Hey Wednesday, How's Your Ash?

Jai Ho (Featuring Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah & Mahala) - A.R. Rahman

I suppose the Slumdog Millionaire backlash was inevitable. Much like JUNO last year, when a film manages to be uplifting, incredibly good and is rewarded with success, both popular and critical, you're bound to find a few nerds in the mix who can't separate hype from reality and write it off before they've even seen it. Most types of backlash bullshit is easy enough to spot (my roommate received a tweet from someone after the awards calling SLUMDOG this year's TITANIC), but I'm shocked at the number of little bitches hating on the musical number playing through the credits, where the entire cast dances to the Oscar-Winning song "Jai Ho" by A.R. Rahman and friends. In an informal poll conducted by myself of the random little bitches I encounter on my own middle American existence, the number of people who call the ending stupid or say that it took away from the film's emotional punch are shocking. I hope this is another case of Michiganders missing everything cool--certainly it's win on Sunday supports that--but I don't know.

I can't imagine the movie ending any other way, and, strangely enough, was the part that stuck with me the most. As I understand it, "Jai Ho" means "Victory," so you can take the ending to be a celebration for Jamal winning on the award show and finally winning the love of the girl. It also serves to remind the audience that the plethora of GD awful things they just witnessed prior to the happy ending were just fiction, essentially breaking down the fourth wall. I'm sure there's also an homage to Bollywood in there, too, but I don't really know enough (anything) to comment on it.

Regardless of the haters, it's nice to see Oscar continuing the tradition he started last year with ONCE and "Falling Slowly" of awarding the "Best Song" Oscar to the song that actually deserves it (rather than meaningless mass-market musicals like ENCHANTED).

Here's the interview with Danny Boyle and the cast/crew on the TODAY show: