people to realize what a masterpiece Shaw shank Redemption was.

History has repeated again, at least as far as Academy Awards are concerned. If I were to believe few bloggers who seemed to be speaking rationally, Frost/Nixon was way ahead of other nominated movies. I haven’t seen that. But I found Milk to be a better movie followed by Curious case of Benjamin Button than Slumdog Millionaire.

Awards might have lost their meanings long ego but let's be frank, an award is an award. It matters to win it. No matter for how long it has been unfair, but it matters to win as long as its valued. And disappointingly an Academy Award still matters despite the fact that it has been 40 years since its meaning started to deteriorate. This year it fell one more step. Unfortunately other awards functions joined in the downfall!

A sequel, that has got nothing to do with its prequel

“In life, you’re always forced to make your choices. But in the long run there is always a scope to change it.”

“If you have lost something somewhere, you have to search where you’ve lost it”.

Above are the quotes I read somewhere. I don’t remember where I read them. For that matter I neither remember the persons who said it nor their exact words. However, the essence of those quotes was somewhat close to what I have written.

If my intro doesn’t ring you any bells, let me say it explicitly without any shame that I am becoming a blogger again. You might ask me, were you a blogger? When? Well, that’s exactly the reason I had stopped writing blogs. That was 3 years ago!!

I know you would ask me to show my earlier blogs. That makes me to quote someone (again I don’t know who am I quoting).

“If you tried and failed, remove all the evidences that you ever tried”.

I hope, this quote answers your question of where my earlier blogs are... :-)

In fact, just like any of you, I too have written lot many blogs under the uncountable (unaccountable too!) fake ids I created (Uncountable because I don’t remember how many I created). Those are still intact but neither you nor I would ever come to know if those blogs were mine even if we fortunately (or unfortunately) tumble upon them by chance. Those chances, however, are very slim. Even if we somehow did, it would be like Lola winning two consecutive bets on the same number of the roulette table in Lola Rennt and making 127,000 marks out of 100 marks she starts with. Near impossible!!

At this point, I feel, its necessary for me to acknowledge two persons who made me to reconsider writing blogs. One of them is Ashwin, one of my roommates and Guruprasad, an engineering pal. Don’t kill them for that because they didn’t force me to write! They started writing blogs. Somehow that bug bit me too for the second time. The result is, as its evident now, my share of dump to the cyber space.

I am not sure how long this dumping is going to continue. Anyway, who cares for it as long as Google keeps adding servers to store all our craps?!!