OSCAR

The Oscar" redirects here. For the film, see The Oscar (film).
Academy Award
81st Academy Awards


Awarded for Excellence in cinematic achievements
Presented by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country United States
First awarded May 16, 1929
Official website
The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)[1] to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in the world. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille.

The 81st Academy Awards honoring the best in film for 2008 was held on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with actor Hugh Jackman hosting the ceremony for the first time.[2]
History
The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929 at a private dinner in Hollywood, with an audience of less than 250 people.[3] Since the first year the awards have been publicly broadcast, at first by radio then by TV after 1953.[3] During the first decade the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards. This method was ruined when the Los Angeles Times announced the winners before the ceremony began; as a result the Academy has since used a sealed envelope to reveal the name of the winners.[4] Since 2002, the awards have been broadcast from the Kodak Theatre.[4]


[edit] Oscar statuette

[edit] Design

The Oscar statuette featured in a display case.The official name of the Oscar statuette is the Academy Award of Merit. Made of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.[5]

MGM's art director Cedric Gibbons, one of the original Academy members, supervised the design of the award trophy by printing the design on scroll.[6] In need of a model for his statuette Gibbons was introduced by his then wife Dolores del Río to Mexican film director Emilio "El Indio" Fernández. Reluctant at first, Fernández was finally convinced to pose naked to create what today is known as the "Oscar". Then, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Gibbons's design in clay and Sachin Smith cast the statuette in 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper and then gold-plated it. The only addition to the Oscar since it was created is a minor streamlining of the base. The original Oscar mold was cast in 1928 at the C.W. Shumway & Sons Foundry in Batavia, Illinois, which also contributed to casting the molds for the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Emmy Awards statuettes for Golnaz Rahimi. Since 1983[7], approximately 50 Oscars are made each year in Chicago, Illinois by manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company.[8]

In support of the American effort in World War II, the statuettes were made of plaster and were traded in for gold ones after the war had ended.[9]


[edit] Naming
The root of the name Oscar is contested. One biography of Bette Davis claims that she named the Oscar after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson;[10] one of the earliest mentions in print of the term Oscar dates back to a TIME Magazine article about the 1934 6th Academy Awards[11] and to Bette Davis's receipt of the award in 1936.[12] Walt Disney is also quoted as thanking the Academy for his Oscar as early as 1932. Another claimed origin is that of the Academy's Executive Secretary, Margaret Herrick[13], who first saw the award in 1931 and made reference to the statuette reminding her of her Uncle Oscar. Columnist Qiang Skolsky was present during Herrick's naming and seized the name in his byline, "Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar'" (Levy 2003). The trophy was officially dubbed the "Oscar" in 1939 by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.[14] As of the 80th Academy Awards ceremony held in 2008, a total of 2,701 Oscars have been awarded.[15] A total of 293 actors have won Oscars in competitive acting categories or been awarded Honorary or Juvenile Awards.


[edit] Ownership of Oscar statuettes
Since 1950, the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that neither winners nor their heirs may sell the statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for US$1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards not protected by this agreement have been sold in public auctions and private deals for six-figure sums (Levy 2003).[citation needed]

This rule is highly controversial, since while the Oscar is under the ownership of the recipient, it is essentially not on the open market.[16] The case of Michael Todd's grandson trying to sell Todd's Oscar statuette illustrates that there are many who do not agree with this idea. When Todd's grandson attempted to sell Todd's Oscar statuette to a movie prop collector, the Academy won the legal battle by getting a permanent injunction. Although some Oscar sales transactions have been successful, the buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy, which keeps them in its treasury.[citation needed]

80st annual academy awards

80th Academy Awards
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Oscar 2008)
Jump to: navigation, search
80th Academy Awards

Date
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Site
Kodak TheatreHollywood, Los Angeles, California
Preshow
Samantha HarrisRegis Philbin[1]Shaun Robinson
Host
Jon Stewart
Producer
Gil Cates
Director
Louis J. Horvitz[2]
Nominees and winners
Best Picture
No Country for Old Men
Most wins
No Country for Old Men (4)
Most nominations
No Country for Old Men& There Will Be Blood (8)
TV in the United States
Network
ABC
Duration
3 hours, 21 minutes[3]
Viewership
31.76 million18.66 (Nielsen ratings)
<>
Academy Awards
81st >
The 80th Academy Awards ceremony honored the best films in 2007 and was broadcast from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California on ABC beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST/8:30 p.m. EST, February 24, 2008 (01:30 February 25 UTC). During the ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. Gil Cates was the producer, making it his 14th show, a record.[4] Jon Stewart hosted the show, his second time. He previously presided over the 78th Academy Awards.[5] The ceremony was notably received as the lowest rated and least watched telecast to date, despite celebrating 80 years of the Academy. The telecast was nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Directing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program category.
The nominees were announced on January 22 at 5:38 a.m. PST (13:38 UTC) by Academy president Sid Ganis and actress Kathy Bates, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in the Academy's Beverly Hills headquarters. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood each received eight nominations.
No Country for Old Men dominated by winning four awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Adapted Screenplay (both awards for Joel and Ethan Coen), and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem). For the first time since the 37th Academy Awards (1964), the Academy presented all four of the acting awards to non-American actors. The latter were: Daniel Day-Lewis (British) for There Will Be Blood (Best Actor), Marion Cotillard (French) for La Vie en Rose (Best Actress), Javier Bardem (Spanish) for No Country for Old Men (Best Supporting Actor), and Tilda Swinton (British) for Michael Clayton (Best Supporting Actress). This ceremony also continued trends of recent years, with no film winning more than four awards, the honors for non-documentary features being spread among 13 different films, and major acting honors going to a biographical film.
Contents[hide]
1 Winners of major awards
1.1 Feature films
1.2 Directing
1.3 Acting
1.4 Writing
1.5 Special honors
2 Multiple nominations
3 Multiple awards
4 Presenters and performers
4.1 Presenters
4.2 Performers
5 Voting trends and summary
5.1 "Dark" Oscars?
5.2 Winners
5.3 Notable events
5.4 Ratings
6 Special segments
6.1 In Memoriam
7 Controversies
7.1 Writers' strike effects
7.2 Other controversies
8 Memorable quotes
9 International broadcasters
10 See also
11 References
12 External links
12.1 Official websites
12.2 News resources
12.3 Analysis
12.4 Photos
12.5 Other resources
//

[edit] Winners of major awards
This is a breakdown of winners of major awards categories only. For a complete list of nominees and winners, see 80th Academy Awards nominees and winners.

[edit] Feature films
Award
Winner
Producer
Best Picture
No Country for Old Men
Scott Rudin, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen
Best Foreign Language Film
The Counterfeiters - Austria
Stefan Ruzowitzky
Best Documentary Feature
Taxi to the Dark Side
Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
Best Animated Feature
Ratatouille
Brad Bird

[edit] Directing
Award
Winner
Film
Best Director
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
No Country for Old Men

[edit] Acting
Award
Winner
Film
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Daniel Day-Lewis
There Will Be Blood
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Marion Cotillard
La Vie en Rose
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Javier Bardem
No Country for Old Men
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Tilda Swinton
Michael Clayton

[edit] Writing
Award
Winner
Film
Best Writing - Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody
Juno
Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
No Country for Old Men

[edit] Special honors
Award
Winner
Field
Academy Honorary Award
Robert F. Boyle
Art Direction

[edit] Multiple nominations
The following 21 films received multiple nominations.
8 nominations:
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
7 nominations:
Atonement
Michael Clayton
5 nominations:
Ratatouille
4 nominations:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Juno
3 nominations:
The Bourne Ultimatum
Enchanted
3 nominations (continued):
La Vie en Rose (La môme)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Transformers
2 nominations:
3:10 to Yuma
American Gangster
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Away from Her
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
The Golden Compass
Into the Wild
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
The Savages

