Slumdog Millionaire was such a hit that everybody associated with it now earns an extra 17 zeros on the end of any paycheck they ever receive. Seriously – everyone’s box office value has increased exponentially.

Also their value in the black market slave trade slightly increased too. That’s why when some potential daughter-buyers recently offered the father of Rubina Ali Qureshi $300,000 for his now somewhat famous daughter, he cut off a lock of Ali’s hair for his wife’s memory book and wished the child well in her new life cruising Nile river-ports.

Or something along those lines.

If you are anything like us, then when you walked out of Slumdog Millionaire with the sound of credits rolling in the background it was with the urgent need to Google all those child actors to see if any of them were being sold into reasonably-priced slavery. After all, it had been absolute months since anything we owned hummed us sad gospel tunes as it washed various things down in the river. Our electronic search ended in nought but disappointment.

Well we must have entered our search terms wrong because we failed to notice that one of those little actors was completely for sale – at least according to News of the World:

“In a bid to escape India’s real-life slums, Rafiq Qureshi put angel-faced darling of the Oscars Rubina up for adoption…Then, almost embarrassed to speak it out loud, he whispered to an accomplice the price tag he has put on his innocent young daughter: “It’s £200,000!”That was an astonishing FOURFOLD increase on his opening demand. But Rafiq’s equally demanding brother Mohiuddin insisted: “The child is special now. This is NOT an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child!”

Upon hearing of the raised price, Madonna stormed right out of the room. Not really. Not yet.

It’s unknown if the actual would-be buyers had any sort of a down payment in mind or a dumb non-famous kid to trade in. What is known though, is that the people on the other end of the nine-year-old girl-purchase were under-cover News of the World reporters who exposed the whole alleged thing. When the father, Rafiq, found out he’d been had, he said this:

“In India you never say ‘no’ directly, least of all to guests. You try not to offend people by refusing to help.”

Really? Well in that case Rafiq, may we please take this over-sized colon we cut out of a decomposing elephant carcass and use it to hog tie your wife just before stuffing her into said elephant tantan style? If you like, we could do it while we’re there for tea. Also, can this guy spend a month with you? He only eats things he brought with him, if you catch our drift, so don’t worry about your severe poverty or anything. Plus if you treat him well enough he might even let you sell his partially-chewed penis tip. That’d probably net you several dozen rupies.

We thought so. You are a businessman, Rafiq – a shrewd one at that. Don’t let those stupid anti-child sellers tell you which of your children you can & can’t hawk into slavery or what-have-you. That’s a decision every man gets to make for himself whenever he feels like it.

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Look at you. Are those plimsolls? Actual plimsolls? Are they ironic plimsolls? Or just normal plimsolls?

Are you poor? Or just pretending? Think before you answer, because should they be anything but ironic, and society – cool society, where people like Pixie Geldof and Henry Holland live – will turn its back on you.

It’s a cruel, unforgiving place – society. It dictates that grown adults should peacock about town with their skinny jeans damn-near squashing their balls, and everyone actually seems to like Lady Ga Ga. And Lady Ga Ga is a total cretin, by the way. But they buy her singles with their iTunes for their iPods. They love her. They also like stonewashed jeans.

With survival in mind, here are four things you should at least claim to like, unless you fancy getting completely ostracised by your so-called friends:

1. The Wire

No one honestly likes The Wire. How could they? It’s written by a man whose mind is so complex and crammed with information that it would take a million Rubix Cube experts to figure out what he’s trying to say at any given moment. With most television programmes, you could safely take a five minute phone call without missing out on too much, but should you so much as yawn at the wrong moment, and you’d have to rewatch The Wire from the start. Even so, society dictates that you adore this show, so if you find yourself caught in the middle of a Wire storm, just start nodding and repeating the words “Bubbles” and “Omar” on loop until everyone shuts the hell up.

2. Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse is an intriguing human being, with her angry sailor tatts and drug habit. Her hairstyle can be quite fascinating too. All of which masks the fact that she really is quite atrocious at singing. A cockney guttersnipe by day, when she opens her mouth, she does a high-volume nasal impression of Billie Holiday, which is so forced as to be borderline offensive, like when Jim Davidson decides to do an impression of a West Indian. That said, society thinks that this girl has got the lot, so for Christ’s sake, just agree with them. The alternative would be to have all of your friends hate you.

3. Slumdog Millionaire

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, he wins at the end and gets the girl. And before you start freaking out because you were waiting for the Director’s Cut to come out, take a moment to accept that you already knew that. You knew that because it’s obvious. Really really obvious. Which isn’t a bad thing. Many films have an obvious outcome. No, the thing that makes this so unbearable is that it’s exactly the kind of film that the pipe smoking women who dictate what we should watch build up to such an extent that when you eventually see it you’re expecting a life-changing experience, and yet you leave the cinema feeling just as emotionally crippled as you were when you went in. That’s not fair. Still, pretend to like it, if you know what’s good for you.

For more “observations”, why not visit Interestment.co.uk

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As the Oscar-winning director of Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle can make any film he likes.

And he might have chosen a really crappy one. Apparently, Danny Boyle is thinking about directing the next James Bond movie, even though a) the last Bond film was so awful that we wanted to kick our own eyes out about 15 minutes in, b) a monkey could direct a Bond film and c) if you give Danny Boyle millions of dollars, he’ll give you back a giant turd.

Still, following up an Oscar win with a Bond film didn’t hurt Halle Berry‘s career. Oh.

Slumdog Millionaire has opened more doors than anyone would have thought possible. Not only has it won every single award on Earth and revitilised Danny Boyle’s career, but it’s also meant that Dev Patel is contractually obliged to shout “I’m 18 and I’m at __________” like some sort of wild-eyed maniac no matter where he goes, plus we all get to look at Freida Pinto‘s big smug face every single bastard time we open a newspaper or a magazine, plus it’s sort of started a bit of a race war. Wonderful stuff.

Best of all, though, Slumdog Millionaire‘s success has meant that Danny Boyle gets to spunk all his new-found respect up a wall by directing the next James Bond movie. The Sun reports:

A source said: “Danny is the man of the moment and he is being bombarded with offers from studios. He has been offered the chance to direct the 23rd Bond film. The EON team love his vision and think that it would work perfectly for the new look of Bond. With Daniel Craig’s involvement and the way the films are now structured — with the emphasis on the characters and plot rather than gags and gadgets — it is right up Danny’s street.”

Yeah, phew, thank heavens for Danny Boyle’s favoured emphasis on characters and plot rather than gags and gadgets. We’ve always thought that ending a big-budget movie by making a ropey Plasticine animation of Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz dancing around to an Oasis B-side is probably the best way to drive character and plot.

Also, did nobody involved in this story actually see Quantum Of Solace? Instead of character and plot there was a mute caveman doing a shot-for-shot remake of the Jason Bourne films while looking a bit sad. That’s hardly the same, is it?

But you know what? Maybe Danny Boyle and James Bond are a good fit, after all – if you look at Slumdog Millionaire and Sunshine and Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary, you can tell that Danny Boyle isn’t too great at ending films. And if you look at A Quantum of Solace, you can tell that the new James Bond films aren’t even slightly good on any level at all. At least they’re reading from the same page.

If Danny Boyle does decide to make the new Bond movie, this is what will happen – Boyle will find the scale of the production too huge for him and the film will be flabby and unfocused, while Eon will freak out about his eccentric little quirks and straitjacket him into making a formulaic picture that nobody will be truly happy with.

Which, to be fair, will still make it a billion times better than Quantum Of Solace. OK, we’re convinced.

Read more:

The Name’s Boyle… Danny Boyle - The Sun

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If a movie does well, it reaps shedloads of benefits for its director, producers and actors. Slumdog Millionaire is no exception.

It’s been nominated for every award, won most of the awards and will probably win more awards in a special Slumdog Millionaire award ceremony in April.

Because the film is literally about a young boy from the Mumbai slums who becomes a millionaire, a quick witted person has decided to make Dev Patel go on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for real. If film stars are getting their performances turned into reality, can we sort organise a private boating holiday for Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio?

