Sunday, February 1, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire quotes Wikipedia

This is what I get for prowling Wikipedia while watching movies.

In Slumdog Millionaire, the tour guides at the Taj Mahal are reading lines from the Wikipedia article on the Taj Mahal. It's heard as ambient noise when the main characters first wander in:
  • ...the Taj Mahal is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture...
  • ...during the birth of their fourteenth child...
  • ...was completed around 1648...
  • ...a labour force of twenty thousand workers...
  • ...became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was cited as "the jewel of...
All those lines are found in the Wikipedia article, and all are heard within a span of 20 seconds about a third of the way into the movie.

You could be tempted to suspect that Wikipedia is the one that is, in fact, quoting Slumdog Millionaire. However, all these lines were in the old Wikipedia article from November 2007, before the movie began filming.

Also of note: The current article says the Taj Mahal "was completed around 1653". That was a change made in November 2008. The old version of the article says 1648, and that's what is quoted in the movie.

The movie was great, by the way, and I'll give my thoughts on it sometime. I just wanted to get this post out first because I couldn't find any other blog or news article that makes note of it. Probably because I'm the only one that does this. Someone should just release a media player for me that displays wikilinked subtitles.

6 comments:

  1. someone must have this on pirate, unless you took your laptop into the cinema!

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  2. SM's filming began in 2005.

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  3. This article says it began shooting in November 2007:
    http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117971102.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

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  4. Worst movie in the history of Indian films...wonder how sad the taste of the selectors of Oscars would have been to find such a terribly bad movie so interesting!!!!

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