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]

The father of Rubina (age 9) reportedly tried to sell her for $300,000 to an undercover reporter, because his family didn't make any cash from the film:

[The father] reportedly raised an asking price of £50,000 for Rubina to £200,000 at a later meeting.

Justifying the increase, his brother Mohiuddin was quoted as saying: "The child is special now. This is not an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child."

Jesus, that is truly horrible. Add in the tidal wave of poverty porn the movie started, and Slumdog is actually a net loss for the human race! Unless you're a News Corp. shareholder: Rubina Ali has now served Fox Searchlight in the film, and also Murdoch-owned News of the World for the original child sale story, and Murdoch's Times UK and New York Post for follow-ups. Good work!

Perhaps the only thing worse than a terribly impoverished dad trying to sell his own daughter is this:

[The British filmmakers behind Slumdog] said that they decided not to shower the child actors from Mumbai's shantytowns with cash for fear of having "a transformative impact on their lives".

Again: absolutely nothing good came out of this feel-good movie, unless you're Rupert Murdoch.
[Times UK]

I mean, what else could explain the unending tumble of horribly sad tales of poverty and greed, or the glut of photos on the wires of the child actors standing in garbage or sleeping on rotten beds?

In the days since the film won a raft of Oscars and generated smiley goodwill across Hollywood, there's been a surge of followup stories, like the ones about the understandably tired young boy being publicly beaten by his father for being tired. Or photos of the the girl who played youngest Latika bestride some wooden planks near her home, standing over trash and beside an open sewer. Or reports that the children are miserable at school back home, that it's been a return to terrifying drudgery after a brief, swoony stint as film royalty. And it's all lapped up, for the same reason why the movie soared when the little ones were covered in shit or getting blinded, but kind of sagged when they were grown-up and seemingly well-fed and employed. The horror is fascinating, oddly thrilling. Reflexively relieving. Exposing ourselves to the misery inoculates us against our general, day-to-day apathy. Spend a few seconds scanning a blog post and feeling bad for distant strangers, and your job is done.

Yes we should care about, and be exposed to, the plight of these kids—real Bombabies plucked from the airport slums for true cinematic veracity. Even more urgently, of course "We" should keep a keen eye out to make sure that these youngsters (and their families) are not exploited, that they enjoy a fair portion of the movie's financial successes, etc. The group was recently given houses and money trusts, which is the sad kind of good that is good because they didn't have "real" houses or trusts before, and sad because there's a certain reckless abandon in suddenly giving someone who has less than nothing a whole lotta something. It's a bit dangerous, and needs to be done carefully. Like people suffering from extreme hunger or thirst, the flashy new Having ought to be introduced delicately, lest the whole thing topple over onto itself.

And 'delicate' is not exactly how I would describe this new, splashy pity. The hand-wringing infotainment articles and Sally Struthersy "bugs on their mouths!" photos do bring attention to an important crisis, for sure. (Of course there's the knee-jerk, lazy, leftie cynic reaction: "Um, duhh. It took a silly movie to make you aware of the fact that there are poors in India? How sheltered can you be?"—a sentiment that does have an important (albeit annoying) grain of truth to it, but is not really the issue at hand). But they also tend to incite a reaction of "Won't somebody do something!!!" (from myself included) without any real encouragement for follow-through, except to demand slightly undefinable things from movie makers. Because, I guess, the movie industry is, for all of its excesses, as faraway a place as the Mumbai slums. Those two distant bodies will help each other and we'll just sit back and watch the bow get tied.

And maybe it will! At least for this small set of children. Which, of course, if done right, is a good thing. But there's still the larger issues of us finding celebrity, and strange comfort, in misery. In deeming someone a special kind of sufferer. Are we creating a face for the entirety of the problem, thus making sure the proper channels are communicating, the right heads are turning? Or are we simply weaving a narrative in which we, all of us who saw and supported the movie and now read the horror stories with tingly regret, are singling out a unique few for rescue; for deliverance from a group of people with whom they no longer—they've now been in a movie that we liked, after all—belong?

It begins to seem like we're actually just fretting over characters from a movie. People we'd like to imagine safely satisfied, so we can keep on with our business, confident that there's been some vague and impossible happy ending. Which I guess is just how fairy tales work.

