Re: Slumdog Millionaire
It's running on the FX network now. Last night it was on right before Justified. Next showings are this Sunday.
This is one of my favorite all-time movies, in no small part because I've spent some time in India, which gives me a great deal of empathy for the plight of the Indian 'peasants' as well as a bit of extra insight into the movie's cultural nuances. Like its depiction of the tolerable levels of cruelty to members of any lower caste. The TV gameshow host is pretty rough on Jamal because he's a lowly "chai walla", which is like ridiculing someone because they're a busboy. Only he's doing it on national TV (in a nation with more than a billion people).
"Walla," by the way, is the indicator of your profession. A "chai walla" might be someone who either sells or serves chai. In either case, his business is chai, a spiced tea, the Indian national drink.
One point of cultural clarification I think makes the movie more meaningful concerns the Indians' curious head waggle, which looks like a cross between shaking their head and nodding off. To westerners, this looks like an expression of disagreement but in fact it's just the opposite. It's more like the Indian equivalent of <span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">Fookin-A!</span></span>