Officials in Mumbai say that Ismail's family house was demolished as part of a pre-monsoon season clean up effort, and that his family had no legitimate claim to the land. The family received no prior notice, and were awoken by the bulldozers, having only minutes to grab belongings and flee the premises.

Officials claim that those who lost homes to the demolitions will be relocated to government housing, though those places are usually far from the city center, making commuting to jobs extremely difficult. There is, of course, the trusts and housing that the producers of the movie set up for the kids, but it looks as though the positive effects of those efforts have yet to materialize.

So where things stand now: One of the child stars of a movie that won eight Academy Awards and has grossed over $300 million in ticket sales just had his shanty house razed by the government and his mother is forced to sit outside with a small plastic bag of her belongings saying "I don't know what I am going to do."

Yeah, I don't think anyone does.

[AP]

After they were sent on a whirlwind tour of Disneyland and Universal Studios on Oscar weekend, the real-life Mumbai slum kids, who, really, are the movie (sorry Dev and Freida), faced the prospect of returning to their homes, situated near open sewers or consisting of one rotten mattress shared by the whole family. But now Danny Boyle, the film's director, along with one of the producers, has announced that the kids and their families will be moved into apartments worth about £20,000 (that's seven hundred billion American dollars). Then the government said "fuck it, let's give 'em houses" because they're national heroes and, careful, white people are looking—some say it's a political maneuver done in a lead-up to elections, but whatever. The kids will also have trusts set up in their names and be provided with guaranteed rickshaw transportation (seriously) between home and school. The hope being, of course, that they'll get a proper education.

So, yeah, good. I guess. It reminds us of those poor kids in The Kite Runner—that film about hope and dreams and Afghanistan and kites. They were plucked from obscurity in Kabul, then threatened with death after the film was released, partly because one of their characters was raped in the film. Then Paramount swooped in and saved the day, ferrying the children to a new life in Dubai, estranging them from their parents. There was a small outcry—they rarely get very loud when they're about poor brown Muslims—and people demanded that since Paramount had exploited them in pursuit of really authenticity, they owed it to the children to support them in whatever way they required. That was two years ago, though, and now we don't really hear anything about those lost people.

And now it looks as though the Slumdog kids are getting the same worried, hand-wringing treatment. An NGO worth about £500,000 is being set up by the producers and distributors of the film to help all the children of Mumbai's disastrous slums. And I guess there really isn't any other answer here, other than that in the end, Danny Boyle and the rest will go home, and will have to hang up their hopes for these kids on some out-of-the-way hook. So they can keep on with their lives. Because what else can you do. As my boss said, at least Boyle and company didn't blind the kids before putting them to work. No, they left them young and cute and opened a strange side door to a new, tenuous future.

Image of Rubina Ali from AP

First Suleman was ditched by her Los Angeles publicists, who had received threatening calls and letters.

Now Ambassador, a Christian talent agency in Tennessee, is making sure everyone knows it is not handling Suleman. Ambassador's president told Access Hollywood the company just lent the recent mother of octuplets some advice:

One week ago, a friend of our agency requested Ambassador's help to advise on the protection and licensing of the Suleman family photographs to safeguard the security of the children. While providing this pro bono advice, we explored whether agency representation would best serve the interests of this family.

Wow. If a pro-life agency isn't going to represent Suleman, in the middle of an economic collapse no less, then who will? Perhaps a desperate agency hungry to prove its mettle on a hugely challenging client.

If Suleman was believed to be worth much money, in terms of book and reality show deals, she'd probably have better luck. Even ruthless dictators like Moammar Qadaffi have been able to find flacks when they can pay. Prospective reps are either betting against her or hitting a wall during pay negotiations.

Anyway, this will mark TLC's second foray into the overgrown-clan genre. Jon and Kate Plus 8, another show about two parents with way too many babes, has proved successful for the network - even stirring up some controversy from those who believe "raising children is not theater." But why do audiences tune in to see screaming parents and whining tots?

It's the "how the fuck do they do it — and why?" quotient. I mean, these people have got to be straight-up clinically insane, right? How do they pay for all of the spit-up rags and dollies and bottles? How do the husband and wife not kill each other after bickering constantly? (Lots of make-up sex, perhaps?) Why do they want so many kids - are they weird and religious or just super charitable and giving? And most importantly: how the hell did that woman pop so many out? Oy.

Be the answers what they may, the best part about watching these shows has to be that when those sweet 30 minutes are up, you've got to feel so much better about your own spoiled brats. For your sake, we hope there are only a few of them.

• 17 Kids and Counting [TLC]

1. Shave your leading men. We've seen this before on offending posters, most recently when My Best Friend's Girl co-star Dane Cook compared his own mug to "Britney Spears's vagina." But that's Dane Cook, and this is Robert De Niro, and the best Bobby can hope for is maybe "bus driver at 5 o'clock." It's conspicuous and really kind of repellent.

2. Four producers, no more. And we don't care how you do it. It's ultimately Avi Lerner's baby to drop on its head, so there's one. The others — co-producers, executive producers, and six full-blown "producer" producers — can fight it out among themselves under Lerner's snowy-haired, bloodthirsty gaze until the credits look less like a 5K-cancer-walk pledge form.

3. Wake up Al Pacino. At least for Pacino's previous B-cop-snoozer 88 Minutes, his promotional likeness was goateed and actively in search of something, even if it was the nearest exit. This is a little more fraught — sort of a vortex of old-man eye-glaze and paycheck hypnosis from which our hero desperately needs rescuing. But how? Well...

4. Avnet/Pacino Redux. One collaboration this year — this lifetime, really — was enough, guys, seriously. Thanks.

5. It's been done. The movie and the poster. Like, a million times better, too, even despite Val Kilmer:

• 'Righteous Kill' Poster [OutNow]