JAIPUR: Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, who had stoked a controversy by slamming Slumdog Millionaire, on January 23 said the movie was “wonderful” and expressed happiness that composer AR Rahman won three Oscar nominations for his score and songs in the movie.

“The sound engineer of this wonderful movie Slumdog Millionaire, Rasool, an Indian, has also won a nomination along with Rahman. I am so happy. Bhanu Athaiya was the last Indian to win an Oscar for the designing the costumes of Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi in 1982,” Bachchan said at an overflowing venue at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Referring to his comment regarding Slumdog Millionaire that “the film projects India as Third World’s dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots”, he said, “I write a blog. But the opinions expressed in my blog were not my own. So many people write on my blog site and I was just quoting one of them. I have spoken to Anil Kapoor and Danny Boyle and cleared the misgivings. But everyone must have freedom of expression.”