While anticipation builds up ahead of this weekend’s Academy Awards, “Slumdog Millionaire’s” momentum continued unchecked, as the flick picked up the top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and the American Cinema Editors (ACE) on Sunday.

The movie’s director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle earned the top award at the 23rd annual American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards on Sunday evening at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel for feature film, while the Danny Boyle-directed movie also picked up an ACE Eddie Award for editor Chris Dickens in the dramatic feature category.

“Slumdog Millionaire” already emerged as the underdog story of the year. Its makers reportedly faced problems in nearly every aspect of production, from shooting on location in India to finding a studio that would distribute it. The movie wound up going straight to DVD.

Now, the rags to riches story set in India has won over 50 awards, including 16 critics groups and four Golden Globes, for best picture, director, screenplay and score, becoming an Oscar front-runner with ten nominations, including motion picture of the year.  If the movie does indeed win the Oscar for best movie, it will become the first film with a significant foreign language component to take the title.

“This year definitely has a more global, more international flavor,” Entertainment Weekly Oscar expert Dave Karger said. “But it's also a very upbeat film. Both those elements are sort of a sign of the times, I think, with the ushering in of the Obama regime and people hoping to maintain an optimism because of the change he hopes to bring with him.”

“It's interesting to note that the first award 'Slumdog' won was the audience award at the Toronto film festival. That's not a critics’ prize -- that was a regular folks audience award,” Karger added. “It's a magical, upbeat movie, a real crowd-pleaser.”