3 posts tagged “danny boyle”

 12/28/2008 00:47:36  ♥ written by vu ()

I just saw another great Danny Boyle movie called Slumdog Millionaire, the movie I'm sure you have all heard about. It basically about a story of Jamal's life, through a series of questions from his appearance on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". Although I won't go too much into the plot, without giving away too much, it's ultimate a destiny love story between Jamal and Latika.

I will point out some things I didn't like was that most of the movie was in English, which seems kind of weird, being in India. The small parts that did feature subtitles, well the subtitles was done in a way that I haven't seen before. Also, I didn't feel like there was any sense of real danger. I know there are a few realistic horrible scenes (the children league of beggars scene for instance, you'll know what I'm talking about if you see the film), but I was never at any point in fear of what will happen to the characters. It's not grim or gritty and the directing doesn't come off as comedic or cheesy, but it's not "real life", if you know what I mean.

Either way, I did enjoy the film, but not love it. I don't hate it, but considering his earlier enjoyable works such as Sunshine (his sci-fi movie), 28 Days Later... (his fast zombie movie), The Beach (his "I'm not working with Ewan McGregor" movie), Trainspotting (the Britpop druggie movie), or Shallow Grave (the first of the money-bag trilogy movies)... Slumdog doesn't quite have it as a Bollywood movie. And I reckon it's not what he intended the film to be compared to either.

Anyway, like Boyle's Britpop-soundtrack of Trainspotting, the soundtrack to Slumdog fits the film quite nicely between modern and traditional Indian music of A.R. Rahman and the urban world hip-hop style of M.I.A. Although I think Rahman's compositions works well as background music, I felt sometime M.I.A.'s in-your-face music overwhelm her scene. Still, it's hard to ignore the catchy sound of "bang bang bang ka-ching" sound effects in her "Paper Plane" hit song.

My two favorite songs from the soundtrack is Alisha Chinai's vocals on the Sonu Nigam song "Aaj Ki Raat". Chinai is quite famous in India, often called The Indian Madonna. Anyway, the song is actually originally from another Bollywood picture called Don - The Chase Begins Again, but I suppose Boyle love the song so much, he snuck it onto his own film.

Also, of course, the big bollywood dance number, "Jai Ho", was also pretty memorable. Incidentally, if you were wondering the vocals on that track is by Sukhwinder Singh, Tanvi Shah, and Mahalakshmi Iyer.

So I highly recommend you checking out Slumdog Millionaire, if it's still showing at your local movie theaters.

We just saw this movie (this would've been my 100th time watching it).

This movie, along with Happiness of the Katakuris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Leon the Professional, Run Lola Run, Rushmore, Super Ninjas (I love Venoms!!!!!!!!!), The Princess and the Warrior, Zatoichi #1-27, are in my little exclusive list of movies I can watch over and over again.

So anyway, there is a scene in the movie, where Ewan is going into a coma and this beautiful song is playing.

Some random fact #1: Kirsty MacColl re-recorded this song, but she turned it into a duet.

Random fact #2: Danny Boyle wanted to use Blondie's "Atomic", but the record company wanted too much money for license.  So he got the next best thing, he got Sleeper to record a cover version of it.

Random fact #3: The original Trainspotting soundtrack was so successful, that they released a second soundtrack!

Random fact #4: The drug dealer at the end of this movie, he was supposed to be the flatmate that's introduced in "Shallow Grave".