Charles Dickens and "Slumdog Millionaire"

[LA Ute]

I am a huge Dickens fan. I hear there is at least one other who posts here. Are there any more?

Some quick faves:

I loved David Copperfield, just loved it. I remember laughing out loud several times while reading it.

Bleak House is also a favorite. Maybe it's the lawyer in me that loved that one. The latest PBS version was pretty good. I also saw an earlier version (Emma Peel as Lady Dedlok and Ian Holm as John Jarndyce) that was better.

Our Mutual Friend was also a lot of fun. The PBS version was well-done.

I read A Christmas Carol - the unabridged version - every Christmas. I think I can get my 11 year-old daughter to listen to me read it to her this year.

I am trying to read Nickelby now, but I keep getting distracted.

Those interested in Dickens will enjoy this movie review:

These days, though, it matters little that Charles Dickens was the greatest prose stylist the English language has ever produced and wove as no one has before or since the disparate strands of classic storytelling--realism and fancy, the natural and the supernatural, psychological character study and broad comic caricature--into a glorious tapestry. We have lost the taste for him and his work. Why would this be?

I am going to try to see the movie he reviews, Slumdog Millionaire, as soon as I can.

[kccougar]

I also read A Christmas Carol every year - a tradition I borrowed from my father - and I list David Copperfield as one of the best books I've read.

Charles Dicken's books are among the few that when I read them I have to stop occasionally and read a passage aloud because it just sounds so good to hear it.

[BigPiney]

Those interested in Dickens will enjoy this movie review:

These days, though, it matters little that Charles Dickens was the greatest prose stylist the English language has ever produced and wove as no one has before or since the disparate strands of classic storytelling--realism and fancy, the natural and the supernatural, psychological character study and broad comic caricature--into a glorious tapestry. We have lost the taste for him and his work. Why would this be?

I am going to try to see the movie he reviews, Slumdog Millionaire, as soon as I can.

Thanks for this I plan on seeing it now when I am in Irvine next week. Looks like a theater that is showing it is only a few miles from where I am staying.

Also, David Copperfield is one of my favorite books. Uriah Heep is one of the great characters.

I really should read Tale of Two Cities again. I probably would enjoy it this time. Amazing how being assigned to read anything in high school automatically made it painful.

[BigPiney]

I saw Slumdog Millionaire last week.

It was good. It was fun to actually see a movie in the theater. I go maybe once every 2 years.

I would recommend it to anyone. The scenes of the slums of Mumbai were incredible. Amazing to think that people live like this.

Also true to anything coming out of India, during the final credits there was a great dancing/music video that would make any Bollywood director proud.

[RobinFinderson]

Slumdog Millionaire is an AWESOME film. On a lark I checked out what was playing here in St George and was surprised to find Slumdog Millionaire! Faith and I hied our way to the back of some mall where my jaw nearly hit the carpet when it only cost us $10 for BOTH OF US! We splurged the other half of the $20 on popcorn and soda. A veritable movie-going bonanza.

Slumdog Millionaire is a love story that follows a handful of characters from their childhood in violent slums up through their young adulthood in a burgeoning India on the verge of assuming major status on the world's stage. The love story at the center of the film is epic! At the end of the film I turned to look at a blubbering Faith to say, "The problem with this film is that it cheapens our love! Look at what these people went through for their love! We met at freaking BYU... what kind of love is ours compared to this!?" She kicked me in the shin. Seriously, the love story in this movie makes Titanic look like the schlock it is, and The English patient? CRAP! Slumdog Millionaire delivers the goods. It has got A1 sauce all over it.

It is also an incredibly uplifting film, even though it takes the viewer through some incredibly difficult stuff to watch. The film is rated R, but at the end of it, I was struggling to recall any swearing, or gore, or sex. All three are represented in the film, but not in the gruesome ways to which we have become accustomed in our more American R-rated movies. If anything, the film deserves its R-rating for its stark depiction of 'slumdogs' ie. the poorest children of India, living in continual peril in violent streets where there are always people seeking to take advantage of them. But the positive story and hopefulness of the story far outshines these bleak displays.

Slumdog does something similar to Forrest Gump and Y Tu Mama tambien in the sense that it follows its characters through a tumultuous period of a country's history. The historic context serves as a backdrop to the tumult in the characters own lives, and that tumult, like something out of a magical realism novel (think Rushdie's Midnight's Children) simultaneously plays out that history at the micro-level of the protagonists' lives. Very cool.

If there were ever an R-rated film to expose the craziness of an absolute religious ban on R-rated films, this would be it. Watch this film and you will be a better person. My pick for best film I have seen all year.

Cheers!

rf

[Gidget]

Slumdog Millionaire is an AWESOME film. On a lark I checked out what was playing here in St George and was surprised to find Slumdog Millionaire! Faith and I hied our way to the back of some mall where my jaw nearly hit the carpet when it only cost us $10 for BOTH OF US! We splurged the other half of the $20 on popcorn and soda. A veritable movie-going bonanza.