Image via AP

1) Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail — $16.5 million
Down a hearty 60% from last weekend, the film still held on against the 3D onslaught of crotchlight rays being shot out by the fertile, holly-scented loins of the brothers Jonas. This latest Madea iteration has stuffed a total $64.9 million into its hilariously oversized bra, becoming Perry's highest-grossing movie to date. Next week a bunch of spandex-clad superheroes with drinking problems ought to handily blue wang their way past the old lady.

2) Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience — $12.7 million
Though their marble-mouthed lady counterpart, Miley Cyrus, earned a cool $33 million outta the gate with her own 3D concert picture show, the floppy-topped young lads just couldn't deliver on the goods the same way. Perhaps dads were less willing to escort their daughters to this one? Perhaps little gay boys couldn't couch their desire to go in a "she's so hot" charade, so they decided to hole themselves up in their rooms for the weekend, furtively? The pic had the best per-screen average of any top 10 pic this weekend, but still there must be some explanation for this vague disappointment.

3) Slumdog Millionaire — $12.2 million
Buoyed by all its Oscars, the two-little-Indians-that-could movie chugs like an extremely crowded train toward the global $200 million mark. When that auspicious goal is reached, all the children will be given the opportunity to trade their new houses in for back-end deals on Boyle's next picture, Kalkotta Hope Dreamer.

4) Taken — $10 million
Liam Neeson continues to thunder-fist his way through Albanians' faces, and American cineplexes, as his actioner speeds past the $100-million mark. This is good news for similarly-brooding actor Gabriel Byrne, who can't wait for you to see his 2010 down-and-dirty thrill-ride, Aggressed Upon—about a former NSA agent who must rescue his teenage son, played by a whimpering Drake Bell, who's been kidnapped by evil Azerbaijani producers and forced to perform in a middling 3D concert.

8) Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li — $4.7 million
I really didn't think that anyone remembered Street Fighter, that glorious old videogame about brawny international dudes—Ryu! Guile! M. Bison! Blanca!—and one lady battling out in, well, the streets. But I guess they sorta do, as this film about that one lady pocketed a not-so-bad little sack of dollars over the too-short weekend. I hope this means a new trend. 'Cause I would totally go see a ToeJam & Earl or Streets of Rage movie.

For one thing, it's set in a strange land, with small children who run around covered in poo. Americans might be confused and stuff!

Not to worry!

The only feel-good movie of the year—or any year, really—that features (SPOILER ALERT) homeless children blinded with acid and forced to sing and hustle for money is doing quite well post Oscar-win.

Its Friday numbers were up 53% from last week, finishing third behind such worthy opponents as The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, and Tyler Perry's Madea Goes To Jail.

Other Oscar flicks experienced an uptick, as well, including the previously unmarketable The Reader, which, in recent ads (which we're trying desperately to find for you) is being pitched as a sex-filled courtroom drama, filled with intrigue and mystery, starring "Academy Award Winner Kate Winslet!"—and is missing all of those foreboding sad piano tones found in the original trailer, and downplays that whole Nazi thing. Well, at least they figured out how to sell tickets.

Milk and The Wrestler also did well at the B.O. post Oscars-even though Mickey Rourke was a loser. The former's gross went up a whopping 37.5%-bringing the total take to $28.8 million. Guess we are commie homo-loving sons of guns, after all.

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

The red-carpet interviewer tried to get everyone to shout their foreign and strange and difficult long names at the same time, a futile effort. "That didn't go well," he said. Indeed! Nor did the next thing.

But then Seacrest was quiet for a little while and let the kids talk, to adorable effect, thus rescuing the moment. Clip above.

(NB to Seacrest: Next time an Indian film is widely favored to win Best Picture, maybe brush up on those tricky South Asian pronunciations.)

But you've really got to want to believe it — that The Wrap had a correspondent on the street soliciting folks' awards-season insights, and that the Oscar culture that so debilitates us in Hollywood actually has acquired this much traction in innocent foreign lands:

Kanika Raj, student
: "Slumdog has a good chance of winning the Best Picture Oscar, only because the entire world is going gaga over it. That's about it. It's not an amazing film, but people have been seduced by this so-called exotic Indian poverty. Just the hype could pitch the film ahead. Benjamin Button is the only other nominated film that I have seen." [...]