In a move to make you all go “aww that’s nice”, Dev Patel and Danny Boyle will be going on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to raise the funds for charity. To keep everything neatly tied together with the film’s theme, any money won will be donated to the Railway Children charity, an organisation that aims to help youngsters who live on the streets all over the world.

A spokesperson who works for Celador, the production company who makes Who Wants To Be A Millionaire said:

“We were approached by Railway Children about doing the special — and we think it would be fantastic. Danny and Dev would play together, as with all our celebrity specials, but filming depends on their availability.”

With Slumdog Millionaire drawing on the life experiences of the main character Jamal to win the top prize, we can assume that the same will happen to Dev Patel and Danny Boyle.

The two hail from totally different backgrounds. One is a director and the other is an actor who stars in wacky dramas about teenage life. But there is one thing that links them together. Drugs! Hooray for drugs indeed, as they could help tons of kids who are in poverty.

Remember the ace drug film Trainspotting? Danny Boyle was the man who directed that – and in Skins, Dev Patel played a teenager who took drugs, partied and said rude word like ‘shitty Mcfuck poo’. Combining their knowledge of drugs from their own projects, they can answer questions like this:

For £32,000, what is the best material for smoking heroin? A) Your mum’s new table cloth B) Foil C) Page 666 of The Bible or D) Bubble wrap.

As per every other 24,635 episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Chris Tarrant can sit in his chair looking like a smug twit as Danny and Dev frantically wrack their brains for the right answer.

Hooray for it being for charity and all that. The higher powers connected to Slumdog Millionaire have been accused of not paying the street kids of Mumbai and leaving them in shit-infested poverty. Usually, we urge the smug middle-class housewife contestants to balls up their £500,000 question. But this time it could actually help kids out. Which of course is a good thing. See, we do have that thing called a ‘conscience’. Potentially seeing Dev and Danny mess up and loose a great deal of money would probably sour proceedings quite substantially.

Though they could always melt down one of their BAFTAs/Oscars. We’d at least pitch in and give £50. It would be nice to be known as the ‘best film award in 2008′ instead of ‘a lazy good for nothing with rubbish hair.’

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Oh Oscars, how could you? Up in chihuahua heaven, little Loki Rourke is in floods. Floods. Are you happy now?

You’d better be. Because, even though he’s won every single other award on the face of the Earth for The Wrestler, the Oscars have just decided to snub Mickey Rourke and give the Best Actor trophy to Sean Penn. Honestly Oscars, when Mickey Rourke goes off the rails again and ends up starring in Sylvester Stallone‘s Get Carter 2, the blood will be on your hands.

Also, Slumdog Millionaire won a bunch of Oscars, which is a great surprise to… oh, nobody.

Prior to Oscars, all the bookies were saying that the big awards were all sewn up. And, mostly, they were. What’s more, all the reactions to the big awards were sewn up too -

* Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture and Best Director, and Danny Boyle looked like the happiest Morrissey impersonator on Earth on both occasions;

* Kate Winslet won Best Actress and immediately flew into her ‘asthma sufferer you’d most like to punch’ shtick;

* Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor and accepted the award in person, admitting that his accidental suicide was simply a ploy to win an Oscar;

* Mickey Rourke won Best Actor and… hey, wait a minute! Mickey Rourke didn’t win Best Actor at all.

Even though he was the critical and public favourite for the best actor Oscar, the Academy decided that the last thing it wanted to hear was another bloody eulogy for a dead chihuahua and gave the Best Actor Oscar to Sean Penn for his role in Milk instead.

Then again, it all seems so obvious in retrospect. The Oscars love Sean Penn. If Sean Penn did a fart in a ziploc bag, he’d probably get an Oscar for it. Because when Sean Penn wins an Oscar, you know you’re going to get a dangerously sincere acceptance speech about cinema’s ability to weave itself into the fabric of the national consciousness, and that tends to ease moviestars’ guilt about being paid millions of dollars to memorise a handful of words in the right order once a year.

