http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/22/oscar.night/index.html
Slumdog Millionaire," the little film about a poverty-raised teaboy who goes on a game show as a way to find his lost love, won best picture Sunday night, earning a total of eight Oscars at the 81st annual Academy Awards.
"Millionaire's" other honors included best director (Danny Boyle), best adapted screenplay (Simon Beaufoy), score (A.R. Rahman), song ("Jai Ho," co-written by Rahman), cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle), sound mixing and film editing. List of winners, nominees
Boyle literally jumped up and down as he accepted his award, saying that if he ever won he'd bounce like Tigger from "Winnie-the-Pooh."
Rahman was equally appreciative as he accepted one of his Oscars.
"All my life I've had a choice between hate and love, and I chose love, and now I'm here," said Rahman.
Wow !!! Jai Ho!!!
Congrats to A.R.Rahman Sir!!! for winning 2 Oscars.
Proud of you Sir!
Just saw AR perform Latika theme and Jai Ho in the Jay Leno show.
Was waiting for hour long to see a 5 mins performance by AR. Jai Ho has been cut short with main lyrics part cut off.
The set was interesting with colorful fabrics everywhere. Even on AR's keyboard :-)
AR didn't have chance to talk, his music spoke for him as always.
I kept hearing his music and really liking it ... there was a fresh sound and a fresh approach ... and a completely different way of looking at film music," said Rahman's friend, the German-born film composer Hans Zimmer. "Like any good artist, A.R. is not a traditionalist, he's a revolutionary. He uses all the revolutionary things that come from all over the world in his stuff ... hip-hop beats, electronics .... and there's an incredible inquisitiveness and playfulness in his music ... .
"Plus he writes a bloody good tune," said Zimmer, an Oscar-winner for his score to "The Lion King." "He's got the most perfect love theme ("Latika's Theme") in 'Slumdog Millionaire' which I am incredibly envious of in a loving way."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/18/arts/NA-FEA-US-Oscar-Rahman.php"
Press Trust of India Sunday, February 15, 2009, (New York)
The US military, stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, will recruit about 550 temporary immigrants, including those from India who know Hindi and Tamil, offering them a golden chance to become US citizens in as little as six months.
The pilot programme, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, The New York Times reported quoting military officials familiar with the plan.
The Army's one-year pilot programme will begin in New York City to recruit about 550 temporary immigrants who speak one or more of 35 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo (a tongue spoken in Nigeria), Kurdish, Nepalese, Pashto, Russian and Tamil. Spanish speakers are not eligible. It will also include about 300 medical professionals to be recruited nationwide. Recruiting will start after Department of Homeland Security officials update an immigration rule in coming days.
Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist.
Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.
A $787 billion economic recovery package became law on Tuesday with the simple stroke of Obama's pen. Knowing whether it's working? Not so easy.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer
President Obama on Tuesday signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law.
But he's far from being able to declare "mission accomplished."
"Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles," Obama said before signing the bill at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. "But it does mark the beginning of the end - the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won't be able to pay next month's bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation."
Indeed, even though debate over the legislation was fraught with partisan fighting and what some characterize as strategic missteps by the nascent administration, getting the law passed was the easy part.
Far more difficult will be gauging whether the legislation's trademark initiatives - which include improving physical infrastructure, investing in energy projects and providing financial relief for families by way of tax cuts and increased government benefits -- are really doing the trick.
The first step is to stem the recession in the near term. In the longer term it will be to put the economy on a path to sustained growth and greater efficiencies in energy production, health care and other areas.
So how will we know if it's working? What will be the signs? The president and economists say the biggest marker will be an improvement in the jobs picture.
"That's bottom-line number one, because if people are working, then they've got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments," Obama said last week before the bill's passage. "Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence, and they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers. So step number one, job creation."
The official benchmark estimates from the White House: 3.5 million jobs will be created or saved over the next two years, and over 90% of them will be in the private sector. (See the White House's state-by-state estimates of how many jobs could be created or saved in the map at right.)
But measuring the numbers of jobs saved as a result of the economic recovery package promises to be an elusive task.
"It will be difficult to gauge the economic benefit of stimulus since we won't know ... how the economy would have performed without stimulus. Indeed I expect the economy to lose another 3 million jobs with stimulus but over 4 million without it," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, whose research was relied upon by lawmakers to make the case for the economic recovery package.
As for gauging how many jobs are created, economists say they will keep an eye on a number of measures.
Lakshman Achuthan, managing director the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said starting later this year he will look to what his group calls its Leading Employment Index as one gauge of stimulus effectiveness. The index is a composite of factors, including the number of initial jobless claims and hours in the average work week, as well as how many industries are adding jobs. As of January, the index was still falling, Achuthan said.
Another question Zandi said he will look at is to see whether job losses have begun to lessen by October or November.
