Yours truly had elsewhere blogged about the implausible script of the global phenomenon, the recent hollywood-bollywood jv, Slumdog Millionaire. Now it has just achieved something more implausible, a whopping eight academy awards!!!! Over the MOON, anybody? Over the top would be more apt. Hollywood likes us to believe that this is what exellent cinema is about, we can't achieve a thing with Indianess of our backyard in the history of a century of cinema. They can, and have done with a few (only a couple) of immensely Indian subjects, and have emerged triumphant. The 82 movie Gandhi was a undoubted aspirant, and a deserved winner. It spoke the language of true cinema, sensuous art and sublime sensibilities. The winner on 23rd February 09 is at best a really brave attempt at westernised bollywood masala. Yours truly has a lot of respect for the academy awards, its choices and the standards. Appreciated the stiff upper lip response to our best hope in recent years,(read Lagaan) their reason for exclusion found to be believable. But now this! A shocker. Yes you like bollywood, everyone who can spell 'cinema' does, so?it gives you a passage to make a hilarious take on a famous quiz show and call it a masterpiece? Not accepted. The drama called Slumdog was a product of a very proffessional bunch of men and women working together.And more such efforts will be eagerly welcomed, but it is too early to bestow oscars on a near comical take on what luck can do for you, in the name of good cinema. The award for Rehman could have come anytime during his colourful carrier, but not this time, the music is just not that superior as the award suggests. Ditto for Gulzar's song Jai Ho. Dhanya ho! What were these jurists thinking? The great poet might be giggling over at the hilarity of the situation, some foreigners judging a rather mundane Hindi lyric and declaring it oscar worthy.Sound mixing, yet another category reserved for an Indian, is highly technical, so may be that does not call for a comment by the uninitiated. All in all, the amount of time,energy and recources spent on the movie at various international events may sound great for bollywood and its future collaboration with the west, but 8 oscar awards is uncalled for. Let's put a figure then,a real one, on the movie's oscar and other awards that it collected(totalling 100). Difficult to figure? Try putting an Indian director at the helm, exactly same movie.Jai Ho.