Also, Sean Penn won his Best Actor Oscar for Milk, which allowed the Academy to register its disappointment of the passing of Proposition 8 in California last year. So now the entire television audience of The Oscars – essentially a dwindling handful of gay men and nobody else – know that some actors think Proposition 8 is bad. Thank God for that.

Also, did you see The Oscars? What with Sophia Loren, that man who balanced his Oscar upside down on his chin and Hugh Jackman’s big gurning head on top of that little puppet body, these were probably the gayest Oscars in living memory. At least Sean Penn’s victory was a decent fit.

But, despite this upset, the 2009 Oscars will go down in history as the Slumdog Millionaire Oscars. Actually, no, who are we kidding? They’ll go down in history as the Oscars where it looked like Angelina Jolie was cackling at Jennifer Aniston‘s inability to talk properly. Something tells us you’ll be hearing more about this soon.

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Spoiler alert: if you don’t want your Oscar night feast of bad dresses and unbearable smugness ruined, stop reading.

Also, if you don’t care about the Oscars, stop reading. So that should leave us with only people who sort of like the Oscars a bit but they’re not women or gay or anything. Welcome aboard, tiny remaining audience.

Excuse our preamble, because we’re about to tell you who’ll win all the Oscars. We mean it – bookies say they’ve never been more convinced. Slumdog Millionaire, by the way. There, that’s saved you about four hours of your life. Spend it wisely.

Television ratings for the Oscars have been in freefall for the last few years, but at least the Oscar organisers have identified the problem. No, it’s not because the Oscar ceremony is essentially an uncomfortably long game of soggy biscuit exclusively played by smug millionaires who genuinely believe that they can change the world by making a barely-watched movie that mentions Iraq three or four times – it’s because people don’t like seeing clever people say funny things, and they don’t like having their surprises ruined.

That’s why Jon Stewart‘s intelligent quips have been replaced at this year’s Oscars by a shrieking Australian man in a pair of spangly trousers, and it’s also why the names of this year’s Oscars presenters are being kept secret.

It’s a decent enough policy – maintaining a spontaneous, anything-goes attitude towards the Oscars that can’t be ruined in advance. Or at least it would be, were it not for the fact that everyone is pretty much convinced that they know who’ll win all of the Oscars this year.

Thanks to a number of factors, like complex betting patterns and the fact that about four billion other awards shows have taken place in the last couple of months and THEY’VE ALL GIVEN PRIZES TO THE EXACT SAME EFFING PEOPLE, it seems like Slumdog Millionaire winning Best Picture at Sunday’s Oscars is a near-inevitability. Bloomberg reports:

“Slumdog Millionaire” had a 90 percent chance of winning as of yesterday, making it the biggest favorite since 2002, according to Intrade.com, a Dublin-based Web site. If Intrade and other oddsmakers are right, Mickey Rourke, Kate Winslet and the late Heath Ledger will all win statuettes. Nate Silver, of the Web site Fivethirtyeight.com, puts the film’s prospects at 99 percent.

Now, we should probably point out that this is all speculation – the Oscar winners aren’t guaranteed yet, and there’s still a chance that Slumdog Millionaire will walk away empty-handed on Sunday. Or, better still, that Kate Winslet won’t win her Oscar and a camera will be pointing right into her crumpled face at the exact moment that she realises someone has booted her dreams into mush yet again. Because, come on, why else would anyone want to watch the Oscars?

Also, we can’t help feeling that this trend of speculative analysis is killing the Oscars. While it’s good for films like Slumdog Millionaire and everything, if it continues any longer everyone will know if they’ve won or not before they even set out for the Kodak theatre. And then we’ll never get to see Eddie Murphy storm off in a huff when he doesn’t win again. Where’s the bloody fun in that?

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If you believe that the BAFTAs act as a bellweather for the Oscars, then Slumdog Millionaire will win all the Oscars.

Also, the Oscars are going to be really bloody drizzly. Because that happened at the BAFTAs too. But anyway, Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner at last night’s BAFTA awards, scooping Best Film, Best Director, Best Music, Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay. Why? Because it’s principally British? No. Well, yes. A bit.