"A key benchmark will be this fall. If stimulus is working as expected then monthly job losses should be closer to 250,000 per month, down from over 500,000 currently," Zandi said.
The ability to create or save jobs will depend in great part on business confidence. That's why, in addition to employment measures, Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research, will keep an eye on small business confidence measures such as those put out by the National Federation of Independent Business.
Another sign of whether the rescue is working: Discretionary spending for activities like casino gambling and dining out, Yamarone said.
"When consumers start to feel better about their personal situation and employment prospects, they pick up the pace of spending - that usually extends to the discretionary items as well," Yamarone said.
Ultimately, even if every indicator of success for stimulus was tangible and could be measured with flawless precision, it will still be hard to issue a final verdict on whether the package has worked because its success is dependent on the success of other recovery efforts, such as the program for stemming foreclosures that Obama is expected to lay out on Wednesday.
"Stimulus by itself will not work well," Zandi said. "A financial stability plan and a foreclosure mitigation plan must also be implemented."
Source : http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/17/news/economy/obama_stimulus_meas_success/index.htm?postversion=2009021713
I was watching the CNN Money Summit just a while ago and they say the current stimulus is just the down payment of the big money that needs to be pumped in to fill the big whole.
And even with the stimulus been signed by President Obama today, market went deep down today. Many people in the age of retirement has been put to dark with their pension savings washed away by this tsunami recession.
Its so scary...
Jai Ho to A.R.Rahman for winning BAFTA!
Proud to be your fan !!!
The count down is on. Keeping fingers crossed for the BAFTA on Feb 8, 2009 and the big one Oscar on Feb 22.
Jo Bi Ho, AR ko Jai Ho !!!
:-)
I read this article in vikatan.com (tamil) that tried to convince Ilayaraja fans on why he didn't get the recognition that AR Rahman gets these days, inspite of being a legendry composer. And also saw this question asked in AR Rahman fans group, "If classic composers were around today".
Well, let's take all the composers from Naushad, SD Burman, RD Burman in the North to S. Rajeswara Rao, KV Mahadevan, MSV, Ilayaraja in the south. We are sure that they were all great composers. No second thought on it. But how Rahman is different from all these? May be the era he is in... the exposure he got. May be yes, but that doesn't alone make the difference as many others are there in this technology surrounded world. Only Rahman could go to other side of the world. So let's leave alone the technology or the opportunity of the period Rahman is in.
We all know the composers mentioned above have done tons of compositions, all put together will be in thousands with Ilayaraja alone taking about 800+ film scores and 5000+ songs and still counting.
Let's not forget that Ilayaraja's song for Maniratnam's Thalapathy was in the shortlist of best songs of all time. And a few more songs of AR Rahman was in the list. Notice that even then AR takes a slight lead there with more songs than others mentioned, taking it to the "global audience". That is the key, how many of these thousands of compositions were able to turn the "global audience" towards our own composers?
Let's leave alone the global arena, composers in the north have given some outstanding unforgettable compositions, but it was limited to the region. It couldn't go further. And the same case with composers from the south. They had given some of the best compositions ever, but were limited to the region. They couldn't go beyond their region and succeed.
Now, let's turn back to Rahman and see what he did that they couldn't do. He was able to deliver music that blended with people right from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. He was able to deliver what a punjabi would expect and also something what a malayali would enjoy. He was able to cross region "just like that", that was his first triumph and he did that in his debut itself. No one else has achieved this, that Rahman did.
Second, his genre is very broad, he could deliver any genre from Indian classicals - Hindustani, Carnatic - Qawwali to Bhangra - Western Classical - Pop, Jazz, Rock. Oh yes, he started off his career with the Reggae. That is one of his strengths. He was able to fuse them and do it in style.
Third, When Time magazine did this shortlisting for Best Soundtrack of All time, do you think they'd have missed these legendry composers' scores from the largest film industry in the world? No way. They'd have considered the above listed composers if i'm not wrong. Why none of the most experienced composers' score couldn't go to the top 10 list when a 26 yrs old young man's composition could make it to the top of the world?
And that's where AR Rahman is different and stands unique from all these composers. He impressed Andrew Lloyd Webber with his Chaiyya Chaiyya, with the blend of the rhythm and melody it carried and earn the offer to compose for Bombay Dreams. And he was able to compose for Chinese film, at the other end, he was able to do a period western british style movie and so on.
When it comes to Slumdog Millionaire, he did his work as usual, but he had the cushion of the carrier that show cased his work to the western audience and as they say "rest is history" yet again. See the kind of response he got from the reviews, click the below amazon.com link to read the reviews of the fans and these are not the critics'. Critics' reviews are a bunch lot that he has won. And so, no surprise that he won the Golden Globe or 3 nominations at the Oscars.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B001LX0JK6/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_next_2?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=2Now you'd agree that AR Rahman is unique that India has ever produced and perhaps the world would see in its history.