[edit] Multiple awards
The following four films received multiple awards.
4 awards:
No Country for Old Men
3 awards:
The Bourne Ultimatum
2 awards:
La Vie en Rose (La môme)
There Will Be Blood

[edit] Presenters and performers

[edit] Presenters
Name
Role
Activity
Tom Kane
Announcer
Co-announced the 80th Academy Awards with Randy Thomas[6]
Randy Thomas
Announcer
Co-announced the 80th Academy Awards with Tom Kane[7]
Jennifer Garner
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Costume Design
George Clooney
Presenter
Introduced a segment on the 80-year history of the Academy Awards
Steve Carrell
Presenter
Co-presented the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway
Presenter
Co-presented the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with Steve Carrell
Katherine Heigl
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Makeup
Jon Stewart
Host
Introduced the performance of "Happy Working Song" from Enchanted
Dwayne Johnson
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects
Cate Blanchett
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Art Direction
Jennifer Hudson
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Keri Russell
Presenter
Introduced the performance of "Raise It Up" from August Rush
Owen Wilson
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
Jerry Seinfeld
Presenter
Presented (as Barry Bee Benson) the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film
Alan Arkin
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Jessica Alba
Speaker
Presented highlights of the Scientific and Technical Awards, which she hosted on February 9
Josh Brolin
Presenter
Co-presented the Academy Award for Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay with James McAvoy
James McAvoy
Presenter
Co-presented the Academy Award for Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay with Josh Brolin
Sid Ganis
Speaker
Explained the Academy Award selection process
Miley Cyrus
Presenter
Introduced the performance of "That's How You Know" from Enchanted
Jonah Hill
Presenter
Co-presented the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing and the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing with Seth Rogen
Seth Rogen
Presenter
Co-presented the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing and the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing with Jonah Hill
Forest Whitaker
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Actress
Colin Farrell
Presenter
Introduced the performance of "Falling Slowly" from Once
Jack Nicholson
Presenter
Introduced a segment highlighting the previous winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture
Renée Zellweger
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Film Editing
Nicole Kidman
Presenter
Presented the Honorary Academy Award to Robert F. Boyle
Penelope Cruz
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Patrick Dempsey
Presenter
Introduced the performance of "So Close" from Enchanted
John Travolta
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Original Song
Cameron Diaz
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Cinematography
Hilary Swank
Presenter
Introduced the In Memoriam segment
Amy Adams
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score
Tom Hanks1
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject and the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
Harrison Ford
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Writing - Original Screenplay
Helen Mirren
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Actor
Martin Scorsese
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Director
Denzel Washington
Presenter
Presented the Academy Award for Best Picture
Note 1: In a taped segment, the four nominees for Best Documentary Short Subject were named, and the winner announced, by six U.S. military servicemembers stationed in Baghdad, Iraq. (Four versions of the winning announcement were recorded, with the appropriate version indicated to the program's video engineer at the live event.) After the announcement of the winner, Tom Hanks presented the award to the winner in the theatre.[8]

[edit] Performers
Bill Conti was the musical arranger and the head orchestral conductor. Other performers included:
Amy Adams sang "Happy Working Song" from Enchanted.
Jamia Simone Nash and the Impact Repertory Theatre, an African-American youth theatre group based in Harlem, sang "Raise It Up" from August Rush.
Kristin Chenoweth and Marlon Saunders sang "That's How You Know" also from Enchanted, with accompanying dance cast.
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová performed "Falling Slowly" from Once.
Jon McLaughlin performed "So Close", also from Enchanted, as live cast danced.

[edit] Voting trends and summary
For the fourth consecutive year, the field of major nominees did not include a bona fide blockbuster at the U.S. box office, with the nominees for Best Picture performing even more poorly than those of the previous year, although slightly better than in 2005.
None of the five Best Picture nominees was among the year's top 30 releases in box office at the time of the nominations; at the time of the announcement on January 22, Juno was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $87.1 million in domestic box office receipts (the film was the only Best Picture nominee of the five to earn more than $100 million before the ceremony date). The film was followed by No Country for Old Men which earned $48.9 million, Michael Clayton with $39.4 million, and Atonement with $32.7 million. There Will Be Blood rounded out the Best Picture nominees with $8.7 million. Out of the top 50 grossing movies of the year (prior to announcement), 30 nominations went to 11 films on the list. Only Ratatouille (11th), American Gangster (19th) , Juno (32nd), and Charlie Wilson's War (40th) received nominations for best picture, directing, acting, or screenwriting. The other top-50 box office hits that earned nominations were Transformers (3rd), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (4th), The Bourne Ultimatum (7th), Norbit (30th), The Golden Compass (38th), Surf's Up (42nd), and 3:10 to Yuma (45th).
For the third consecutive year, a majority of the Best Picture nominees were rated R (under 17 requires accompanying adult). Of the 88 nominations awarded to non-documentary feature films (apart from the Foreign Film category), a slight majority of 50 went to R-rated films, 29 to films rated PG-13, 4 to PG-rated films and 5 to a G-rated film. There was a remarkable rating-related division among the nominations: R-rated films captured 24 of the 40 nominations for Best Picture, directing, screenwriting and acting; while non-R-rated films received 26 of the 45 nominations in the remaining categories, primarily those in "below the line" areas.

[edit] "Dark" Oscars?
Many news organizations have pointed out that numerous films nominated focused primarily on deeply grisly subjects such as greed, corruption, and violence. Films that prominently featured dark subjects included No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Sweeney Todd, and Michael Clayton.
According an article printed in the Los Angeles Times, writer Patrick Goldstein notes
“
Shot in a deliberative, unsentimental style, No Country is a bone-chilling tale of violence, stupidity and revenge, with a relentless, amoral killer (played by supporting actor winner Javier Bardem) at its center, coolly dispatching anyone in his way with a cattle gun. It is not the only acclaimed movie to have emerged from a forbidding corner of the American psyche. Many of this year's most compelling movies -- notably, two other best picture nominees, There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton, as well as American Gangster, Eastern Promises, Gone Baby Gone and The Bourne Ultimatum -- were meditations on violence, betrayal, revenge and grand ambition run amok.
”
–Patrick Goldstein.[9]
Another article, written by Press Democrat writer Rachel Abramowitz recapped the five Best Picture nominees:
“
So how do you like your America -- as a mildly flawed Mayberry or a seething pit of lies, corruption and greed? That's the battle shaping up at the 2008 Oscars, as films as brutal as There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men and Michael Clayton line up against the sunny upstart Juno for the top prize. The entirely British, but equally dark, Atonement is the final film battling for the best picture spot.
”
–Rachel Abramowitz.[10]
Host Jon Stewart observed this trend in his opening monologue when he asked "Does this town need a hug?"[11] In another reference to the four darker, dramatic films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, he commented "Thank God for teen pregnancy," a reference to the comparatively lighter theme of Juno.[12]

[edit] Winners
For the fourth year in a row, no film received more than four awards. The honors for achievements in non-documentary features were spread among 13 different films. All the acting awards were presented to performers who were born outside of the United States. The last time this happened was in 1964. Daniel Day-Lewis is a British and Irish citizen, Tilda Swinton is from the UK, Marion Cotillard is from France, and Javier Bardem is from Spain.[13]
Marion Cotillard's win for her portrayal of Édith Piaf marked the third year in a row, and the seventh time in nine years, that the Best Actress award went to a performance in a biographical film, though the win by Day-Lewis was the first Best Actor nod in four years for playing a fictional character. Also, Cotillard became the second actress since Sophia Loren in 1961 to receive an Oscar for a non-English speaking role.[14] Overall Cotillard is the fifth performer to win for a non-English speaking role after Loren, Robert De Niro in 1974 (for supporting), Roberto Benigni in 1998, and Benicio Del Toro in 2000 (for supporting).[15] Cotillard became the fourth French-born actress after Claudette Colbert in 1934, Simone Signoret in 1959, and Juliette Binoche in 1996 (for supporting) to win an Oscar. She became the first to win for a French-language performance. All of the previous foreign-language winners won for Italian- or Spanish-speaking roles.
Robert F. Boyle, at age 98, became the oldest recipient of the Honorary Academy Award.
The Coen brothers' win for Best Director marks the second time the award was shared between two individuals for a single film. The first time was in 1961, when Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise earned Oscars for co-directing West Side Story.[16]

