Still of Freida Pinto as Latika from Slumdog Millionaire

I couldn't help notice the number of relatively small films that were nominated for Oscars this year. In the Best Picture category alone, The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire are up against movies with huge budgets like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. "Small" is a relative term, since these films all had budgets in the millions. But I'm getting hopeful that we're seeing the start of a new trend in studio filmmaking; one where we have massive $200MM tentpole projects like The Dark Knight and a myriad of small films designed to be profitable by new methods of marketing and distribution online.

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