“Slumdog Millionaire”: The Anti-Blockbuster
If there’s one movie that deserves to win a lot of Oscars this year, it’s “Slumdog Millionaire“.
This film was made for about a tenth of the budget of the year’s other hot contenter, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. It certainly doesn’t boast the same kind of all-star cast and breakthrough technical wizardry. Instead it has a heart-warming story that is at the same time funny and thought-provoking, a cast of young, obviously enthusiastic actors and a fresh visual style that fuses a “Bourne Identity”-like vitality with Bollywood aestethics. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who also shot some of Lars von Trier’s best movies, certainly did a fantastic job here, as did the rest of the crew.
What’s great to see above all is that a quality movie like this one still can find its way to a mainstream audience without gazillions of marketing money. Just look at the U.S. weekend box office numbers (according to IMDB) since “Slumdog Millionaire” was released in November:
$10,699,629 (USA) (25 January 2009) (1,415 Screens)
$5,849,157 (USA) (18 January 2009) (582 Screens)
$3,782,340 (USA) (11 January 2009) (601 Screens)
$4,690,769 (USA) (4 January 2009) (612 Screens)
$4,301,870 (USA) (28 December 2008) (614 Screens)
$3,053,760 (USA) (21 December 2008) (589 Screens)
$2,175,518 (USA) (14 December 2008) (169 Screens)
$1,402,176 (USA) (7 December 2008) (78 Screens)
$1,346,039 (USA) (30 November 2008) (49 Screens)
$947,795 (USA) (23 November 2008) (32 Screens)
$360,018 (USA) (16 November 2008) (10 Screens)
This gradual audience growth — obviously based on word-of-mouth recommendations — is refreshingly different from the usual Hollywood blockbusters that have one or two strong weekends (bought with a lot of marketing dollars) and then disappear.
Go see it. In my opinion, it’s the movie of the year.
The movie theater we saw it in was showing it on 2 screens – and both were sold out tonight. I think usually this only happens with mega-blockbusters like Batman or Star Wars. Or maybe this is just because we saw it in intelligentsia town Cambridge, MA?
But it is worth noting that Young’s first season in the 1995 regular season, the same passer rating over 110.