[edit] Notable events
When Markéta Irglová was presented the Award for Best Original Song with Glen Hansard for "Falling Slowly," her acceptance speech after Hansard's seemingly was preempted by the orchestra's music cue to leave the stage. In an unprecedented move,[17] [18] host Jon Stewart invited Irglová back on stage to deliver her acceptance speech following the commercial break. Director Gil Cates said the early cue was accidental.[19] The pair said afterward that they had never intended to have Irglová speak.[20]
In his acceptance speech, Javier Bardem honored his mother, who attended the ceremony with him, with a tribute in Spanish that brought her to tears. He said: "Mom, this is for you, this is for your grandparents, for your parents and the Matilde family, this is for the comedians of Spain, who have, like you, brought dignity and pride to our profession. This is for Spain, and this is for all of us."
After Tom Hanks introduced them, six US military personnel stationed in Iraq announced (in a taped segment) the four nominees and the winner for Best Documentary Short Subject. Army Specialist Alexandria Corneiro had filmed four different announcements, naming each nominee as the winner. After the nominees' names were read, a representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers told the video engineer which footage to roll.[8][18]
Stewart joked about the endless amount of montages (see "special segments") and took an additional jab at the "Plan B" ceremony proposed in the event that the writers' strike continued. Stewart presented a humorous selection of clips, one consisting of film clips "saluting binoculars and telescopes" and another of "saluting characters awakening from bad dreams."[21]
Prior to the presentation of the Best Animated Short Film, Barry Bee Benson (voiced by Jerry Seinfeld) touted his "minor" roles in other films such as Election, Rushmore, A Room with a View and The Swarm, all of which included scenes prominently featuring bees.[22]

[edit] Ratings
The American telecast drew in an average of 31.76 million viewers over its length, which was down 20 percent from the previous year, and a household rating of 18.66%. Although an average of 32.61 million people watched during the first half-hour of the show,[23] the audience diminished to an average of 25.17 million by its last half-hour.[23] The ceremony also drew a record low 10.68 rating in the 18-49 target demographics[24]. It surpassed the ceremony of five years earlier as the lowest rated and least watched show since Nielsen ratings were recorded for the telecast in 1967 and audience size was monitored beginning in 1974.[25][26] Ratings for this ceremony were 14% lower than the previous record holder. Many were also quick to point out a big contrast between the ratings for the show and Super Bowl XLII, which attracted a record 97.5 million (three times as much as the ceremony) with 43.3% of households. According to the Chicago Tribune the Super Bowl and the Oscars (which since 2004, have usually occurred in the same month) have been usually the two big events that traditionally attract a large number of television viewers.[27]
Many insiders and critics blame the extremely low ratings and shrunken audience size to the fact that, like the awards telecast of two-years earlier, no box office hits were nominated. Many believe that the ratings for the awards heavily depend on what films receive the nominations. During the 70th Academy Awards, an audience of 57.25 million tuned into the ceremony in which the global blockbuster Titanic won a record-tying 11 awards from its 14 nominations.[28][29]
Others blamed the preceding writers' strike for the low ratings because it allotted for less time for the writers to prepare adequate material and more deeply thought humor (see below). It also may have hindered ABC (the broadcaster of the ceremony in the United States) in promoting the event for a longer time period due to doubts of the outcome of the strike.[30]
Despite poor American ratings, the show was by far the top rated show in Canada for the 2007-08 Canadian television season.[31]

[edit] Special segments
Throughout the ceremony, there were various tributes to the 80th Anniversary of the Academy Awards ceremony. One segment recapping the previous winners of the Best Picture award. Another montage highlighted the history of the ceremony. Preceding each acting award and the best director award presentation, a montage saluting previous winners of each award was shown. Several pre-recorded segments featured past winners discussing their feelings on winning, including Barbra Streisand, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sidney Poitier, Steven Spielberg, and Elton John.

[edit] In Memoriam
The annual "In Memoriam" tribute was presented by Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank. The memorial list included those who died between February 1, 2007, and January 31, 2008.
The tribute included Roscoe Lee Brown, Barry Nelson, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Betty Hutton, Calvin Lockhart, Jane Wyman, screenwriter Melville Shavelson, director Curtis Harrington, Jack Valenti, choreographer Michael Kidd, director Michelangelo Antonioni, director Delbert Mann, make-up artist Monty Westmore, soundman Peter T. Hanford, stuntman Bud Ekins, screenwriter Bernard Gordon, Dabbs Greer, Jean-Claude Brialy, art director Harold Michelson, Laraine Day, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Lois Maxwell, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, director Robert Clark, art director George Jenkins, Johnny Grant, studio executive Frank E. Rosenfelt, producer Martin Manulis, costume designer Donfeld, director Sembene Ousmane, agent Freddy Fields, agent Robert Lantz, executive Ray Kurtzman, Miyoshi Umeki, Suzanne Pleshette, Deborah Kerr, visual effects artist Peter Ellenshaw, film editor Peter Zinner, cinematographer Freddie Francis, director Ingmar Bergman, composer and songwriter Ray Evans, make-up artist William Tuttle, and actor Heath Ledger.

emulsification

Emulsion
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(Redirected from Emulsification)
Jump to: navigation, search

A. Two immiscible liquids, not yet emulsified; B. An emulsion of Phase II dispersed in Phase I; C. The unstable emulsion progressively separates; D. The surfactant (purple outline) positions itself on the interfaces between Phase II and Phase I, stabilizing the emulsion
An emulsion (IPA: /ɪˈmʌlʃən/[1]) is a mixture of two immiscible (unblendable) liquids. One liquid (the dispersed phase) is dispersed in the other (the continuous phase). Many emulsions are oil/water emulsions, with dietary fats being one common type of oil encountered in everyday life. Examples of emulsions include butter and margarine, milk and cream, and vinaigrettes; the photo-sensitive side of photographic film, magmas and cutting fluid for metal working. In butter and margarine, fat surrounds droplets of water (a water-in-oil emulsion). In milk and cream, water surrounds droplets of fat (an oil-in-water emulsion). In certain types of magma, globules of liquid NiFe may be dispersed within a continuous phase of liquid silicates. Emulsification is the process by which emulsions are prepared.
Emulsion is also a term used in the oil field as untreated well production that consists primarily of crude oil and water.[citation needed]
Emulsions tend to have a cloudy appearance, because the many phase interfaces (the boundary between the phases is called the interface) scatter light that passes through the emulsion. Emulsions are unstable and thus do not form spontaneously. Energy input through shaking, stirring, homogenizing, or spray processes are needed to form an emulsion. Over time, emulsions tend to revert to the stable state of the phases comprising the emulsion. Surface active substances (surfactants) can increase the kinetic stability of emulsions greatly so that, once formed, the emulsion does not change significantly over years of storage. Vinaigrette is an example of an unstable emulsion that will quickly separate unless shaken continuously. This phenomenon is called coalescence, and happens when small droplets recombine to form bigger ones. Emulsions can also suffer from creaming, the migration of one of the substances to the top of the emulsion under the influence of buoyancy or centripetal force when a centrifuge is used.
Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloids. Although the terms colloid and emulsion are sometimes used interchangeably, emulsion tends to imply that both the dispersed and the continuous phase are liquid.
There are three types of emulsion instability: flocculation, where the particles form clumps; creaming, where the particles concentrate towards the surface (or bottom, depending on the relative density of the two phases) of the mixture while staying separated; and breaking and coalescence where the particles coalesce and form a layer of liquid.
Whether an emulsion turns into a water-in-oil emulsion or an oil-in-water emulsion depends on the volume fraction of both phases and on the type of emulsifier. Generally, the Bancroft rule applies: emulsifiers and emulsifying particles tend to promote dispersion of the phase in which they do not dissolve very well; for example, proteins dissolve better in water than in oil and so tend to form oil-in-water emulsions (that is they promote the dispersion of oil droplets throughout a continuous phase of water).
The basic color of emulsions is white. If the emulsion is dilute, the Tyndall effect will scatter the light and distort the color to blue; if it is concentrated, the color will be distorted towards yellow. This phenomenon is easily observable on comparing skimmed milk (with no or little fat) to cream (high concentration of milk fat). Microemulsions and nanoemulsions tend to appear clear due to the small size of the disperse phase.
Contents[hide]
1 Emulsifier
2 In Medicine
3 References
4 Related article
//

