‘Slumdog Millionaire’ Movie Review

By Mukul | February 16, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire

I had wanted to watch this movie when I first heard about it in December. However, I never got around to a viewing until late January after which the film had already won Golden Globes, SAG Awards and been nominated for 10 Oscars. It almost seemed unfair to have had the bar set so high as it couldn’t possibly fulfill the hype. And unfortunately, after watching it, the movie seemed very ordinary for me. I should offer a *spoiler* alert for those who haven’t seen the film as integral pieces of the plot may be discussed.

It may be worth mentioning that I missed the very start of the movie but was caught up quickly by the time I arrived. The movie focuses on three orphaned children from the slums of Mumbai and details a rags to riches love story. As the movie went along, I really enjoyed the premise of re-telling the background story of each answer and the back-and-forth cuts were carefully done. I would have preferred to see a running sidebar on the Millionaire show to see how many questions our hero was away from the ‘million’ and also if the same life lines from the U.S. show were available for use. While it was unfortunate for India to have gained recognition in this film through the portrayal of slum villages, it also wouldn’t be fair to ignore the fact that these areas exist, as they do in many other countries around the world. Despite the Western praise, the movie has been a cause for protest in areas of Mumbai.

I actually think there was dialogue in the movie that did not translate well in the subtitles. Luckily my early years at Hindi class paid off and I think those who could understand the language may have connected a bit more with certain scenes. I also wish the film did a better job highlighting Amitabh Bachan, the actor who came down in the helicopter in the autograph scene. To put it in perspective, there probably isn’t a single actor in Hollywood who is on the same scale as the iconic Bachan is relative to the Bollywood scene. It’s also cool to note that Bachan is the actual host of India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Meanwhile, the actor playing the host in the movie was another recognizable face for me, Anil Kapoor, who I was a big fan of back in the early 90s (Ram Lakhan anyone?). It’s always interesting to see Bollywood actors cross over to the Hollywood scene (Amrish Puri in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom rings a bell). I’m hoping this movie is a launch pad for the two main stars, Dev Patel and Freida Pinto, both of whom did a good job in the movie.

What bothered me about the film however was the stretching of reality as it went along. For example, young Jamal (Dev) going back to Mumbai to find Latika (Freida) seemed too easy. To keep things in perspective, try finding a ‘Mary’ in NYC without the assistance of any technology. Furthermore, it seemed odd how much the kids were able to get by speaking English without finishing any formal education. Millionaire is also a show that is never shown live as the last scene depicted, and the phone-a-friend list is predetermined at the time of filming. It seemed like we really had to suspend reality to allow for the Hollywood ending. Also, it may have been the 5hrs sleep I was on and most definitely my lack of literary knowledge, but I was convinced at the time of viewing that Jamal answered the last question incorrectly and the proceeding events were a fantasy sequence. Why else would a million dollar winner be stranded alone at a train station after a monumental win? Where was the media? Again, maybe I expected too much and perhaps I am being too critical but concluding the fairy tale love story with a convenient happy ending accompanied with a dance scene is what prompted me to stop watching Bollywood movies in the mid-90s in the first place. That being said, I think it will probably win the Best Picture Oscar in a relatively weak field but give me Boyz in the Hood any day over this above average film.

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Kelly Clarkson vs Carrie Underwood

By Mukul | February 15, 2009

Kelly Clarkson Carrie Underwood

A recent random argument with a colleague prompted me to write this post and settle our differences. Now, I don’t claim to listen to pop or country too much, however I do think Kelly Clarkson is by far the better singing talent over Carrie Underwood. So, while judging singing talent alone is highly subjective, I had to dig into areas that have more quantitative measurements:

Album Sales
For starters, I found it a fairly difficult to find official album sale numbers on the Internet. There really should be a site that houses this data and allows users to select an album and retrieve appropriate sales stats and splits by month, year etc. (ok, too much time looking at ESPN player cards). In any case, digging around the official U.S. recording company site (RIAA) and official press releases, it eventually led me back to Wikipedia which did a nice job summing it up (as of 02/15/09):

