From White House to black humour, Slumdog tops charts

WASHINGTON: From a White House battle to black humour tattle, ���Slumdog Millionaire��� dominated national discourse on Monday, a day after it snapped up eight Academy Awards in an entertainment coup that left the Hollywood elite aghast.
How a small-budget movie that has no major bankable stars that seemed headed straight to DVD clicked with the 5000+ Academy members was the hot topic of discussion among the chatterati.Many recalled the time in 1983 when Richard Attenborough���s Gandhi trumped ET and Tootsie.
There was wall-to-wall coverage of the manic celebrations in India, including graphic stories from the Mumbai slums where the film was shot with the movie���s true protagonists begging the world to see the horrible conditions they lived in. Stories also conveyed the embarrassment many Indians felt at the country���s poverty being ������exploited������ on celluloid.
At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama, who���s big on movies because of his children, wants to see Slumdog. ���I don���t know if he has seen ���Slumdog Millionaire���. I know he wants to,������ Gibbs said. Obama himself has led a difficult life and could empathize with the so-called slumdogs. Although his childhood was, relatively, secure with time spent between his peripatetic mother and maternal grandparents, his early adulthood had hardships.
In a feeble spoof, one satirical magazine on Monday joked about how ������Louisiana governor Slumdog Millionaire Bobby Jindal������ will confront Obama in a Bollywood Battle.
Jindal is slated to give a rebuttal to Obama���s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, an event that has put the spotlight on the governor���s Indian origins at the same time Slumdog is making a splash.
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