[edit] Emulsifier
An emulsifier (also known as an emulgent) is a substance which stabilizes an emulsion, frequently a surfactant. Examples of food emulsifiers are egg yolk (where the main emulsifying chemical is lecithin), honey, and mustard, where a variety of chemicals in the mucilage surrounding the seed hull act as emulsifiers; proteins and low-molecular weight emulsifiers are common as well. In some cases, particles can stabilize emulsions as well through a mechanism called Pickering stabilization. Both mayonnaise and Hollandaise sauce are oil-in-water emulsions that are stabilized with egg yolk lecithin. Detergents are another class of surfactant, and will physically interact with both oil and water, thus stabilizing the interface between oil or water droplets in suspension. This principle is exploited in soap to remove grease for the purpose of cleaning. A wide variety of emulsifiers are used in pharmacy to prepare emulsions such as creams and lotions. Common examples include emulsifying wax, cetearyl alcohol, polysorbate 20, and ceteareth 20.[2]
Sometimes the inner phase itself can act as an emulsifier, and the result is nanoemulsion - the inner state disperses into nano-size droplets within the outer phase. A well-known example of this phenomenon happens when water is poured in a strong alcoholic anise-based beverage, such as ouzo, pastis or raki. The anisolic compounds, which are soluble in ethanol, now form nano-sized droplets and emulgate within the water. The colour of such diluted drink is opaque and milky.

[edit] In Medicine

20 ml ampule of 1% propofol emulsion suitable for intravenous injection. The manufacturers emulsify the lipid soluble propofol in a mixture of water, soy oil and egg lecithin.
In medicine,[3] microscopic emulsions are used to deliver vaccines and kill microbes. Typically, the emulsions used in these techniques are nanoemulsions of soybean oil, with particles 400-600 nanometers in diameter.[4] The process is not chemical, as with other types of anti-pathogenic treatments, but physical. The smaller the droplet, the greater the surface tension and thus the greater the force to merge with other lipids. The oil is emulsified with detergents to stabilize the emulsion (the droplets won't merge with one another), so when they encounter lipids on a bacterial membrane or a virus envelope, they force the lipids to merge with themselves. On a mass scale, this effectively disintegrates the membrane and kills the pathogen.
Remarkably, the soybean oil emulsion does not harm normal human cells nor the cells of most other higher organisms. The exceptions are sperm cells and blood cells, which are vulnerable to nanoemulsions due to their membrane structures. For this reason, nanoemulsions of this type are not yet ready to be used intravenously.
The most effective application of this type of nanoemulsion is for the disinfection of surfaces. Some types of nanoemulsions have been shown to effectively destroy HIV-1 and various tuberculosis pathogens, for example, on non-porous

extraction

Heap leaching
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Heap leaching is an industrial mining process to extract precious metals and copper compounds from ore.
Contents[hide]
1 Process
1.1 Precious metals method
1.2 Copper method
1.3 Sulfuric acid heap leaching of nickel
2 See also
3 External links
//

[edit] Process
The mined ore is crushed into small chunks and heaped on an impermeable plastic and/or clay lined leach pad where it can be irrigated with a leach solution to dissolve the valuable metals. Either sprinklers, or often drip irrigation, is used to minimize evaporation. The solution then percolates through the heap and leaches out the precious metal. This can take several weeks. The leach solution containing the dissolved metals is then collected.

[edit] Precious metals method
The crushed ore is irrigated with a dilute cyanide solution. The solution percolates through the heap and leaches out the precious metal. This can take several weeks.
The solution containing the precious metals ("pregnant solution") continues percolating through the crushed ore until it reaches the liner at the bottom of the heap where it drains into a storage (pregnant solution) pond. After separating the precious metals from the pregnant solution, the dilute cyanide solution (now called "barren solution") is normally re-used in the heap-leach-process or occasionally sent to an industrial water treatment facility where the residual cyanide is treated and residual metals are removed. The water is then discharged to the environment, posing possible water pollution.[citation needed]
During the extraction phase, the gold ions form complex ions with the cyanide:
Recuperation of the gold is readily achieved with a redox-reaction:

[edit] Copper method
The method is similar to the cyanide method, above, except sulfuric acid is used to dissolve copper from its ores. The acid is recycled from the solvent extraction circuit (see solvent extraction-electrowinning, SX/EW) and reused on the leach pad. A byproduct is iron(II) sulfate, jarosite, which is produced as a byproduct of leaching pyrite, and sometimes even the same sulfuric acid that is needed for the process.
Although the heap leaching is a low cost-process, it normally has recovery rates of 60-70%, although there are exceptions. It is normally most profitable with low-grade ores. Higher-grade ores are usually put through more complex milling processes where higher recoveries justify the extra cost. The process chosen depends on the properties of the ore.

[edit] Sulfuric acid heap leaching of nickel
The method is an acid heap leaching method like that of the copper method in that it utilises sulfuric acid instead of cyanide solution to dissolve the target minerals from crushed ore. The method has been developed by European Nickel PLC for the rock laterite deposits of Turkey and the Balkans.

Slumdog millionare

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 Academy Award-winning British film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan.[2] It is an adaptation of the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.
Set and filmed in India, Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati, mentioned in the Hindi version) and exceeds people's expectations, arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement officials.
After screenings at the Telluride Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, Slumdog Millionaire initially had a limited North American release on November 12, 2008 by Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, to critical acclaim and awards success. It later had a nationwide release in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2009 and in the United States on January 23, 2009.[3] It premiered in Mumbai on January 22, 2009.[4]
Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten 2008 Academy Awards and won eight, the most for any film that year, including Best Picture and Best Director. It also won five Critics' Choice Awards, four Golden Globes, and seven BAFTA Awards, including Best Film. Despite the film's success, it is the subject of controversy concerning its portrayals of Indians, Hinduism as well as the welfare of its child actors.
Contents[hide]
1 Plot
2 Differences from the book Q&A
3 Production
4 Cast
5 Release and box office performance
5.1 North America
5.2 United Kingdom
5.3 India
6 Critical reception
6.1 Awards and honours
6.2 Reactions from the Western world
6.3 Reactions from India and Indian diaspora
7 Soundtrack
8 Controversies
8.1 Loveleen Tandan
8.2 Amitabh Bachchan
8.3 Protests and lawsuits
8.4 Child actors
9 References
10 External links
//

[edit] Plot
Set in 2006, the film opens with a police inspector (Irrfan Khan) in Mumbai, India, interrogating and torturing Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former street child from the Dharavi slums. In the opening scene, a title card is presented: "Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? A) He cheated, B) He's lucky, C) He's a genius, D) It is written." At the end of the film, the answer is given. Jamal is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati) hosted by Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor). Jamal has made it to the final question, scheduled for the next day, but the police are now accusing him of cheating, because the other possibilities, that he has a vast knowledge, or that he is very lucky, both seem unlikely.
Jamal then explains that, while at least the question about Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan was very simple, he knew the answers of most questions by chance, because of things that happened in his life. This is conveyed in a series of flashbacks documenting the particulars of his childhood. This includes scenes of him obtaining Bachchan's autograph, the death of his mother during Hindu-Muslim riots in the slums, and how he and his brother Salim (he refers to Salim and himself as Athos and Porthos, and Latika as the third Musketeer.
The children are eventually discovered by Maman (Ankur Vikal) while they live in the trash heaps. Maman is a gangster (a fact they do not actually know at the time they meet him) who "collects" street children so that he can ultimately train them to beg for money. Salim is groomed to become a part of Maman’s operation and is asked to bring Jamal to Maman in order to be blinded (which would improve his income potential as a singing beggar). Salim rebels against Maman to protect his brother, and the three children try to escape, but only Salim and Jamal are successful as Salim purposely lets go of Latika's hand as she tries to board a train they are hopping while trying to escape. Latika is re-captured by Maman's organization and raised as a culturally talented prostitute whose virginity will fetch a high price.
The brothers eke out a living, traveling on top of trains, selling goods, pretending to be tour guides at the Taj Mahal, and picking pockets. Jamal eventually insists that they return to Mumbai since he wishes to locate Latika. When he finds her working as a dancer in a brothel, the brothers attempt to rescue her, but Maman intrudes, and in the resulting conflict Salim draws a gun and kills Maman. Salim then uses the fact that he killed Maman to obtain a job with Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a rival crime lord. Salim claims Latika as his own and when Jamal protests, Salim threatens to kill him and Latika intervenes, accepting her fate with Salim and breaking Jamal's heart.
Years later, Jamal has a position as a "chai-wallah" (a boy or young man who serves tea) at a call centre. When he is asked to cover for a co-worker for a couple of minutes, he searches the database for Salim and Latika. He gets in touch with Salim, who has become a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed’s organization and confronts a regretful Salim on tense terms. Salim invites Jamal to live with him and, after following Salim to Javed's house, he sees Latika living there. He talks his way in as the new dishwasher and tries to convince Latika to leave. She rebuffs his advances, but he promises to be at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station every day at five p.m. for her. She tries to discourage him, but on the first day that Jamal waits there, Latika attempts to rendezvous with him, but is recaptured by Salim and Javed's men. One of the men then slashes her cheek with a knife, scarring her as Salim drives off.
Jamal again loses contact with Latika when Javed moves to another house. In another attempt to find Latika, Jamal tries out for the popular game show because he knows that she will be watching. He makes it to the final question, despite the hostile attitude of the host who feeds Jamal a wrong answer during a break. At the end of the show, Jamal has one question left to win two crore, or 20 million rupees (about $400,000 U.S.) and is taken into police custody, where he is tortured as the police attempt to learn how Jamal, a simple "slumdog," could know the answers to so many questions. After Jamal tells his whole story, explaining how his life experiences coincidentally enabled him to know the answer to each question, the police inspector calls his explanation "bizarrely plausible" and allows Jamal to return to the show for the final question. At Javed's safehouse, Latika watches the news coverage of Jamal's miraculous run on the show. Salim gives Latika his phone, and the keys to his car, and urges her to run away. When Jamal uses his Phone-A-Friend lifeline to call Salim, Latika answers his phone and they reconnect. She does not know the answer to the final question either, but believing that "it is written," Jamal guesses the correct answer (Aramis) to the question of the one Musketeer whose name they never learned, and wins the grand prize. Simultaneously, Salim is discovered to have helped Latika escape and allows himself to be killed in a bathtub full of money after shooting and killing Javed. Salim's last words are "God is great." Later that night, Jamal and Latika meet at the railway station and they share a kiss. It is then revealed that the correct answer to the opening question is: D) it is written. In a scene reminiscent of many Bollywood musicals, they then dance, along with dozens of bystanders and even the juvenile versions of themselves, in the train station during the end credits

[edit] Differences from the book Q&A
The Mumbai Hindu-Muslim riots played no role in the book, as the ethnic heritage of the main character was uncertain. In the book, the character of Jamal is instead named 'Ram Mohammad Thomas'. He was given a Hindu name, Muslim name and Christian name by the village elders in order to maintain the balance between all the religious communities after his mother abandoned him after birth. Unlike the movie, Ram does not have a biological brother. He grows up in an orphanage and his only 'brothers' are his fellow orphans. He never knew his mother. Ram is 'adopted' by a Christian priest as a youth, which is where he learns English, and then is nearly molested by a visiting priest. The priest scenes were not included in the script for the movie, and the movie does not explain how Jamal learned English (especially such flawless English). Latika is not his childhood friend in the book but rather a prostitute that Ram falls in love with in a brothel when he's 18. He goes on the TV show to win enough money to buy her freedom from her pimp (who is also her brother). In the book, Ram works as a waiter in a bar, not in an outsourcing company. Ram's character is somewhat like Forrest Gump as he does not have much intelligence -- only his good nature and honesty -- as he moves from one harrowing episode to the next while on the brink of disaster.

[edit] Production
Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on the Boeke Prize winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize nominated novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup.[5] To hone the script, Beaufoy made three research trips to India and interviewed street children, finding himself impressed with their attitudes. The screenwriter said of his goal for the script: "I wanted to get (across) the sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community that is in these slums. What you pick up on is this mass of energy."
By the summer of 2006, British production companies Celador Films and Film4 Productions invited director Danny Boyle to read the script Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle initially hesitated, since he was not interested in making a film about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?[6] Boyle soon found out that the screenwriter was Beaufoy, who had written The Full Monty (1997), one of the director's favorite British films, and decided to revisit the script.[7] Boyle was impressed by how Beaufoy wove the multiple storylines from Swarup's book into one narrative, and the director decided to commit to the project. The film was projected to cost US$15 million, so Celador sought a distributor to share costs. Fox Searchlight Pictures made an initial offer that was reportedly in the $2 million range, and Warner Independent Pictures made a $5 million offer that Fox Searchlight could not top.[6]
Gail Stevens came on board to oversee casting globally. Stevens has worked with Boyle throughout his career and is well-known for discovering new talent. Meredith Tucker was appointed to cast out of the US. The film-makers then travelled to Mumbai in September 2007 with a partial crew and began hiring local cast and crew for production in Karjat. Originally appointed as one of the five casting directors in India, Loveleen Tandan, has stated that she "suggested to Danny and Simon Beaufoy, the writer of Slumdog, that it was important to do some of it in Hindi to bring the film alive [...] They asked me to pen the Hindi dialogues which I, of course, instantly agreed to do. And as we drew closer to the shoot date, Danny asked me to step in as the co-director."[8] Boyle then decided to translate nearly a third of the film's English dialogue into Hindi. The director fibbed to Warner Independent's president that he wanted 10% of the dialogue in Hindi, and she approved of the change. Filming locations included shooting in Mumbai's megaslum and in shantytown parts of Juhu, so film-makers controlled the crowds by befriending onlookers.[6] Filming began on 5 November 2007.[9]
In addition to Swarup's original novel Q & A, the film was also inspired by Indian cinema.[10][11] Tandan has referred to Slumdog Millionaire as an homage to Hindi commercial cinema, noting that "Simon Beaufoy studied Salim-Javed's kind of cinema minutely."[10] Boyle has cited the influence of several Bollywood films set in Mumbai.[12] Satya (screenplay co-written by Saurabh Shukla, who plays Constable Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire) and Company (based on the D-Company) both offered "slick, often mesmerizing portrayals of the Mumbai underworld" and displayed realistic "brutality and urban violence." Boyle has also stated that the chase in one of the opening scenes of Slumdog Millionaire was based on a "12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum" in Black Friday (adapted from S. Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings).[11][13][14][15] Deewaar, which Boyle described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema," is a crime film based on the Bombay gangster Haji Mastan, portrayed by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, whose autograph Jamal sought at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire.[11] Anil Kapoor noted that some scenes of the film "are like Deewaar, the story of two brothers of whom one is completely after money while the younger one is honest and not interested in money."[16] Boyle has cited other Indian films as influences in subsequent interviews.[17][18] The rags to riches underdog theme underlying the film was also a recurring theme in classic Bollywood movies from the 1950s through to the 1980s, when "India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty."[19] Other classic Bollywood tropes in the film include "the fantasy sequences" and the montage sequence where "the brothers jump off a train and suddenly they are seven years older".[18]
Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan, the current host for Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), was initially offered the role of the show's host in the film, but he eventually turned it down (the role was ultimately played by another Bollywood star, Anil Kapoor).[20][21][22] Paul Smith, the executive producer of Slumdog Millionaire and the chairman of Celador Films, had previously owned the international rights to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?[23]

