(Look at that beauty mark, she’s a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe.)
The actual slumdogs from Slumdog Millionaire, for whom the director and producer bought houses and set up a trust, have been missing so much class lately that they’ve been threatened with getting their trust cut off. I for one am so sick of trust-fund punks thinking they don’t have to play by the rules.
Azharuddin Ismail, 11 and Rubina Ali, 10 have been told to stop skipping class in Mumbai or forfeit a 120-dollars per month payment.
Noshir Dadrawala, who helps administer the fund, said that Azharuddin was showing up at school only 37 percent of the time and that Rubina had a 27 percent attendance rate. The trust decided that the children must raise their attendance above 70 percent or forfeit their monthly stipends.
When asked about his truancy by NDTV, Ismail, 11, said “My father died and I had to go through the rituals so I couldn’t attend.” Ismail’s father died in September after a lengthy battle with tuberculosis. Ali, 10, gave a similar excuse, telling the network “I had hurt my foot with a glass shard and got burnt with a cracker. So I was not going to school.”
Ali’s father Rafiq defended her, saying “I know what is best for Rubina. They called us and said they will stop helping us. I told them God will take care of us.” [AP, NYTimes]
Small correction: “I burnt myself on a cracker” is actually NOT a similar excuse to “my father died.” That sh-t don’t even fly at community college. Though perhaps by “burnt with a cracker” she was speaking metaphorically, of her encounter with the rich white man who changed her life forever, and not necessarily for the better. And that maybe things were better before, when they were simpler, before her dance* with the fickle mistress that is fame. Discuss.
*elaborately choreographed with 50 extras and excessive shoulder gyrating.
(I just thought Professor Fuzzkins and the duckling duo were less depressing than the original picture)
The father of Slumdog Millionaire star Azharrudin Mohammed (who played Salim), the same one who slapped his son around for being impolite to photographers, has died in Mumbai. He got the finest care possible, but succumbed to a rare, incurable diseas– wait, hold on, I’m getting some new info… Sorry, check that, he died of tuberculosis. Which is still India’s number three killer, behind the bubonic plague and Ox palsy.
Mohammed Ismail’s premature death will inevitably fuel the controversy surrounding the fate of the slum children who appeared in the movie. He died today in the new flat bought for the family by the trust set up by director Danny Boyle.
Ismail had been ill for some time and had twice been admitted to a tuberculosis hospital in Mumbai after being turned away by another hospital in the city, which refused to admit him in case he infected other patients.
Well sure. I asked my friend who’s a doctor what the best way to cure someone with tuberculosis is, and he said, first you cover them with a plastic tarp, then you kick them into a vat of acid, and then you throw away anything they might have touched. Then you rub two sticks together and make a fire, because witches hate fire.
(Yo, dawg, we heard you like walls so we put walls in your house)
India treats their national treasures so well that Slumdog Millionaire actor Azharrudin Ismail recently moved into an apartment foreigners had to buy him just months after the Indian government knocked his house down and kicked him into an open sewer like a piece of garbage. Director Danny Boyle and producer Christian Colson are still in India securing a place for Ismail’s co-star, Rubina Ali. Meanwhile Ismail and his mom moved into their $50,000, one-room apartment. Pff, for that kind of money, you can get a mansion in Detroit with a fence made of corpses.
“I was shocked when I saw this house,” Azhar, 11, said, before turning on one of his favorite Hindi songs and dancing around the living room. “I want to thank Danny Boyle for giving us this flat.”
Really? He actually put on a Hindi song and danced around? Now what the hell am I supposed to make a joke about? Wait, could he also call him “Mr. Danny?”
Azhar’s mother Shameem Ismail said she is looking forward to their first night in the new apartment.” God has given me so much,” she said. “We will sleep very well tonight. There is no water leaking, no bad environment, no quarreling.”
She and Azhar will share the main room, while Azhar’s brother Irfan Ismail Sheikh, 22, and his wife will sleep on a mattress in the kitchen, she said. Meanwhile, back in Garib Nagar, Azhar’s father, Mohammed Ismail, sat disconsolately on the hard wooden bed crawling with flies that the family used to share. He will remain here, and visit his son and wife in the new apartment regularly, he said. He said he’s hoping to get some government land in exchange for the shanty, and prefers to remain near the neighbors, chickens and mucky lanes he has always called home.
Azhar’s mother said she doesn’t want her husband in the new house because he does drugs, but she pledged to return to Garib Nagar for visits. [HuffPo]
At which point Azhar’s father took a huge bong rip and grumbled, “Yeah? Well at least the flies put out.”
Jesus, it’s about time. A week after his shanty got demolished and three months after both the filmmakers and an Indian housing authority promised him a house, Slumdog actor Azharudin Ismail finally has a new home.
Director Danny Boyle and producer Christian Colson flew into Mumbai. Smiling and hugging the children, Boyle said a home had been bought for Ismail, 9, who played the character of Salim as a child. He added they would soon buy one for Ali as well, who plays the young Latika.
The “Jai Ho” trust, named after the film’s award-winning track, and set up by Boyle and Colson, is meant to pay for the education and basic living costs of Ismail and Ali until they turn 18. A director for the trust said the apartment for Ismail was “comfortable, in a good neighborhood (and) near his school” and cost “upwards of 2 million rupees” ($42,000).
Boyle, who came under fire for not doing enough for the children who lived in squalor despite the film’s success, blamed the media for raising the families’ expectations. “Inevitably, the tension and pressure is media generated,” he said, after greeting Ali and Ismail with a hug. “They were given access to a world, an extraordinary and glamorous world, and they understandably want their lives to be completely transformed,” Boyle said. “The homes are a concern. That is one of the reasons why we built the trust.” [THR]
Boyle’s got a point. These kids didn’t have huge parts in the movie. You pay people for their work - just because your movie does well doesn’t mean you have to go back and pay your extras’ mortgages. Really it’s India that’s the problem. You can’t claim the kids as national heroes and then knock their house down and then demand that the west give you more money.. Even in North Korea they give you a shiny uniform.
You’ve probably seen this by now since it’s all over every news outlet, but Azharuddin Ismail, the kid who played young Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire, recently had his shanty torn down. According to some reports, the same thing actually happened a few months ago, so it’s not actually that big of news, but you know these media hippies. They love a good third-world sob story. Waaah, my one-room shack got torn down. Waaaah, I live in the sewer. That attitude’s the reason you’re not making the big bucks like me.
Ismail’s tarpaulin-covered home in a teeming slum was one of several shanties, illegally built along a drain, that were demolished by local authorities in Mumbai, India’s financial capital and entertainment hub. “When they came I was sleeping, they shook me awake and one policeman even threatened me,” Ismail, surrounded by half-broken suitcases filled with clothes and utensils, told Reuters. “What can I do if they have demolished my house? I will sleep out in the open.”
A poster of “Slumdog Millionaire,” signed by director Danny Boyle, fluttered from the only wall of Ismail’s shanty still standing. Open sewers run nearby and it had no running water. [mmm, that's some good poverty porn. You guys might wanna leave me alone for a few minutes. *fap fap fap* -Ed.]
“The shanties are all touching a drain that has to be cleaned before the advent of the monsoons,” said U.D. Mistry, the local official in charge of the demolition drive.
Just a few months ago, the filmmakers and the Indian government were literally fighting over who’d get to buy this kid a house and paying rickshaws to take him to school (I’m not making this up). And now this. Why, it’s almost as if Hollywood people and government of India were just full of empty promises. Danny Boyle isn’t going to hear the end of this until he adopts the kid. Oooh, I smell reality show! Wait, false alarm, it’s just the sewer.
