Birthday things today. Took Will to karate, which he always enjoys, regardless of what he gets up to, then managed to get away about an hour after that. The lateness didn’t help timing for the day, and there was at least one totally unnecessary argument (which is always terrible and stupid in retrospect), but Sallie and I found some lunch at Eastwood after dropping the kids off at my parents, then we decided to go to the movies (note to self, just eat at one of the places near the movies at Macquarie next time we do this!)
Watched Slumdog Millionaire, and it was the first Best Picture Oscar winner I’d seen at the movies in a couple of years. A very impressive movie, with everything you could possibly imagine — full of love and fear and humour and adventure and horror and violence and culture and history and a hundred other things. Well acted, well written and well made.
I had noticed some of those “contrary” negative reviews out there, spouting on about how bad the original book was, but it brings up the odd idea that sometimes the best book-movie adaptations come from quite average books. Two excellent examples of that are Jaws and the Godfather, both average to poor books (Jaws moreso), but brilliant movies. Haven’t read the Slumdog book of course, so I don’t reall know, but it’s an interesting idea.