Slumdog Millionaire is a love story that follows a handful of characters from their childhood in violent slums up through their young adulthood in a burgeoning India on the verge of assuming major status on the world's stage. The love story at the center of the film is epic! At the end of the film I turned to look at a blubbering Faith to say, "The problem with this film is that it cheapens our love! Look at what these people went through for their love! We met at freaking BYU... what kind of love is ours compared to this!?" She kicked me in the shin. Seriously, the love story in this movie makes Titanic look like the schlock it is, and The English patient? CRAP! Slumdog Millionaire delivers the goods. It has got A1 sauce all over it.

It is also an incredibly uplifting film, even though it takes the viewer through some incredibly difficult stuff to watch. The film is rated R, but at the end of it, I was struggling to recall any swearing, or gore, or sex. All three are represented in the film, but not in the gruesome ways to which we have become accustomed in our more American R-rated movies. If anything, the film deserves its R-rating for its stark depiction of 'slumdogs' ie. the poorest children of India, living in continual peril in violent streets where there are always people seeking to take advantage of them. But the positive story and hopefulness of the story far outshines these bleak displays.

Slumdog does something similar to Forrest Gump and Y Tu Mama tambien in the sense that it follows its characters through a tumultuous period of a country's history. The historic context serves as a backdrop to the tumult in the characters own lives, and that tumult, like something out of a magical realism novel (think Rushdie's Midnight's Children) simultaneously plays out that history at the micro-level of the protagonists' lives. Very cool.

If there were ever an R-rated film to expose the craziness of an absolute religious ban on R-rated films, this would be it. Watch this film and you will be a better person. My pick for best film I have seen all year.

Cheers!

rf

You have persuaded me. I totally want to see this now!

[myboynoah]

Slumdog Millionaire is an AWESOME film. On a lark I checked out what was playing here in St George and was surprised to find Slumdog Millionaire! Faith and I hied our way to the back of some mall where my jaw nearly hit the carpet when it only cost us $10 for BOTH OF US! We splurged the other half of the $20 on popcorn and soda. A veritable movie-going bonanza.

Slumdog Millionaire is a love story that follows a handful of characters from their childhood in violent slums up through their young adulthood in a burgeoning India on the verge of assuming major status on the world's stage. The love story at the center of the film is epic! At the end of the film I turned to look at a blubbering Faith to say, "The problem with this film is that it cheapens our love! Look at what these people went through for their love! We met at freaking BYU... what kind of love is ours compared to this!?" She kicked me in the shin. Seriously, the love story in this movie makes Titanic look like the schlock it is, and The English patient? CRAP! Slumdog Millionaire delivers the goods. It has got A1 sauce all over it.

It is also an incredibly uplifting film, even though it takes the viewer through some incredibly difficult stuff to watch. The film is rated R, but at the end of it, I was struggling to recall any swearing, or gore, or sex. All three are represented in the film, but not in the gruesome ways to which we have become accustomed in our more American R-rated movies. If anything, the film deserves its R-rating for its stark depiction of 'slumdogs' ie. the poorest children of India, living in continual peril in violent streets where there are always people seeking to take advantage of them. But the positive story and hopefulness of the story far outshines these bleak displays.

Slumdog does something similar to Forrest Gump and Y Tu Mama tambien in the sense that it follows its characters through a tumultuous period of a country's history. The historic context serves as a backdrop to the tumult in the characters own lives, and that tumult, like something out of a magical realism novel (think Rushdie's Midnight's Children) simultaneously plays out that history at the micro-level of the protagonists' lives. Very cool.

If there were ever an R-rated film to expose the craziness of an absolute religious ban on R-rated films, this would be it. Watch this film and you will be a better person. My pick for best film I have seen all year.

Cheers!

rf

Too bad it's rated R.

[RobinFinderson]

Too bad it's rated R.

That is what my SIL said too. Faithfulness has its price. How strange that the good secular folks of the MPAA, with all of the politics and back-room dealing that goes into film rating, get to decide what the 'faithful' Mormons can watch. The standards for applying ratings shift through time, as do the meaning of the ratings themselves, and the ratings systems vary from country to country, but the restriction on the 'faithful' remains a constant some twenty years after the declaration was taken out of context.

I have Canadian relatives who won't watch a movie in SLC, when they are visiting family for the holidays, but will watch the same film in Canada, where the ratings system will often give softer ratings to films that receive R-ratings in the states. The burdens of faith!

[myboynoah]

That is what my SIL said too. Faithfulness has its price. How strange that the good secular folks of the MPAA, with all of the politics and back-room dealing that goes into film rating, get to decide what the 'faithful' Mormons can watch. The standards for applying ratings shift through time, as do the meaning of the ratings themselves, and the ratings systems vary from country to country, but the restriction on the 'faithful' remains a constant some twenty years after the declaration was taken out of context.

I have Canadian relatives who won't watch a movie in SLC, when they are visiting family for the holidays, but will watch the same film in Canada, where the ratings system will often give softer ratings to films that receive R-ratings in the states. The burdens of faith!

I'm not even sure I should be discussing this.