bolly goes to holly, holly comes to bolly: Julia Roberts at Taj Mahal. The actress reached Agra on Thursday from Jaipur, where she and her family spent two days. (AFP)

Washington, Jan. 22: Slumdog Millionaire, a modest Indo-British production with virtually no recognisable actors and a distinctly Third World theme swept this year’s Oscar preparations with 10 nominations, including best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay and best original score for A.R. Rahman.

The 10 nominations cap an awards season in north America and Europe in which the film dominated the scene and it is widely considered in Hollywood as the front-runner for best picture when the Academy awards are presented on this day next month.

The Oscar nominations were announced on the eve of Slumdog Millionaire’s release in India and the honours contrasted grimly with the petty nit-picking at home for the film’s portrayal of Mumbai’s slums.

The leader of a so-called slum-dwellers’ welfare group has sued the film’s music composer, Rahman and actor Anil Kapoor for showing slum-dwellers in a poor light and violating their human rights by not objecting to use of the word “slumdog” in the movie’s title.

The case is to be heard in Patna on February 5.

In Mumbai there were protests today in slums with residents flaunting placards that said “Poverty For Sale,” and “I am not a dog.”

Slumdog was also nominated yesterday in the categories for best original song, best cinematography, best film editing, best sound editing and best sound mixing. There were two nominations for the film in the category of best original song.

Although Slumdog has been widely acclaimed here following its spate of awards and has created a record at the box office in its category of movies, today’s virtual sweep of Oscar nominations has ruffled many feathers here.

The Academy Awards are a cosy club of Hollywood vested interests into which even black artistes and film personalities had difficulty breaking into until some years ago.

Initial reaction in the US following the nominations chose to underplay Slumdog’s march towards securing the golden statuettes in Hollywood and instead highlighted a perceived insult to Bruce Springsteen instead.

Springsteen’s The Wrestler did not even get a token recognition during today’s nominations despite doing well at the Golden Globes this year.

There was also criticism that there were only three nominations for the Best Original Song category this year instead of the usual five. Two Slumdog Millionaire songs have been nominated in this category: M.I.A. and Rahman’s “… Saya” and “Jai Ho.”

Rolling Stone magazine hoped that it was a typing mistake that two nominations were missing.

The US media chose to highlight the nominations in 13 categories for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, including one for best picture posing a stiff challenge for the Indo-British production at the Academy Awards.