But Slumdog Millionaire wasn’t the only thing to leave the BAFTAs with anything. We left with the onset of trenchfoot. Eat that, Dev Patel.

The BAFTAs are the shining light at the centre of the British filmmaking calendar, where the great and the good decide that they’re probably happier to stay in Hollywood and have a night off, then the good and the mediocre plan to go but get put off by all the rain and we’re left with Christian Slater and celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke and an auditorium that smells vaguely of wet dog.

But the BAFTAs aren’t just the badly-dentured Oscars any more – now they’re an exciting precursor to the Oscars. You see, the BAFTAs inform the Oscars, just in the same way that the 4,000 other award shows which happen in the first six weeks of the year inform the Oscars.

And, if the BAFTAs have any sway whatsoever, it might be a good year for Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a movie that’s already beaten the odds – originally destined to be a direct-to-DVD release, Slumdog Millionaire is at once both the most depressing feelgood movie you’re ever likely to see and the most celebrated movie to ever fall apart and stop being any good about two-thirds in.

Not that any of that stopped Slumdog Millionaire from winning everything at the BAFTAs, though, as the Hollywood Reporter, um, reports:

Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” dominated this year’s Orange British Academy Film Awards, scooping seven awards including best film, director, cinematography and adapted screenplay for writer Simon Beaufoy. “I’ve had a complex relationship with this statue,” Beaufoy said, “I have a plastic one that I bought from eBay, a chocolate one that I stole from the dinner one year and now, well …”

Elsewhere at the BAFTAs, Kate Winslet‘s Best Actress award for The Reader gave her another chance ahead of the Oscars to not instantly start blubbering like an idiot the moment that anybody says her name out loud, Noel Clarke won the BAFTA Orange Rising Star Award and Abi Titmuss turned up, even though nobody really knew why.

Chances are you’ve already seen our searing expose of the BAFTA red carpet, but if you actually want to see what some of the celebrities who turned up look like when they’re not studiously avoiding a swearing idiot, then you’ll be able to find some decent BAFTA interviews here. Warning – in them, Fearne Cotton appears to be wearing Brian Blessed to keep warm.

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10 - A Mad Cow Disease joke. Yeah, we miss the early 1990s too…

9 - Eight musicians who need a punch in the face. Their words, not ours – Radioexile

8 – Join the army – Dailymail

7 - What is Grimace? – Gunaxin

6 – That Slumdog Millionaire kid? Consider his career over – Underwire

5 – Paul’s Boutique has been reissued. Everyone go get – Wired

4 - We think this video is supposed to be adorable, but we’re terrified that the dog will flip out and attack us – I Am Bored

3 – This is why it doesn’t snow in Britain much. It makes God too ashamed – Cardsboard

2 - Freakishly specific Flickr groups - Bestweekever

1 – Hey, who wants to see Morrissey naked? No? Nobody does? Nobody wants to see Morrissey naked? – Electricroulette

In essence, SAG is a gang of prissy millionaires all threatening to go on strike because they don’t get paid enough.

But it’s more than that, you know – SAG also holds an incredibly important awards ceremony each year, too. The SAG awards help to dictate the Oscar winners each year, by basically copying the Golden Globes and then standing around hoping that nobody notices. Which, so far, they haven’t.

And, as such, the big winner at last night’s SAG awards was Slumdog Millionaire, which not only won Best Picture, but also Best First Half Of A Movie and Drippiest Ending.

You’d think that SAG had better things to do than hold awards shows at the moment, wouldn’t you? The union is currently poised on the verge of a civil war over a potential strike that could lead to the unthinkable – that’s right, a slightly longer wait than usual to see films that you weren’t even bothered to see in the first place. It’s literally a nightmare.

But still, last night’s SAG awards gave the acting community a rare day off from the stresses of its strike impasse to do the one thing that it does better than anyone else – throw on some nice clothes and crow on forever about how brilliant and important it is.

And, make no mistake, the SAG awards are important – they’re a heavy indicator to the results of the Oscars, along with only three or four thousand other smug, attention-seeking movie awards shows that tend to take place at this time of year. So with this in mind, who came out on top at last night’s SAG awards?

