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Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Director Danny Boyle admits Slumdog Millionaire 'would never be made today' unless Indian filmmakers were at the helm
Director Danny Boyle has admitted that Slumdog Millionaire 'would never be made today' unless Indian filmmakers were at the helm. The producer, 68, reflected on the 2008 movie which he directed as he said him and the team in Mumbai who shot the scenes were 'outsiders'. The film was a loose adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author Vikas Swarup and followed the story of teenager Jamal (Dev Patel) from the slums of Mumbai. He becomes a contestant on the show 'Kaun Banega Crorepati?' and when interrogated under suspicion of cheating, he revisits his past, revealing how he had all the answers. Danny told The Guardian: 'Yeah, we wouldn't be able to make that now. And that's how it should be. 'It's time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we've left on the world.' 'We made the decision that only a handful of us would go to Mumbai. We'd work with a big Indian crew and try to make a film within the culture. But you're still an outsider. It's still a flawed method. 'I'm proud of the film, but you wouldn't even contemplate doing something like that today. It wouldn't even get financed. Even if I was involved, I'd be looking for a young Indian film-maker to shoot it.' The moviemaker has recently stepped back into the director's chair to helm the new horror 28 Years Later - written by Alex Garland - 23 years after the pair's first film 28 Days Later hit cinemas. He recently admitted it was a 'nightmare' filming naked zombies for new horror movie. Danny has revealed they needed to take extra care not to have 'naked' actors on the set because they had strict rules in place to protect the film's child star Alfie Williams. Speaking to PEOPLE, Danny explained: 'I mean, if you're recently infected [with the zombie virus], you'd have some clothes, but if you've been infected for a long time, the clothes would just disintegrate with the way that you behave. 'We never knew that [about rules governing nudity on set when there's a child present] going in, it was a nightmare.' Danny went on to explain the work-around they came up with, adding: 'Interestingly, because there was a 12-year-old boy on set, you're not allowed for anybody to be naked, not really naked, so they look naked, but it's all prosthetics ... 'So it's like: 'Oh my God,' so we had to make everybody prosthetic genitals'.' Danny revealed he was keen to push boundaries with the elements of nudity and gore in the film and he's glad studio bosses were supportive of his plans. He told Variety: 'I think one of the wonderful things about horror is that you're expected to maximize the impact of your story. Everybody wants to do that with a drama, with the romance, whatever. 'But with horror, it's obviously gonna be brutal, some of it. What we loved was setting it against an innocence that's represented by the various children in it, and also the landscape, the beauty of the landscape, the nature. 'Having those two forces stretches your story as far as you can go, if you maximize them. That was our principle and the studio was supportive of that, of course they were.' On Thursday critics weighed in on the new zombie horror movie. A follow-up to the 'great' 2002 film 28 Days Later, Boyle and Garland assembled a star-studded cast including Harry Potter star Ralph Fiennes, 62, and fellow Brit Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 35, for their latest endeavor. Two decades on from the original which saw a deadly virus plague London, the new movie finds a group of survivors living on the secluded island of Lindisfarne. Boyle and Garland's new project has received a heap of positive reviews from critics following early screenings. Rotten Tomatoes for instance have handed the movie an impressive 94 percent critic approval rating after rounding up the thoughts of more than 91 film reviewers. The Daily Mail's Brian Viner was incredibly impressed after watching the series' latest gory installment, dubbing the movie the 'best post-apocalyptic horror-thriller film I have ever watched'. Brian wrote: 'With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic survivalist horror-thriller film I have ever seen. Which sounds like limited praise, yet it's a much more crowded field than you might think.' Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also handed 28 Years Later a rave review, with the critic scoring the 'terrifying' horror movie five stars out of five. 'Garland employs a strain of peculiarly British pulp humour - very 2000 AD, very Warhammer 40,000 - to undercut the ambient dread,' Collin wrote. 'And flashes of Arthurian fantasias and wartime newsreel footage (as well as a pointed double cameo for the now-felled Sycamore Gap tree_ serve as regularly nudges in the ribs as he and Boyle ty with the notion of a 21st century British national myth.' The film too received five stars from The Times critic Ed Potton, who hailed Jodie Comer's 'impressive as always' performance. The journalist wrote: 'Is this the most beautiful zombie film of them all? It's hard to think of another that combines such wonder and outlandishness with the regulation flesh-rending, brain-munching and vicious disembowelment.' The BBC 's Caryn James gave the highly-anticipated film four stars out of five as she dubbed Ralph Fiennes's performance 'scene-stealing'. '28 Years Later is part zombie-apocalypse horror, part medieval world building, part sentimental family story and - most effectively - part Heart of Darkness in its journey towards a madman in the woods,' she wrote. 'It glows with Boyle's visual flair, Garland's ambitious screenplay and a towering performance from Ralph Fiennes, whose character enters halfway through the film and unexpectedly becomes its fraught sole'. Empire also awarded 28 Years Later four stars out of five, with journalist Ben Travis writing: '28 Years Later is ferocious, fizzing with adrenaline. The mainland thrums with a pervasive sense of immediate danger; when the infected arrive (and, do they arrive), it is breathlessly tense.' Reviews in The Guardian and The Independent were slightly more critical however, with journalists scoring 28 Years Later with three stars. Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian: 'A little awkwardly, the film has to get us on to the mainland for some badass action sequences with real shooting weaponry - and then we have the two 'alpha' cameos that it would be unsporting to reveal, but which cause the film to shunt between deep sadness and a bizarre, implausible (though certainly startling) graphic-novel strangeness.' While The Independent 's Clarisse Loughley wrote: 'Even if 28 Years Later feels like being repeatedly bonked on the head by the metaphor hammer, Boyle's still a largely compelling filmmaker, and the film separates itself from the first instalment by offering something distinctly more sentimental and mythic than before.' 28 Years Later has become the best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025, with the film expected to gross around $30million in its first weekend. 28 YEARS LATER - THE REVIEWS The Daily Mail (FIVE STARS) Rating: With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic horror-thrill I have ever seen. The Times (FIVE STARS) Rating: Jodie Comer is impressive as always in the latest instalment of the post-apocalyptic series The Telegraph (FIVE STARS) Rating: This transfixingly nasty zombie horror sequel, starring Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, is Danny Boyle's best film in 15 years The Evening Standard (FIVE STARS) Rating: Jodie Comer, young Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes have a monsters' ball in this supercharged third outing for the 28 Days Later series BBC Culture (FOUR STARS) Rating: Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have reunited for a follow-up to their 2002 classic. It has visual flair, terrifying adversaries and scene-stealing performance from Ralph Fiennes. Empire (FOUR STARS) Rating: The sequel we needed is both the film you expect, and the one you don't. There's blood, but also real guts and brain and heart - visceral cinema soaked in viscera. The Guardian (THREE STARS) Rating: This tonally uncertain revival mixes folk horror and little-England satire as an island lad seeks help for his sick mum on the undead-infested mainland. The Independent (THREE STARS)
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
My Father and I: Writers on books and bonding
'Some of my most cherished memories are of the family trips we took together to Nainital, Nepal, Mussoorie, Pachmarhi, Jabalpur and other places.' These were not just holidays, but deeply anchoring experiences: 'Travelling with him and my mother, discovering new places, and just being together as a family gave me a deep sense of security and joy.' That sense lingers still: 'Even now, those memories evoke a warm nostalgia and a quiet smile.' Former diplomat and author Vikas Swarup with his father Vinod Swarup. (Source: Express Photo) As years pass, so too does the curiosity deepen about who our parents were before they became our parents. 'I often wonder what he was like as a young man, before life happened. We never really had that kind of conversation, and I wish we had.' But timing, always elusive: 'He turns 90 this year, but I doubt he would want to have that kind of conversation now!' He suggests two that resonate. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini — 'which captures the silences and complexities in father-son relationships.' And The Road by Cormac McCarthy — 'though bleak in tone, is a haunting meditation on the bond between a father and son.' (Vikas Swarup, former diplomat; author of Slumdog Millionaire, The Accidental Apprentice, Six Suspects; host of the podcast Diplomatic Dispatch) On a favorite memory: 'Let me show you some photographs, each one encrypted with voices and stories,' she writes. 'Old black and white photographs of my parents and me, held in place by neat cardboard corners in the stiff black pages of a vintage family album. My father, mother and me. In the active periphery of my childhood there were aunts and uncles and grandmother, each one a strong presence. But the nucleus of my world was the three of us.' She remembers a summer evening when she was three and a half, and seized by a sudden desire to become a 'Sahib'. 'Not a memsahib but a Sahib. Maybe inspired by a picture in some book my father read out to me… In the absence of a tail-coat I demanded my green winter frock-coat and in default of the fitted breeches I shrieked for my green woollen dungarees with the red embroidered squirrel on its chest-flap.' The trouble was — it was June. 'These were winter clothes, packed away with dried neem leaves and camphor balls in the heavy metal trunk, and the timing of my impassioned fantasy had fallen on a hot June evening!' Her mother tried to resist. 'My mother threatened me with a slap, several slaps and imminent hammering but I gritted my teeth and persisted.' Then came her father: 'That long-suffering man of imagination, came to my rescue and reasoned: 'The child is deeply involved in some creative make-believe. We must not shatter it. Take out the woollen clothes and dress her.'' 'So, hatted and booted, in thick woollen clothes, swaying a stick, a child walked down the Colonelgunj road… and into the triangular park! My Dad walked with me with a very straight face, fully co-operating with my inner life. We must have made a curious spectacle that hot June evening… I remember taking a turn or two round the park before the heat and oppression of my heavy woollen clothes put my fantasy to flight.' 'How can I ever retrieve my father in words? A lot of people who knew him used the word 'genius'… Musician, mathematician, physicist, linguist, philosopher, educationist. He was all these things… I am in no position to measure him. He was my father, playmate, refuge, counselor.' She remembers how he let her scrawl on walls, pile toys on his bed, sketch elephants, and hold captured flies in his palm before gently releasing them. 