Artist Albums Sales*
Clarkson 3 9,545,000
Underwood 2 9,330,000

Carrie supporters would probably be quick to point out that Kelly had a 2-year lead in sales and that is probably a fair point. To give credit where credit is due, Underwood also has the top selling U.S. album of any Idol contestant. However, outside the realm of U.S. sales, Kelly’s Breakaway album sold over 12 million copies worldwide (AI record) and Clarkson has a much more emphatic advantage over Underwood in world sales (unconfirmed 17+ to 11+). Carrie’s photogenic image and heavy involvement in the pop media (Tony Romo anyone?) greatly assists her U.S. sales numbers. Further investigation has Clarkson at an astounding 8 to 2 advantage over Underwood in Top 10 Singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 which speaks to the quality and quantity of content produced. This includes Kelly’s latest single (“My Life Would Suck Without You”) which reached #1 last week. Although both ladies have probably already peaked in individual album sales, Kelly’s recent #1 hit leads me to believe her March 2009 album All I Ever Wanted will do reasonably well. Meanwhile Carrie’s sharp sales drop from her first to second album may be a sign of further diminishing returns.

Grammys
While there are probably a dozen or so award shows each year recognizing music talent, the Grammys are generally recognized as the standard of honoring musical achievement across all genres. For this purpose, I will only focus on the Grammys to compare hardware earned by our two competitors. The results are as follows (as of 02/15/09):

Artist Nominations Wins
Clarkson 4 2 (Female Pop Vocal Performance, Pop Vocal Album)
Underwood 4 4 (New Artist, Female Country Vocal Performance [3])

 

By sheer numbers Underwoord clearly has the advantage but a closer look tells a different tale. Carrie has done exceptionally well in the Country genre as 3 of the awards lie in the Best Female Country Vocal category. However after that, it is slim pickings. While Underwood has defeated the likes of Trisha Yearwood and LeAnn Rimes, Clarkson faced heavier competition in her award wins over Mariah Carey and Paul McCartney among others. Is it also not somewhat strange to note that Carrie has never been nominated for a Best Album Grammy (Country or otherwise)? The Pop genre is a much more competitive field and Kelly has held her own in both at the Grammys and in competing against album sales. With the up and coming talent of Taylor Swift, Carrie’s hold on the Country market may be coming to an end.

In terms of intangibles, while Kelly is no angel herself and some might say even a tad arrogant, I find her to be somewhat more wholesome than Carrie who seems to be preoccupied these days digging her key into 4-wheel drives and forgetting dudes’ names. While there will probably never be a clear-cut winner with these two, I think the above areas of investigation shed enough light into the competition to put Kelly Clarkson on top. Rebuttal anyone?

* [Update: 03/23/09] Kelly’s new album release, All I Ever Wanted debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 reaching 255,000 in sales. Although the sales figures pale in comparison to a couple of her previous album releases Thankful (297,000) and My December (291,000), the strong debut displaced U2 at #1 at a time when year-to-date sales were down 12%. Her first CD single “My Life Would Suck Without You” remains on on the Billboard Hot 100 for the 9th consecutive week holding ground in the #5 slot.


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‘Notorious’ Movie Review

By Mukul | February 13, 2009

B.I.G.

Growing up, my favorite rapper was Notorious B.I.G. and I had a chance to relive his life story in this film. I’m glad the movie did not come out too much later than it did so as to keep memories of the rap giant relatively in perspective. Outside of some minor details, there wasn’t too much I didn’t already about his life and I was hoping some of the matters would have been probed in more detail. Otherwise, the film did a good job hitting many of the key points in B.I.G.’s life and the music was well placed throughout the movie.

Jamal Woolard did an exceptional job portraying B.I.G. including much of the rapper’s swagger and mannerisms. I had a tough time figuring out if Jamal’s rhymes were authentic or if he was just lip-syncing them - regardless, it looked fairly legit. I was also neat to note that B.I.G.’s actual son played young Biggy early on in the movie. The actress playing Faith Evans also did a great job and her close resemblance to the real deal definitely assisted in relating to the character. This is one element that hurt the portrayals of Puffy and Tupac as I had a tough time ‘believing’ each actor’s representation due to the dissimilarities in looks (I’ve always thought Kobe Bryant had a pretty close resemblance to Tupac).