Deepanjali Singh, student: "Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road would be the hot Oscar favorites. Slumdog was a nice movie, but not Oscar-worthy. There's nothing about Slumdog that you can go 'ooh' and 'aah' about, except for the music. The transformation of the slum boy was so jarring."

Kishenchand R Dubey, chauffeur "Oscar Foscar! I don't know the other films at all, and I'm not interested in any awards. I saw Slumdog Crorepati in Hindi, and imagined myself in the hot seat winning all that big money. Alas, such stories happen only on screen."

Maybe so. Either way, we're really, really sorry about that whole Revolutionary Road export. That won't happen on Obama's watch.

• Indians Talk Oscar and 'Slumdog' [The Wrap]

Not that there was much countermanding going on Thursday night, when Colbert's epic game of word association still implicated Stewart's favorite Slumdog Millionaire as this year's Oscar winner. But the afterthought of opening a window for Button — which "did seem pretty important," Colbert dismissively notes — no doubt relieved some of the pressure coming down from the top. Expect Carlos Mencia to finish the job by Tuesday's voting deadline, relocating Slumdog's Child-ExploitationGate controversy to East L.A. in a lukewarm, last-ditch bit of satirical sabotage.

• 'The Colbert Report' [Comedy Central]

• "Slumdog Millionaire," Coming Soon From Warner Independent Pictures! [The Lost Boy]

Stone's assignment seemed simple enough: Present the evening's Best Picture award, naturally destined for Slumdog. But with neither a date nor a pioneering scientific theory to occupy her pre-show interview with the BBC, she instinctively courted a starstruck Patel's assistance. What happened next is open to interpretation, though British gossips report that the chaste Q&A belies the racier courtship that followed:

Stone, 50, reportedly dated 24-year-old Chase Dreyfus last year before their relationship cooled. And Stone proved she is keen on another young man - after the Basic Instinct star flirted with newcomer Patel, 18, on the red carpet at the prestigious film event.

He says, "Sharon's great, she's been flirting with me all night. She was chasing me around earlier, slapping me. Sharon Stone! Can you believe it?"

Dev. Buddy. Seriously. You're kidding, right?

• Sharon Stone slaps Dev Patel [BBC]

• Stone Sets Sights On 'Slumdog' Star Patel
  [WENN]

Instead, Fox Searchlight's critical/commercial darling hoarded seven more trophies, including that for Best Picture and honors for director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and composer A.R. Rahman. All continue to be favored for Oscar night, as does Kate Winslet, who won Best Actress for The Reader. Mickey Rourke broke further away from Sean Penn, winning for The Wrestler and continuing his Sort-Of-Humble Comeback Tour '08-'09 by thanking director Darren Aronofsky for casting him despite "fucking up my career for 15 years."

The evening continued (mostly) predictably elsewhere as well: Benjamin Button went 3-for-11, winning only for production design, make-up and visual effects. Heath Ledger, Penelope Cruz and WALL-E each topped their respective categories, while In Bruges's unlikely awards-season resurgence continued with a Best Original Screenplay prize for Martin McDonagh. He'll again face off against Milk's Dustin Lance Black — without the European home-field advantage — at the Oscars. Enjoy that rare competitive category; the rest, as they say, is written.

• Unstoppable 'Slumdog' wins at BAFTA Awards [LAT]

Not that "Obama message echoes at Oscar time," a think-piece published this morning, offers the cramp-inducing logical stretch of EW's trailblazing "How Obama Helps Batman" from last November. But it does exhaustively unpack pretty much every other zeitgeist-y scenario you probably hadn't thought of, from the president's message of hope not-so-coincidentally resonating throughout Milk, or the angst of the post-Bush era rewarding the totemic power critique that is Frost/Nixon.

The hell with the also-rans, though. To paraphrase a common query accompanying so many contemporary world affairs: Is it good for the Slumdog? Well, sort of; that film's front-runner status evidently owes more to Rocky's feel-good example 32 years ago than to anything Obama has done since his election. Which, of course, only reaffirms the likelihood that three decades from now, we'll all wonder what the Academy was thinking when it could have rewarded something actually, like, good.

Like any of it matters anyway — everybody knows that Jon Stewart sets the Oscar agenda these days.

