Videogum » Poverty

Slumdog Millionaire‘s Rubina Ali Is A Thousandaire

Gabe — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:27:32 +0000

Let’s start the day with some good news, FOR ONCE. From the AP:

MUMBAI, India – “Slumdog Millionaire” child star Rubina Ali played a poverty-stricken child in the Oscar-winning film, but the real-life daughter of India’s shantytowns now has a small fortune in book and movie deals.

The 10-year-old’s publisher and a producer say she is already committed to projects worth more than $145,000, and her family will could soon move out of the slums and into a new apartment paid for by a trust set up by the film’s director, Danny Boyle.

She and her family will could soon move out of the slums! Good! I’m not sure why she and her family will could has not yet move out of the slums, since you would think that it would take far less than $145,000 to get the F out of T, but that is great news! Because it is still sounding pretty grim:

Does Anyone Care About The Slumdog Millionaire Kids Anymore?

Gabe — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:01:47 +0000

As you may or may not know, I am not a fan of the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Personally, I think that it is a condescending and exploitative after-school-special to make white people feel better about their cultural ignorance and their inaction towards global humanitarian crises. And there was a certain period of time in which I regularly wrote posts about the tumultuous and mostly-tragic lives of the movie’s young child stars after the colonial film crew had packed up and moved home. Today, there is another report about how the kids aren’t going to school, and how that might make them ineligible to receive the trust fund that Danny Boyle set up in their names. That’s no good! My first thought was “Ah, another disturbing update on the nightmarish lives of the Slumdog Millionaire kids.” And my second thought was, “wait, does anyone even care about them anymore?” And that is the whole problem right there!

But first, what is going on with those dudes?

Sell The Vatican, Feed The World

Gabe — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:04:06 +0000

I am completely on board with this. Because on the one hand, I hate world hunger. HATE IT! I know that’s not a very popular thing to say around here, where everyone is so pro-world hunger it’s ridiculous, you can’t swing a baseball bat without Bear Jewing some pro-world hunger advocate in the scalp. But I hate world hunger. And I don’t care about the Vatican. Like, if you were to make a list of everything in the world from things that I care about the most to things that I care about the least, the Vatican would certainly be in the bottom half of that list, and here are a few things that would be above it:

Honey-flavored candies
Ashlee Simpson
The well-being of people on the Atkins Diet
Ed Hardy Face Wash

I say we go for it. Let’s put this super-realistic and completely reasonable suggestion from a renowned Poverty Scientist into action!

It’s Official, Everyone’s Diamond Shoes Are Too Tight

Gabe — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:53:52 +0000

I know that sometimes my diamond shoes can get too tight, but sometimes it takes a really news story to remind you just HOW tight diamond shoes can really get. Like this one, in which a man in Bangladesh won a 14″ color television for killing more than 83 THOUSAND rats. From the AP (via WarmingGlow):

Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a first prize of a color television for killing some 83,450 rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country’s capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof.

“I am so happy to get this honor,” Islam said after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers and officials. “I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this… This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them,” he vowed.

Oh, incidentally, the “contest” is part of a national campaign to reduce food imports as a step towards domestic resolution of a national food shortage. Yay?

NYC Prep: 17 Going On 17

Gabe — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:27:31 +0000

I will give the children of NYC Prep this: they are very poised and “adult” on camera. High school students are, for the most part, sloppy spazz-attacks, flailing around all over the place with their hormones and their malformed identities and their terrible dreams (at one point last night, Taylor said, “My life plan is I’m going to take dance in college, and then I’m going to become a superstar”). But the children of NYC Prep are mostly like, “Oh no, last night I burned the French cuff of my tuxedo shirt on the edge of the samovar.” And when PC (or was it Jessie or was it Who Cares) says that kids in New York grow up faster, I am inclined to half believe it. They certainly gain more efficient social manipulation skills, and they can hide their gawky faces and awkward bodies with $500 haircuts and Marc Jacobs dresses (or in PC’s case, a personal trainer), but at the end of the day, children are children. And these are definitely children we are dealing with.

NYC Prep: Oh, Babies, What Have You Done?

Gabe — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:47:00 +0000

When the women of the Real Housewives, or anyone on any VH1 show ever, are forced into bizarre social situations (think the traditional final episode dinner party on Housewives, or the Real Chance at Love reunion) the discomfort of it is the point. It’s not really schadenfreude to want these women to destroy each other. It’s just the Rules of the Game. We’re nearly 20 years into reality TV as a regular genre of television programming. People should know what they’re getting into at this point. But on last night’s episode, when Camille (whoever that is) decided to “host a dinner party” and just happened to invite only the other castmembers of this show, there was a virulent strain of ickiness running through the whole thing. It wasn’t just PC’s shithead behavior, either. It was the fact that high school kids don’t throw dinner parties, and if they did throw dinner parties they would throw them with their friends. It’s one thing to watch women who don’t like each other throw tables and spill wine, but there’s something creepy (and dull) about watching high school children who don’t like each other forced to squirm in the silk-lined private dining room of a midtown restaurant, reserved by producers who do not have anyone’s best interest at heart.