As the movie went along, it was fairly obvious the story was biased towards B.I.G./East Coast and all matters related to his life (executive production efforts from Puff Daddy, B.I.G.’s mother and Faith Evans may have had something to do with that). Any foul play B.I.G. committed was spinned into a positive light and B.I.G. always seemed to come out in a compassionate manner. The feud with Tupac was even downplayed somewhat to make B.I.G. appear as the innocent victim. Although the facts have never been confirmed, it seemed a bit too simplistic for Bad Boy not to be involved in some way or another of Tupac’s robbery/shooting in NY. Its unfortunate we couldn’t gain any more details/insight on the true happenings of this event among others (murders, Pac/Faith).

I actually think the movie would have been more memorable with cuts to actual footage (outside of the funeral- which probably hit the spot for those who remember the scene). For example, the incident at the 1995 Source Awards would have been much more powerful if the viewer witnessed the real scene illustrating the build up of East/West coast tensions. Another knock I have of the film is the omission of some of the side characters in B.I.G.’s life. A colleague noted that Charlie Baltimore, who was romantically liked to B.I.G., was notably missing from the storyline (did I mention Faith was involved in Production?). I also thought some of the other Bad Boy members (112, Mase, Lox) along with Jay-Z should have been mentioned in some light, at least from the perspective of how B.I.G. positively influenced their music careers.

I would definitely recommend this to those who wish to gain a better understanding of the rapper’s life and for those who already have memories of the late rapper, it will be enjoyable to relive the moments that define the life of ‘Big Poppa’.

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The Office - ‘Stress Relief’ Episode Review

By Mukul | February 12, 2009

Michael Scott

So this was the much hyped Office episode airing after the Super Bowl, usually a sweet spot for shows to grow in audience following the most watched telecast of the television season. This year NBC gave the honor to The Office, super-sized it to 1hr and threw in some big names to build it up. In execution the episode was hilarious from start-to-end, at times not the sharp poignant humor Office fans are accustom to, but definitely offering broader comedy angles to appeal to the larger mass audience.

The tone was set early with a ridiculously hilarious slapstick cold open. It did a good job attempting to keep the Super Bowl audience afloat. The scenes with CFO David Wallace were vintage Office equipped with witty conversation and classic Michael, facial expressions et al. I thought the writers did a good job incorporating the “big names” without escaping from the day-to-day reality of Scranton, PA (although if you blinked you probably missed Jessica Alba’s appearance). Also, any episode with the ‘Nard dawg dropping vocals should be considered an instant hit (the Stayin’ Alive scene alone was killer comedy). For syndication purposes, it seemed like the hour long episode was basically broken down into two story segments with the latter portion showcasing a roast of Michael Scott (”friends only, Toby”). Although the best zingers came from Michael himself with the “boom-roasted” 1-liners directed at each employee. BTW, “what’s a text?”

Overall I think the episode did a good job “re-introducing” each character by highlighting each one’s eccentricities to an audience that may be watching for the first time. I’m glad the writers did not go over the top with a wedding or surprise pregnancy. While the episode drew 22 million viewers, which more than doubled its average season audience, it fell pretty hard from the 98 million who watched the Super Bowl. Although the late start (10:40 PM EST) may have averted some viewers, personally, I don’t think The Office is a show that will ever really catch on with the general public. Its dry comedy really only appeals to a niche audience (with shows like Arrested Development and 30 Rock suffering from the same fate). Jim+Pam’s Ross+Rachel angle allows the show to reach out to a larger fan base and attract higher viewer ship but we will never see Office rating numbers resemble NBC’s past comedy hits.

Overall, a hilarious episode with high levels of comedy sustained throughout the hour: 8.3/10

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Welcome world!

By Mukul | February 9, 2009

I decided it was time to enter the wonderful world of blogging. I hope to keep the topics trendy and entertaining. Please enjoy the ride!

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