• Obama message echoes at Oscar time [Variety]

Instead, Stewart went forward with a few good-natured jibes at his corporate cousin's $150 million Oscar behemoth The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button — if you can call two narcolepsy jokes and extended plot mockery "good-natured." Worse yet, it came while introducing Slumdog's Dev Patel, who was welcomed shortly afterward as the equivalent of Oscar 2009's homecoming king. Worse yet, Stewart's smirking laughter at his own jokes led both his live and viewing audiences to believe they are actually fresher, funnier and/or more influential than they actually are.

So! That does it, right? 0-for-13? Watch your nuts, Jon; Brad Grey just stepped out for lunch. [The Daily Show via LAT]

The man behind Slumdog Millionaire won Best Director at the weekend ceremony, which didn't even have Sean Young to drunkenly mix up the proceedings. Instead, it was all class and dignity, as per Boyle's usual, thanking the defunct Warner Independent for offloading his Indian fantasia to Fox Searchlight and intoning humbly to up-and-comers: "If I can get here, so can you. Dream kind, and dream hard." That was little consolation to David Fincher, whose polished and practiced Rimjob Address remained sequestered in his tux for the next to last time; he and fellow nominees Ron Howard and Gus Van Sant will, in all likelihood, watch Boyle pick up a directing Oscar three weeks from now.

In slightly less foregone conclusions, Ari Folman won the Best Foreign-Language Film prize for his animated doc Waltz With Bashir, while Paul Feig (The Office) and Dan Attias (The Wire received the respective awards for TV comedy and drama directing. Jay Roach won the TV movie prize for Recount.

But... sigh. Boyle. Again. Comments and suggestions for enlivening Oscar-night viewing are welcome below; we're stumped for now.

• Danny Boyle nabs DGA feature award [Variety]

Fox Searchlight and the makers of Slumdog Millionaire ended a rough week on just the upnote they needed: After days of "unwarranted media attention" investigating its young cast's unusual compensation structure, the AP offered a more reassuring update from the parents of 7-year-old Rubina Ali Qureshi, who reportedly made the equivalent of $700 for 30 days' work but is the beneficiary of free education and a trust fund that'll cash out at age 18. "Whatever a parent could have done, they have done much more than that," said father Rafiq; mother Munni added that she "felt very happy that my daughter had become a star."

And Rubina herself, whose safety Fox reps told us was compromised as recently as Wednesday? Expect her in Searchlight's for-your-consideration ads by next week: "I would like to study and also pursue a career in the films," she told the AP. "Our movie should definitely get an award (at the Oscars) because it's such a nice movie." A born campaigner. Beat that, Focus.

• Child star, parents happy to be part of `Slumdog' [LAT]

· Speaking of orphans, Variety printed a photo of a chocolate-dipped one today in reporting the Slumdog controversy—three days after "mudslinging...bloggers" already broke the story. Keep the poop-dipped flame alive, guys. [Variety]
· A heavily in-demand Emily Blunt may have to pull out of Iron Man 2—in which she was to play Black Widow—to honor a Fox option that would require her to star in Gulliver's Travels. Hmm...being a busty Soviet superspy or a Lilliputian love interest to a colossal Jack Black. It's like our fantasy dilemma! Don't make us choose! [Variety]
· DreamWorks is giving Shrek's Puss in Boots his own spinoff movie, in which that gag where he gets whatever he wants by gripping his hat and turning himself into a giant-eyed Keane painting will be employed numerous times. [THR]
· Comedy-crazy ABC greenlit Lauren Graham pilot Let It Go, about "a self-help guru who...fails to follow her own advice when her perfect boyfriend dumps her." [THR]

As noted last night by Anne Thompson, Focus waited to enter Milk in the wide-release scrum where Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon battled last week. The strategy accomplished more than just simple separation; it allowed the distributor to pocket the money it would have dumped on garden-variety awards-season ads and spend more aggressively tomorrow, calling attention to eight actual Oscar nods.

On one hand, it's not like Focus had much choice — Milk only had one Golden Globe nomination to pimp (a loss, at that). On the other, it's still a savvy economization of punches in the week when ballots were sent out, and in any case it has Thompson (and now us) surmising a scenario in which "Slumdog and its main rival, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, split the vote and Milk takes the best picture win."