Bollywood He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe Is The Rich Man’s Slumdog Millionaire

Gabe — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:13:11 +0000

Sorry guys, we have to do the 2009 Academy Awards again, we messed up. After we KILL HITLER, let’s point the Time Machine to last February and give all the Oscars to Bollywood He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

I would like to see the Indian government try to raze Castle Greyskull in a routine slum-cleaning effort. No dice! (Via iO9.)

One Of The Slumdog Millionaire Children Won’t Be Sleeping In Garbage Tonight!

Gabe — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:54:08 +0000

Remember how two of the Slumdog Millionaire children have had their homes razed in the past month? Well in what appears to be the first good thing that has happened to any of them since they had the overwhelming privilege of watching Danny Boyle win all those Oscars, one of them has a new home. This is good news! What, you think I won’t write about when good things happen, too? I’m not a monster. From the AP:

The makers of the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire” have bought a new home for one of the two child stars discovered in Mumbai’s slums.

The purchase of a 250-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment for the family of Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, was completed Monday, said Nirja Mattoo, who helps oversee a trust set up by the filmmakers to help Azharuddin and his 9-year-old co-star Rubina Ali.

“They can move in,” Mattoo told The Associated Press Wednesday, adding that the trust plans to deliver the keys Thursday.

Both children lost their homes last month when authorities demolished parts of their slum.

Mattoo said the trust is actively looking for a new home for Rubina.

Finding a new home for only one out of two homeless children who were largely responsible for the runaway success of your horrible movie but are once again living in abject squalor is not the best track record, and 250-square-feet is not that many square-feet considering a whole family is going to live in there and by that standard I would like Danny Boyle to also live in a 250-square-foot apartment, but yay! Azharuddin Ismail’s pillow will be made out of pillow instead of “smelly sack of something, not sure what.” And if it’s true that they are actively looking for a new home for Rubina, we might even be TWO FOR TWO in child stars of Slumdog Millionaire not literally sleeping in piles of garbage or being shuttled between distant relatives already overburdened with their own lives of poverty and hardship. Success! (Is what we would say! If that happens!)

Slumdog Millionaire Star To Publish Life Story, Finally

Gabe — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:07:29 +0000

Rubina Ali, the adorable little girl from Slumdog Millionaire, is writing a book! About her life! Um, she is nine years old! From the AP:

Transworld Publishers said Rubina Ali’s book will tell the story of her life in the shantytown where she grew up.

They added: “It will be written in crayon, and it will be four pages long, because she is nine. Just kidding no one in Mumbai can afford crayons.”

Look, I want nothing but the best for the Slumdog Millionaire children, instead of nothing but the worst, which is what they are constantly getting, but perhaps the endemic problems of abject poverty that “inspired” the terrible movie, and from which the child stars continue to suffer, will not be solved by a 9-year-old’s ghostwritten rags-to-riches-to-rags memoir about how she went from a lifetime of suffering to SPOILER ALERT the Academy Awards and then SPOILER ALERT back to suffering. Just like how they weren’t solved by the brightly colored fairy tale music video about how magical poverty can be that was Slumdog Millionaire, winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Achievement in Sound. Clearly exploiting this child for publicity has not been working out so great so far.

You Can Make It Up: Gwyneth Paltrow Nourishes Her Inner Aspect

Gabe — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:39:25 +0000

Gwyneth Paltrow stirred. A lilac scented breeze pushed gently at the diaphanous curtains of her castle aerie (two servants stood beneath her castle window, one waving a giant palm frond as the other squeezed a bulb of artisanal lilac oil into the current). The silk sheets felt rough against her pearl white skin, as they always did after having been slept on for more than four hours. She would have to have them replaced; their satin comfort was gone now. Now they were like sandpaper to her temple (body). She thought of the tiny hands of child laborers in China and India, harvesting the silken threads for her midnight cocoon. Surely they would be happier doing something else, like playing, or going to school, or starring in a movie with Robert Downey Jr. She should write them a letter to encourage them to find their true spirit. She should have one of her assistants write them a letter right away.

“Dear child laborers,” it would begin. “Seek your happiness.” Blah blah blah, her assistant would know how to end it. She was always much better at writing letters, and aspirational websites, than Gwyneth.