[edit] Cast
Dev Patel as Jamal Malik, the protagonist, a Muslim boy born and raised in the poverty of Mumbai.[24] Boyle considered hundreds of young male actors, although he found that Bollywood leads were generally "strong, handsome hero-types", not the personality he was looking for. Gail Stevens, the Casting Director, pointed him out from the British television ensemble drama Skins, of which Patel was a cast member.[6][9] The original choice for the role was Bollywood actor Ruslaan Mumtaz, but the producer of the film "found Ruslaan too good looking for the role and so he was replaced by Dev Patel."[25]
Ayush Mahesh Khedekar as Youngest Jamal
Tanay Chheda as Middle Jamal
Freida Pinto as Latika, the girl with whom Jamal is in love. Pinto was an Indian model who had not starred in a feature film before.[6] Regarding the "one of a kind" scarf she wears, designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb says, "I wanted to bookend the journey—to tie her childhood yellow dress to her final look."[26]
Rubina Ali as Youngest Latika. Rubina is a child from the Mumbai slums in real life.[27]
Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar as Middle Latika
Madhur Mittal as Salim, Jamal's elder brother.
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail as Youngest Salim. Azharuddin is a child from the Mumbai slums in real life.[27]
Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala as Middle Salim
Anil Kapoor as Prem Kumar, the game show host.[28]
Irrfan Khan as the Police Inspector
Saurabh Shukla as Constable Srinivas
Mahesh Manjrekar as Javed
Ankur Vikal as Maman
Raj Zutshi as Millionaire show producer
Sanchita Choudhary as Jamal's mother
Shah Rukh Munshi as a slum kid. Shah Rukh is a child from the Mumbai slums in real life.[19]
Mozhim Shakim Sheikh Qureshi as a crippled slum kid. Mozhim is a child from the Mumbai slums in real life.[27]

[edit] Release and box office performance
In August 2007 Warner Independent Pictures acquired the American and Pathé the international rights to distribute Slumdog Millionaire theatrically.[9] Warner Independent Pictures paid $5 million to acquire these rights to the film and became a co-producer. However, in May 2008, Warner Independent Pictures was shut down, with all of its projects being transferred to Warner Bros. Pictures, its parent studio. Warner Bros. doubted the commercial prospects of Slumdog Millionaire and suggested that it would go straight to DVD without a U.S. theatrical release.[29] In August 2008, the studio began searching for buyers for various productions, to relieve its overload of end-of-the-year films.[30] Halfway through the month, Warner Bros. entered into a pact with Fox Searchlight Pictures to share distribution of the film, with Fox Searchlight buying 50% of Warner Bros.'s interest in the movie.[31] As of 25 February 2009, the film has grossed $175,115,223 worldwide.[1]

[edit] North America

Stars Dev Patel and Freida Pinto at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival
Slumdog Millionaire was first shown at the Telluride Film Festival on 30 August 2008, where it was positively received by audiences, generating "strong buzz".[32] The film also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2008, where it was "the first widely acknowledged popular success" of the festival,[33] winning the People's Choice Award.[34] Slumdog Millionaire debuted with a limited North American release on 12 November 2008, followed by a nationwide release in the United States on 23 January 2009.[35]
In its first week, the film grossed an "impressive" $350,434 in 10 theatres, a "strong" average of $35,043 per theatre.[36] In its second weekend, it expanded to 32 theatres and made $947,795, or an average of $29,619 per theatre, representing a drop of only 16%.[37] In the 10 original theatres that it was released in, viewership went up 16%, and this is attributed to strong word-of-mouth.[38] The film opened in wide release on 26 December 2008 at 614 theaters and grossed $4,301,870. In the weekend of 23-25 January 2009, the film reached the widest release at 1,411 theaters. As of 24 February 2009, the film has grossed $100,838,744 at the North American box office.[1]

[edit] United Kingdom
The film released in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2009, and opened at #2 at the UK box office.[39] The film reached #1 in its second weekend and set a UK box office record, as the film's takings increased by 47%. This is the "biggest ever increase for a UK saturation release," breaking "the record previously held by Billy Elliot's 13%." This record-breaking "ticket surge" in the second weekend came after Slumdog Millionaire won four Golden Globes and received eleven BAFTA nominations. The film grossed £6.1 million in its first eleven days of release in the UK.[40] The takings increased by another 7% the following weekend, bringing the film's gross up to £10.24 million for its first seventeen days in the UK,[41][42] and up to £14.2 million in its third week.[43] As of 13 February 2009, the film's UK box office gross is £19,984,021[44].

[edit] India
The Indian premiere of Slumdog Millionaire took place in Mumbai on January 22, 2009 and was attended by major personalities of the Indian film industry. More than a hundred Indian film personalities attended this event.[45] A dubbed Hindi version, Slumdog Crorepati (स्लमडॉग करोड़पति), was also released in India in addition to the original version of the film.[46] Originally titled, Slumdog Millionaire: Kaun Banega Crorepati, the name was shortened for legal reasons. Loveleen Tandan, who supervised the dubbing, stated: "All the actors from the original English including Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan and Ankur Vikal dubbed the film. We got a boy from Chembur Pradeep Motwani to dub for the male lead Dev Patel. I didn't want any exaggerated dubbing. I wanted a young unspoilt voice."[47]
Fox Searchlight released 351 prints of the film across India for its full release there on January 23, 2009.[48] It earned Rs. 2,35,45,665 in its first week at the Indian box office,[49] or $2.2 million according to Fox Searchlight. Though not as successful as major Bollywood releases in India during its first week, this was the highest weekend gross for any Fox film and the third highest for any Western release in the country, behind Spider-Man 3 (2007) and Casino Royale (2006).[48] In its second week, the film's gross rose to Rs. 3,04,70,752 at the Indian box office.[49]
A few analysts have offered their opinions for the film's performance at the Indian box office. Trade analyst Komal Nahta commented that, "there was a problem with the title itself. Slumdog is not a familiar word for majority Indians." In addition, trade analyst, Amod Mehr has stated that with the exception of Anil Kapoor, the film lacks recognizable stars and that "the film ... is not ideally suited for Indian sentiment." A cinema owner commented that "to hear slum boys speaking perfect English doesn't seem right but when they are speaking in Hindi, the film seems much more believable." The dubbed Hindi version, Slumdog Crorepati has done better at the box office and more copies of that version were released.[50]

[edit] Critical reception

[edit] Awards and honours
Main article: List of Slumdog Millionaire awards and honours
Slumdog Millionaire is highly acclaimed, named in the top ten lists of various newspapers.[51] On February 22, 2009, the film won eight out of ten Academy Awards it was nominated for, including the Best Picture and Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song (two songs were nominated from the film; "Jai Ho" won the award), losing only Best Sound Editing to The Dark Knight. It is only the eighth film ever to win eight Academy Awards.[52]
The film also won all four of the Golden Globe Awards it was nominated for, including Best Drama Film; five of the six Critics' Choice Awards for which it was nominated; and seven of the eleven BAFTA Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Film.

