Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in a still from Slumdog Millionaire, Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Los Angeles, Feb. 19: A quick phone around by The Telegraph indicates that A.R. Rahman, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Freida Pinto, Dev Patel, Vikas Swarup and other members of a strong Indian contingent are on their way to Los Angeles but will Slumdog Millionaire, with 10 nominations in nine categories, actually pull it off on Sunday?

Or will it, like the Indian cricket team used to, choke in the final?

Its main competitor is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a very curious but technologically innovative film in which Brad Pitt is born old and grows young and which has garnered no fewer than 13 nominations.

Slumdog is, no doubt, the front runner but Pete Hammond, a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times who has been chatting privately to some of the academy members, warns against overconfidence and suggests there could be some huge upsets on the Oscar night.

The votes of over 5,800 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who sent in their ballot papers by the deadline of 5pm on February 17, have already sealed the fate of the winners and the losers. Indians will be reassured to learn that the tabulations are being done by PricewaterhouseCoopers of Satyam fame.

Hammond, who was the first to reveal there was a plot by some jealous folk in Bollywood aimed at ruining Slumdog’s chances, has commented on the curious coincidence of the first movie that was officially screened at the White House by President Barack Obama.

Although Slumdog Millionaire “appears to have this Best Picture thing all sewn up, there was a peculiar sign that occurred last week at the White House when, according to CNN, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Best Picture contender with a leading 13 nominations, became the first movie officially shown there since President Obama took over three weeks ago”, Hammond pointed out in the Los Angeles Times.

He added that “even with all those nominations, Button is a decided long shot at this point but with Obama’s special screening could that mean another stunning comeback surprise is in store Sunday night?

“After all a year ago Obama himself was in the position of the unthinkable underdog and look what happened to him!”

He also revealed the results of a personal straw poll: “Another eerie sign came this weekend when three, count ‘em, three (older) academy voters, whose opinions I respect, all said the exact same thing to me at different times. They weren’t voting for Slumdog Millionaire because ‘it’s just not an Oscar picture’.

“I thought it was very strange that I would suddenly be hearing virtually the same kind of reasoning out of the mouths of three different academy members, but there it was. All of them, by the way, had cast their Best Picture vote for Button.

“Dare I say it? A sign?”

Did Hammond really mean that Slumdog could be pipped to the post by Button? The Telegraph asked Hammond today.

His answer was yes and no.

Since writing his article, “I have talked to other people and I have found a lot of Slumdog votes, too”, he said.

However, Hammond, billed by the LA Times as “one of the film industry’s best known award season pundits”, did seek to analyse whether Obama had discreetly indicated his personal preference to academy members.

“You can read anything you want into all of this stuff but it is interesting he chose to show that movie,” reasoned Hammond. “Maybe that means something. He was a huge underdog a year ago and look at what happened to him and that is what Button is right now. It’s a big underdog so maybe there is some kind of symmetry here.”

Hammond continued: “Benjamin Button is the longest shot because Slumdog has just swept this whole award season but in the past stranger things have happened. I thought it was an interesting thought that Obama, this great underdog who triumphed in the end, should choose to show that movie.”

On the anti-Slumdog academy voters, Hammond said: “I know there is a faction there that is not going to vote for Slumdog, basically, but the overwhelming majority of academy members probably will. I think they are going to follow the way the season has been going. The fact that it has won everything made them watch the DVD, made them see the movie and they seem impressed by it, impressed enough to not want to be too different from the rest of the award shows out there.”

On why some members were against Slumdog, he said: “They are older members. They don’t feel it is an ‘Oscar film’. They look at this movie — no stars, partially in the Hindi language, came out of nowhere, very much the foreign flavour. They all voted for Benjamin Button which does reek of being the kind of traditional film that won the Oscar movie of the past with the technical wizardry, in addition to the story which is like a Forest Gump.”

Rahman, though, could take heart from Hammond’s assessment: “The entire academy votes on the music: they are fairly unsophisticated when it comes to picking music scores. They like what they like musically and this one just pops out because of the end song and all of that and it has a nice sound to it, a different sound, an exotic sound. I think there is a kind of openness to a lot of this now and this movie walks right into that. It wins both music categories (Original Score and Original Song) easily.”

He felt that Bafta rather than the Golden Globes — Slumdog won seven awards at the former and four at the latter — offered a more accurate indication of the likely Oscar trends.

As to whether Slumdog was viewed as British or Indian by the academy, the reply was complicated.

“I don’t think they care,” said Hammond. “It’s a hybrid — it has a whole British thing going, particularly with Danny (Boyle) directing it and Simon Beaufoy (screenplay) and it has a strong Indian feel, obviously. It has an American thing going for it, too. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? has a strong American identification because we have that game show here. The game show aspects Americans easily relate to the point where ABC is considering bringing it back on prime time because of the success of Slumdog.”