I stand by my decision, Slumdog will NOT win best picture this year. The Dark Knight or Benjamin Button will, maybe even Wall-E, but not Slumdog. Who else wants to join this club?

Good luck.

In.

In

Although I don't think this will happen I want it to so bad I'm going to lull myself into a false hope.
IN! (Fuck slumdog, bring on a MILK WIN!!!)

I think I'm gonna petition the members of this club to join my new Water Cooler club, the "It Will Not Rain in Florida in Summer 2009 Club."

Or the "yoshue will NOT make a snarky comment in 2009 club".

Damn! So close!

How about the "trixster will not indulge in underage poon in 2009 club?"

Or the "trixster will not yell at other members for taste infractions while saying montrously ignorant things about classic foreign films in the forum no one reads in 2009 club?"

I'd say the chances of either of those are slim to none. I've learned my lesson!

Especially the underage poon.

In.

haha both fine clubs and I'm willing to join.
It's called a hope, not everything has to be based entirely in reality. Where's the fault in hoping for something unlikely?

at this point, there's about an 80% chance it will win. If not higher.

But I'd love to be surprised, especially since the only possibilities of an upset - Ben Button & Milk - were both superior films.

Slumdog would be a fine BP winner... just not as strong as you'd like to see.

This is a year where the Academy can redeem themselves (at least for me), and honestly Slumdog is about the last movie I want to see win. So I am going against all logic and living in a dreamworld.

redeem from what? I was actually extremely pleased with most of last year.

I think DIB hates when they award serious movies like No Country, and would rather see something like Ratatouille win every year. I'd like that, but I understand why what happens happens.

However, I thought The Departed was a very fun, often funny movie... that's a winner he should be somewhat happy with.

Yeah, DIB seems to push things to extremes. And this is coming from someone who has vigorously pushed for Wall-E since June.

I don't mind the Wall-E mentions, do you all just promise to take it easy on Up next year if Wall-E is not nominated?

Unless it makes like $350 million with the same reviews, yeah, probably.

Though I would love for a "Benjamin Button" upset (though I have nothing against Slumdog Millionaire), I just don't see how "Slumdog" could lose. This is on the front page of Yahoo!, right between an Obama/economy story and a Ben Affleck/Jennifer Garner's baby story: http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/slumdog ... -blog.html

It's become such a natural, powerful frontrunner. "Slumdog-as-frontrunner" has seeped into the mainstream even. Chances are, it's going to win big.

I would love to see it not win, but it's highly unlikely.

Serious or not serious, it should be whatever movie is BEST! Has the best production value, and handles whatever task it take up most thoroughly. For instance, juno is meant to be an occasionally emotional and often funny film. That worked extremely well and deserved the recognition. However No Country's serious plot and lack of emotionality, and intense character study worked more thoroughly, and was harder to do. Therefore deserved the stronger hype it received. A movie should not be recognized just for its genre, it should be recognized for how well it does its purpose.
For instance Forgetting Sara Marshall deserves to be recognized for being hilarious.

First hint of a mainstream backlash: in the 1/19 issue of Newsweek, there is a vaguely angry article discussing how everyone winning awards for "Slumdog" is white (Simon Beaufoy, Danny Boyle, etc.) -- no mention is made of A. R. Rahman -- and questioning why Loveleen Tandan isn't sharing in the Best Director honors.

That was also the same issue with City of God's female co-director.

I guess the difference is that Fernando Meirelles did try to include Katia Lund, crediting bodies didn't want to.