It's not out of the question; if anyone knows about peaking too soon, it's Focus, still stinging along with the rest of us three years after Brokeback Mountain. We don't know when or even if Button will peak at all, but Slumdog is having a miserable time holding on to "darling" status while press on three continents chatter on about Child-ExploitationGate. We'll leave the sociocultural debate to the experts, but we were way in front of the raging Oscar-cultural debate as to which Slumdog nemesis might have pushed the story to coincide with the ballot-mailing. And don't look at Harvey, folks; he's just happy to be here.

• Oscar Watch: Is Milk Coming Up on the Outside? [Thompson on Hollywood]

A Fox rep sends word to Defamer that this week's coverage of young Slumdog Millionaire stars Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail's questionable compensation scale has thrust the children and their families into grave danger. "Due to the exposure and potential jeopardy created by the unwarranted press attention and violation of the privacy of the children and their families, the filmmakers are arranging for flats for Azhar and Rubina, and their families, that will be paid directly by the filmmakers," we're told. This is in addition to supporting the kids' education and trust funds noted in our initial BacklashWatch report on Tuesday, and reiterated today by the same rep.

While we sincerely empathize on one hand, we're tabulating numbers on the other: $85 million (and counting) worldwide gross. Ten Oscar nominations. Four Golden Globes. One huge SAG Awards honor recognizing the film's ensemble — slum kids included. We're not here to broker settlements, but it seems clear enough that Slumdog's social implications require a little more finessing under the circumstances than those of rolling out Little Miss Sunshine's yellow bus or Diablo Cody's back story for impressionable Oscar blue-hairs. Try as you might, Searchlight, you can't have "unwarranted press attention" both ways.

Speaking of which, some persistent Indian protesters will get a police investigation into whether or not the term "slumdog" — coined by Millionaire screenwriter Simon Beaufoy — is in fact an offensive reference to Mumbai's slum-dwellers. Director Danny Boyle and Co. received the word yesterday; the worst-case scenario would require retitling the film in India without the word "dog." Good luck with that.

• Protests at Indian cinemas over 'Slumdog Millionaire' [Guardian]

The Telegraph today noted complaints by the parents of Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, two of the kids cast straight from the slums into Danny Boyle's game-show/romance fantasia. Happy as they are for Slumdog's success in the States, they're still wondering if their children got precisely what they're worth for carrying over a third of the presumptive Best Picture winner: according to the parents, roughly $700 for Ali and $2,400 for Ismail (for 30 days' work each), who play the younger versions of the film's characters Latika and Salim, respectively.

That's "less than many Indian domestic servants," reports the Telegraph, and in any case, Ismail's father has already spent the cash on TB medicine. Boyle has mentioned paying for the kids' educations and establishing a trust fund for each, and both the filmmaker and Fox Searchlight issued statements saying they were sensitive to criticism it had exploited either youngster; the studio even confirmed it would revisit their compensation. What's another $10,000 in the Oscar campaign, right? Especially coming just three days after another report cited critics of Slumdog's "stereotypical depiction" of Mumbai:

"It's a white man's imagined India," Shyamal Sengupta, a film professor at the Whistling Woods International institute in Mumbai, told the [LAT]. "It's not quite snake charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour." [...]

"These ideas, that there are still moments of joy in the slum, appeal to Western critics," said Aseem Chhabra, an Asia Foundation associate fellow and culture critic.

It would be an ugly claim even without precedent, but one of your editors last year ran into a similar controversy afflicting the Best Documentary Short nominee Salim Baba, which tracked a Calcutta man who made a living showing movies to slum kids on a 100-year-old Lumiere projector. Great film, went to 70 festivals, audience favorite, and for whatever reason, it hit a wall after its subject went to the press, accusing the filmmakers of the same bad faith.

The producer said the subject soon retracted the charge, but who knows? It didn't alter the film's chemistry, but for a doc short financed via credit cards, without a studio behind it, voted on by a small branch of the Academy, it very well may have upset the Oscar balance. Slumdog's scenario is magnified in proportion to its stakes, and maybe the parents are just greedy. (And even granting that, can you blame them?) But if an unscrupulous opponent actually wanted to stir the open sewers near the young stars' Mumbai hovels, the smell probably wouldn't go away by the time Oscar polls close Feb. 17.

In other words: You've come this far, Harvey. Do your worst.

• Slumdog child stars miss out on the movie millions [Telegraph]

• Indians don't feel good about 'Slumdog Millionaire' [LAT]