Novelist Salman Rushdie earned a standing ovation after bashing three of the Academy Award-winning films in a single speech in Atlanta.
During an Oscar-night lecture at Emory University, Rushdie picked apart the nominees in front of a sold-out audience of 1,100 readers. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he called The Reader “[a] leaden, lifeless movie killed by respectability,” and knocked The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because “It doesn’t finally have anything to say.”
Rushdie reserved his strongest criticism for Slumdog Millionaire, the movie that swept Best Picture honors. “[T]he problem with this adaptation begins with the work being adapted,” he said. “The movie piles impossibility on impossibility.” (Via Publishers Weekly)