'His very first sentence, on seeing me a few minutes after I was born, was: 'This daughter is more to me than seven sons can be to their fathers. And I shall teach her seven languages.'' She reflects now: 'The one thing I wish I could tell my father (who passed away in 1990) is: Dad, it hasn't been an easy life for me but I discovered that I had hidden reserves of strength in me, thanks to the depth of security you provided me as a child.' 'Off-hand I can recall To Kill A Mockingbird.' (Neelum Saran Gour, author of 'Sikandar Chowk Park', 'Virtual Realities', and 'Messrs Dickens, Doyle and Wodehouse Pvt. Ltd.') 'As a child, I had a deep fascination for trains. I must have been three or four years old at the time. My father would take me to the Ghatsila railway station just to look at trains and listen to their piercing whistles. We used to go up on the foot overbridge and see trains passing beneath. When an engine honked loudly, I used to be so frightened I would grab my father's hand and hold it tightly.' The railway station then was still cloaked in colonial-era architecture — 'that sturdy structure of bricks and lime' — but to the young Sowvendra, 'this just added to my sense of wonder and awe, and my father was my companion in this adventure.' 'I come from a space where fathers are still figures of authority. Everything that fathers say are correct. We don't usually oppose them. So to think that I would have something to say to my father is quite unlikely.' And yet, he offers: 'Perhaps, only an apology for the disappointments I may have caused him and to tell him how much having him as my father has meant to me.' The Small-Town Sea by Anees Salim. 'This is a favourite of mine. I will recommend it to everyone but my father though.' (Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, author of The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, and Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire) 'My father and I have always loved furniture-gazing in vintage shops.' It began in childhood in Calcutta — 'in the auction houses in Park Street or Russell Street or in the dingy but incredible shops of Gopalnagar near New Alipore.' Their shared passion was less about purchasing and more about the romance of discovering: 'Our budgets seldom matched our vision. (Of course, for my father, the true joy was uncovering a jewel from a dump. A set of nested tables that turned out to be rosewood: the shopkeeper did not change the original price he'd quoted as a salaam to my father.)' Later, in Delhi, this father-daughter ritual continued. 'He and I have worn out the soles of our shoes in and around MG Road and Amar Colony. There was one memorable trip to the land of Punjabi Baroque, Keerti Nagar, though we didn't buy.' Their ultimate favourite? 'Sharma Farms in Chhatarpur.' But even when purchases were made, they weren't necessarily practical: 'Our desires have always exceeded the sizes of the homes we have to furnish at any given moment. And sometimes our purchases end up giving off a whiff of grandiosity which is perhaps a little comic.' Still, the act is rich with meaning. 'Baba and I have filled mansions without owning them — and had robust disagreements about the placement of pieces in said mansions (for instance, where would one place the gorgeous corner piece with the four giant flying cherubs, in the most fine-grained of mahogany?).' 'It is glorious. It is mad. It is a regular weekday afternoon jaunt. We are pros after all; we won't go to any of these places on the weekend, when people who want to buy furniture (not dreams) come.' 'My husband hopes that our daughter will do the same with him in Defence Expo one (Devapriya Roy, author of Indira; The Vague Woman's Handbook; Friends from College, and The Heat and Dust Project) 'My father, Pran Chopra — eminent journalist, super intelligent mind.' For much of her life, he remained emotionally reserved, and their relationship, tinged with distance. 'He was always reserved about his emotions and I was a bit formal with him.' But in the twilight of his life, a profound reversal occurred, not just in memory, but in relationship. 'Towards his last days, as that intellect wore away with age related dementia, he began to think of me as his mother and talked of his childhood, his love of me, the comfort I gave him.' In that final unraveling of mind, there was a gift of connection. 'He passed away in my arms, his head in my lap.' 'Oh dad, I loved you so. I hope you knew the comfort that you gave me.' (Paro Anand, author of Like Smoke, Nomad's Land, Being Gandhi, and I'm Not Butter Chicken; recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puruskar) 'My father passed, unexpectedly, when I was barely ten.' What remained was the ache of absence, softened only by fragments of memory: 'He was a very good humored man and my parents were very much in love. So his death tore us up. I can still feel the void.' The grief was early and searing, leaving her trying to hold on to something real. 'I remember trying to keep my eyes fixed on his feet throughout the time his body was kept in our house before the cremation, hoping that the sight would be etched in my mind forever that way.' In the years that followed, her longing became layered with speculation, of what might have been. 'It is hard to grow up without a father. I know that I probably would have disagreed with him when I grew up on many important things but I wish I had both my parents.' She offers a metaphor for the kind of nurture lost: 'Growing up with loving adults caring for you — and in our context those are mostly your biological parents — is like a sapling sprouting. By the time the sprout is ready to grow, the skin has to soften. Maybe my father would have softened by the time I was ready to leave.' (J Devika, historian, feminist, translator; author of Engendering Individuals and Kulasthreeyum Chanthappennum Undaayathengine?) Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