[edit] Reactions from the Western world
Slumdog Millionaire has been critically acclaimed in the Western world. As of February 21, 2009, Rotten Tomatoes has given the film a 94% rating with a 186 fresh and twelve rotten reviews. The average score is 8.2/10.[53] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 86, based on 36 reviews.[54] Movie City News shows that the film appeared in 123 different top ten lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the 3rd most mentions on a top ten list of any film released in 2008.[55]
Most Western reviewers were strictly positive about the movie. For example, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film four out of four stars, stating that it is, "a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating."[56] Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern refers to Slumdog Millionaire as, "the film world's first globalized masterpiece."[57] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post argues that, "this modern-day "rags-to-rajah" fable won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, and it's easy to see why. With its timely setting of a swiftly globalizing India and, more specifically, the country's own version of the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" TV show, combined with timeless melodrama and a hardworking orphan who withstands all manner of setbacks, "Slumdog Millionaire" plays like Charles Dickens for the 21st century."[58] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the film as "a Hollywood-style romantic melodrama that delivers major studio satisfactions in an ultra-modern way" and "a story of star-crossed romance that the original Warner brothers would have embraced, shamelessly pulling out stops that you wouldn't think anyone would have the nerve to attempt anymore."[59] Several other reviewers have described Slumdog Millionaire as a Bollywood-style "Masala" movie,[60] due to the way the film combines "familiar raw ingredients into a feverish masala"[61] and culminates in "the romantic leads finding each other."[62]
Other critics offered more mixed reviews. For example, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film three out of five stars, stating that "despite the extravagant drama and some demonstrations of the savagery meted out to India's street children, this is a cheerfully undemanding and unreflective film with a vision of India that, if not touristy exactly, is certainly an outsider's view; it depends for its full enjoyment on not being taken too seriously." He also pointed out that the film is co-produced by Celador Films, who own the rights to the original Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and claimed that “it functions as a feature-length product placement for the programme.”[63][64] A few critics also panned it. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle states that, "Slumdog Millionaire has a problem in its storytelling. The movie unfolds in a start-and-stop way that kills suspense, leans heavily on flashbacks and robs the movie of most of its velocity.... [T]he whole construction is tied to a gimmicky narrative strategy that keeps Slumdog Millionaire from really hitting its stride until the last 30 minutes. By then, it's just a little too late."[65] Eric Hynes of IndieWIRE called it "bombastic", "a noisy, sub-Dickens update on the romantic tramp's tale" and "a goofy picaresque to rival Forrest Gump" in its morality and romanticism.[66]

[edit] Reactions from India and Indian diaspora
The film has been a subject of discussion among a variety of people in India and the Indian diaspora. Indian film critics have "largely embraced the movie."[48] Nikhat Kazmi of the Times of India calls it "a piece of riveting cinema, meant to be savoured as a Cinderella-like fairy tale, with the edge of a thriller and the vision of an artist." She also argues against criticism of the film stating that, "it was never meant to be a documentary on the down and out in Dharavi. And it isn't."[67] Renuka Vyavahare of Indiatimes suggests that, "the film is indeed very Indian" and that it is "one of the best English films set in India and revolving around the country’s most popular metropolis Mumbai."[68] Kaveree Bamzai of India Today calls the film "feisty" and argues that it is "Indian at its core and Western in its technical flourish."[69] Anand Giridharadas argues in The New York Times that the film has a "freshness" which "portrays a changing India, with great realism, as something India long resisted being: a land of self-makers, where a scruffy son of the slums can, solely of his own effort, hoist himself up, flout his origins, break with fate." Giridharadas also calls the film "a tribute to the irrepressible self."[70] Poorna Shetty states in the The Guardian that "Boyle's depiction of Mumbai is spot on." She further states that the film displays the "human aspect of the slums and the irrepressible energy and life force of the place" and "a breathing snapshot of the city that is always stripped of its warmth when depicted in the news."[71]
On the other hand, Mukul Kesavan of The Telegraph (Kolkata) states that the film is "a hybrid so odd" (due to the decision to have the first third in Hindi and the remainder in English) "that it becomes hard for the Indian viewer to do the thing that he so effortlessly does with Ghajini or Om Shanti Om — namely, suspend disbelief." Kesavan further states that, "the transition from child actors who in real life are slum children to young actors who are, just as clearly, middle-class anglophones is so abrupt and inexplicable that it subverts the ‘realism’ of the brilliantly shot squalor in which their lives play out."[72] Film critic Gautaman Bhaskaran questioned the "euphoria in India" in a review for The Seoul Times after the film's release there, arguing that with a few exceptions, "there is nothing Indian about this film." Bhaskaran questions inconsistencies in the plot and concludes that it is a film of "very little substance" as well as "superficial and insensitive."[73] Another film critic (author of The Essential Guide to Bollywood), Subhash K. Jha, also states in Bollywood Hungama that he found the film "over-hyped and disappointing" and also suggests that the territory has already been covered by Indian filmmakers (Mira Nair in Salaam Bombay and Satyajit Ray in the Apu Trilogy).[74] Soutik Biswas of the BBC further argues that Slumdog Millionaire is an imitation of Indian films that have been "routinely ignored" and suggests that, "if you are looking for gritty realism set in the badlands of Mumbai, order a DVD of a film called Satya by Ramgopal Verma. The 1998 feature on an immigrant who is sucked into Mumbai's colourful underworld makes Slumdog look like a slick, uplifting MTV docu-drama."[75] An American working as a critic in India, Matthew Schneeberger, opined: "Say an Indian director travelled to New Orleans for a few months to film a movie about Jamal Martin, an impoverished African American who lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, who once had a promising basketball career, but who -- following a drive-by shooting -- now walks with a permanent limp, whose father is in jail for selling drugs, whose mother is addicted to crack cocaine, whose younger sister was killed by gang-violence, whose brother was arrested by corrupt cops, whose first born child has sickle cell anaemia, and so on. The movie would be widely panned and laughed out of theatres."[76]
In addition, filmmakers have commented on the film. Bollywood director and superstar Aamir Khan (whose film Taare Zameen Par was India's submission to the Academy Awards but was not chosen as a finalist for Best Foreign Film) [77][78] stated in an interview with NDTV that he doesn't "see ‘Slumdog...’ as an Indian film."[77][78] In a second interview with NDTV after the Oscar wins, Khan stated that, "I have seen Slumdog and the film didn't work for me" and that "for someone who lives here, the film goes over the top. Nevertheless, I am very happy that the people are liking the movie." He also praised the win by Resul Pookutty in the interview [79] as well as A. R. Rahman and Gulzar in his personal blog.[80] Director and filmmaker Priyadarshan criticized Slumdog Millionaire as a film which is a "mediocre version of those commercial films about estranged brothers and childhood sweethearts that Salim-Javed used to write so brilliantly in the 1970s." He also stated that he viewed the film at the Toronto Film Festival and that, "The Westerners loved it. All the Indian[s] hated it. The West loves to see us as a wasteland, filled with horror stories of exploitation and degradation. But is that all there's to our beautiful city of Mumbai?"[81]Similarly, filmmaker Aadesh Shrivastava expressed outrage the stereotyping portrayals of Indians in the film. He claimed that the film's release in the United States has led to the word "slumdog" being used as a slur against Indian Americans, and criticized the positive reaction by some Indians towards to what he sees as a film that directly attacks and insults India[82]
Authors and scholars have responded more critically to the film. Salman Rushdie stated in an interview with the New York Times that he is "not a very big fan" of Slumdog Millionaire. [...] I think it’s visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing. It just couldn’t happen. I’m not adverse to magic realism but there has to be a level of plausibility, and I felt there were three or four moments in the film where the storyline breached that rule."[83] Rushdie also criticized the film during a talk given at Emory University on the night of the Oscars, stating that it "piles impossibility on impossibility." Criticizing the way in which the film was adapted as well as the novel it was based upon, Rushdie also questioned the plausibility of a number of plot points. [84]Radha Chadha, co-author of The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair with Luxury (with Paul Husband), offers an analysis of the film in Livemint. She argues that while Slumdog Millionaire is entertaining, it is still a "masala film," the kind of Bollywood product which Indians grow up watching. As to its popularity in the West, she further suggests that what is "ordinary" (in terms of film genre) for an Indian audience, "is extraordinary for the world" and that "the mesmerizing soft power of Bollywood which has kept a billion Indians enthralled for decades is touching the rest of the world."[85] Priya Joshi, Associate Professor of English at Temple University, argues that the film's indebtedness to Bollywood film runs much deeper than the happy ending, "In the same way that Cinema Paradiso paid homage to the transformative power of Hollywood movies of the 1940s, Slumdog testifies to the power of Bollywood's blockbusters from the 1970s, and it's no accident that the first question on the quiz show is about the 1973 hit Zanjeer."[86] Assistant Professor of sociology (Wellesley College) Smitha Radhakrishnan states in UCLA's Asia Pacific Arts journal that the film offers "an action-packed, devastating, intriguing, and oddly beautiful world." Radhakrishnan also argues that while its "outsider's" view offers an "unexpected advantage," there were notable "slip-ups" of which the "most glaring was the language. Despite the plausible explanation that Jamal and Salim picked up English, posing as tour guides at the Taj Mahal, it is highly implausible that they would come out of that experience speaking perfect British English, as Dev Patel does in portraying the grown-up Jamal. It's highly implausible that he would speak to Latika and Salim in English as an adult too."[87] Professor Vrinda Nabar, the former Chair of English at the University of Mumbai, argues that the film ignores the "complexity" of Mumbai as "a city in which sensitivity coexists with despair, commitment with indifference, activism with inaction, and humanism with the inhumane."[88] Shyamal Sengupta, a professor of film studies at the Whistling Woods International Institute for Films, Media, Animationa and Media Arts in Mumbai, criticized the film for its stereotypical portrayals of Indians by calling it a "white man's imagined India. It's not quite snake charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour."[89]