Well, we’ll start by dismissing the Best Actor and Best Actress awards, because they were won by Sean Penn and Meryl Streep – both such icons of the acting community that they probably still would have won had they starred in that air freshener commercial about the boy who gets offended at how much his poo stinks.

The Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress SAG awards were also pretty much an inevitability – Heath Ledger won his for The Dark Knight while Kate Winslet won hers for Nazi Girls Gone Wild, or whatever that film of hers is called.

And, really, that just left Best Picture. And we’re going to dismiss that as well, because Slumdog Millionaire win it and it’s already won all kinds of other awards, plus the ending’s a bit wet and we can’t help shaking the feeling that people only give it awards so that they can gloat about their own diverse tastes in movies afterwards because of all the brown people that are in it.

So that’s it, really. The SAG awards were a bit of a washout, with awards either going to established awards favourites or the usual cast of Serious And Respected Actors. And nobody even took the time to indulge in the most SAG-y pasttime of all – literally comparing themselves to God. Did they, Variety?

“I don’t mean to embarrass anybody by comparing the actor to God, but once we’ve taken the role, we have a similar responsibility to breathe life into that role, and only the actor can do that.”

Thank you, James Earl Jones. You had us worried there for a minute.

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Although in 1995 India was a barren wasteland where nothing had ever lived, by 1996 billions of bums had moved in and turned it into a sort of poverty-themed Disneyland.

Tourists love it – and it’s the perfect setting for that Slum Dog Millionaire movie, don’t you think? You don’t think so? Well you’re not alone – all homeless Indian denigrates agree with you wholeheartedly. Enough so that they’re currently picketing outside the home of one of the film’s stars for a big budget name-change or something.

In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, there’s a scene towards the end where the entire cast gets accidentally axed to death by a blind fireman. He’s later found guilty of something or other, and gets hanged by the neck from the Mayor’s crystal chandelier. It’s a tragedy, really. Not as good of a tragedy as we would write, mind you, but a tragedy just the same. We figure that’s why people like it so much.

The western world has always welcomed cinematic sadness with open arms – think about it. That movie where the girl boxer dies on a stool or something – all countries first-world and up actually changed their constitutions to force every single person to have to watch it, by law, on their 18th birthday. Penalty for not doing so is a class c misdemeanor. It truly was great for ticket sales.

And every single movie Ben Stiller ever made – they’re all incredibly tragic. It’s a different kind of tragic, mind you, but still, they’ve made so much money that some African governments literally had to print more.

We meant ‘almost’ literally.

You know who hates tragic movies though? Poverty-stricken East Indians. They hate ‘em. Especially when they’re set in India, and the title of the movie calls their entire financial underclass ‘dogs.’ We’re talking about that insensitive Slumdog Millionaire movie. The natives in India have even been riled enough to stage protests outside the homes of at least one of the film’s actors.

You don’t believe us? Well then, believe the Associated Press:

“Several dozen Mumbai slum residents protested the award-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” on Thursday, calling the film’s title insulting. The protest came amid mounting excitement in India _ where the movie is set and home to many of its actors _ ahead of Academy Award nominations later Thursday…”I am poor, but don’t call me slumdog,” said Rekha Dhamji, 18, one of about two dozen slum residents who protested outside the home of one of the movie’s actors, Anil Kapoor. “I don’t want to be referred to as a dog,” she said. Other protesters held up banners reading “Poverty For Sale,” and “I am not a dog.” One of them carried a puppy.”

Funny they have such a problem being called dogs when once a year or so they make all their daughters marry one. It’s true – follow the link and see. The lesson learned there is that although dogs do make excellent, caring and attentive spouses, they are still socially several steps below the extremely poor.

This makes those marriages rather tough. Imagine for a second what it would be like to be married to something so wonderful, and yet be forbidden by law from looking it in the eye.

That’s not a life most are willing to lead. Not when you’re madly in love with a cocker spaniel the way we are and always have been since we first saw Foofy in a rich man’s backyard.

We’ll always have Alpo, Foofy, We’ll always have Alpo.

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