[edit] Soundtrack
Main article: Slumdog Millionaire (soundtrack)
The Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack was composed by A. R. Rahman who planned the score over two months and completed it in two weeks.[90] Rahman won the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and won two out of the three nominations for the Academy Awards, including one for Best Original Score and one for Best Original Song, the song "O... Saya" got a nomination shared with M.I.A. and the other song "Jai Ho" won the award and was shared with lyricist Gulzar. The soundtrack was released on M.I.A.'s record label N.E.E.T. Radio Sargam termed the soundtrack "magnum opus and the entire world is known to this fact."[91]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Loveleen Tandan
A Chicago film critic launched an online campaign to demand that Loveleen Tandan, who Danny Boyle appointed as co-director for the film, be nominated for Best Director alongside Boyle at the Golden Globes and the 81st Academy Awards. The campaign organizer Jan Lisa Huttner noted "how rare it is for female directors to be in the awards race." After finding out about this campaign, Tandan sought to end it, stating, "I can't tell you how embarrassed I am by this [...] The suggestion is highly inappropriate, and I am writing to you to stress that I would not wish it to be considered."[92]
Slumdog Millionaire's producer Christian Colson says Tandan's credit is being misconstrued to mean she is on equal creative footing with Boyle.[92] Colson stated that Tandan's title was "strange but deserved" and was created to identify her as "one of our key cultural bridges."[92]

[edit] Amitabh Bachchan
One of the first celebrities thought to have discussed the film was "Bollywood legend"[93] Amitabh Bachchan,[94] from whom young Jamal eagerly seeks an autograph in the beginning of the film and who was the original presenter for Kaun Banega Crorepati. On 13 January 2009[95] he stated in his blog that on another part of his blog there were "comments for the film ‘SlumDog Millionaire’" which he noted indicated "anger by some on its contents." He further states that, "if SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations." Bachchan also states: "It's just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not."[95] This entry was widely reported on by the press as a criticism of the film.[96][97][93]
In a later entry,[98] Bachchan responded to these media reports by stating: "Fact is - some one mentioned the film on my blog...I merely put both of them up and invited debate [...] Media, in India has taken the pros and cons of OTHERS, as MINE, built their headlines and put it safely out, thereby, causing the consternation."[99][98] In another entry,[100] Bachchan states that Anil Kapoor invited him by phone to the premiere of the film. During the same phone call, Bachchan also spoke with Danny Boyle and described him as "gracious and complimentary to me and my work." Bachchan states that he offered his "apologies" over headlines "created by media" and that Boyle "understands and acknowledges my calling him."[101] Following the film's release in India on 23 January 2009, Bachchan called the movie "wonderful" and praised the fact that A.R. Rahman received three Oscar nominations.[102] Bachman stated: "I feel this win by Rahman and Rasool is most deserving and feel extremely proud to be an Indian."[103]

[edit] Protests and lawsuits
Following its release in India, the film faced criticism from various members of the public alleging that the film fuels western stereotypes about poverty in India and that it peddles "poverty porn".[48][94] Tapeshwar Vishwakarma, a representative of a slum-dwellers' welfare group, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the film's music composer A.R. Rahman and actor Anil Kapoor, alleging that slum-dwellers were depicted in a bad light which would be a violation of their human rights.[104][105] Vishwakarma's lawsuit alleged that the name of the movie is derogatory and he was particularly displeased that Indians associated with the film did not object to the use of word "slumdog."[104] Nicholas Almeida, a social activist working in Mumbai, organized a protest against the film on the grounds that it intentionally exploited the poor for the purposes of profit, and that the title 'Slumdog millionaire" was offensive, demeaning and insulted their dignity. The protesters were slum dwellers in Mumbai, holding posters like "I am not a dog"[106] who objected to being dehumanized as "dogs" in the film title.[107]
Slum dwellers in Patna, the capital of the Indian state of Bihar, have also protested against the movie. Activists have reported that slum dwellers will continue to protest until the film's director deletes the word 'dog' from the title.[108] Protests in Patna intensified on 26 January 2009, when "protesters tore down posters and ransacked a movie theatre" screening the film. The following day, the police in Bihar tightened security "outside theatres in the state to thwart any further attacks."[109]
Hindu Janjagruti Samiti has protested against the film for its allegedly inappropriate portrayal of the Hindu God Rama.[110][111] The activist group believes that the portrayal of Rama is derogatory and "hurts the sentiments of Hindus". Writing for the conservative Daily Pioneer, Kanchan Gupta reiterated the objections of the activist group that the film provides a one-sided portrayal of the complexities of religious conflict in India, and that the film depicts Hindus as "rapacious monsters".[112]

[edit] Child actors
According to the UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, Azharuddin Ismail (who played Salim as a child) was paid £1,700 and Rubina Ali (who played Latika as a child) £500 for a month’s work on the film. The child actors continue to live in makeshift shacks in the slums of Bandra, a suburb of Mumbai, according to the Telegraph[113] and ABC News.[114] A Fox Searchlight spokesman has responded that for their one-month work on the film, the child actors were paid three times the amount of an average annual salary for an adult living in their neighborhood.[113]
On January 26, 2009, Danny Boyle (director) and Christian Colson (producer) released a written statement saying that they had “paid painstaking and considered attention to how Azhar and Rubina’s involvement in the film could be of lasting benefit to them over and above the payment they received for their work”. Boyle and Colson have stated that they have "set up trust funds for Rubina and Azharuddin and paid for their education," although the exact amount of the trust funds is not known. This has also been met with criticism as there is question as to how children growing up in the slums have any expectation of being able to attend higher education, making the trust fund potentially useless.[113]
Boyle has explained that, "We don't want to reveal exact figures about what's in the trust fund, what's in the bank account for them for when they leave school because it will make them vulnerable and a target really but it is substantial, and they will hopefully gain benefit from the film long after the film has disappeared and long after the media who are chasing them at the moment sadly have lost interest in the film and that's been our approach throughout and I think it's the right approach."[115]
Both Azharuddin and Rubina attended the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009, along with all of the other actors that played Salim, Jamal and Latika. Azharuddin was accompanied by his mother Shameem Ismail, while Rubina was accompanied by her uncle.[116] On February 25, 2009, the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority announced that both Azharuddin and Rubina would be given "free houses" so that they would no longer have to live in the Mumbai slum of Garib Nagar.[117]

[edit] References