I always wanted to blog the irresistible experience of watching one of the hundreds of award ceremonies that we are witnessing over the years. The saga starts as early as January with teasers from the previous years to all the way till December when even you start wondering was this movie released last year!
These award ceremonies have become a platform for marketing and satisfying the ego of big stars and have lost the essence of honoring the talent in the industry. In the early 90s, when Filmfare awards were still uncorrupted by commercialism, our king of Bollywood, SRK offered ‘incentive’ to be voted as the best debutant for his film Deewana. This offer was turned down and was told that these are popular awards and if he is popular he will win it. Eventually, much to his surprise, SRK did win the best debut award!
I remember watching Filmfare awards a few years back when ‘apna paaji’ Dharmendra was awarded for his Life Time achievement. It was a touchy speech. He said, “I used to dress up each year for Filmfare awards in hope that I will receive an award. I never got a Filmfare award during my entire career. Now I receive Life Time Achievement award. I am not retiring yet…..” The speech went on..but I was literally in tears! Such was the crave for Filmfare awards in the past. The battle for the much coveted black lady was hard.
I always admired the two awards: National awards and Filmfare awards.
National awards, where I thought lobbying was almost impossible, Saif Ali Khan was chosen the best actor for Hum Tum! Can you believe that? After a small research it was an easy guess. Saif’s mother, Sharmila Tagore was amongst the Jury! Well…. I lost respect for National awards.
So, my bet was on Filmfare awards…until….last year, when Hrithik was sure to get the best actor award for Jodha Akbar (owing to its great success and popularity at the box office), how would the organizers get SRK and the rest of the A-list stars to attend? Without such star presence, the sponsors won’t be willing to shell out a huge deal of money, the main motivation behind these awards, right? Well they were creative…they introduced new award categories like the power star of the year and made sure everyone received their share of price for attending the show. So, Filmfare awards were out of my list too.
Did this stop me from watching these shows? No..I am an average Indian viewer, who never gets tired of Bollywood or Cricket. I am bent upon watching these awards to make sure my theory about lobbying and camp rivalry still holds good!
Filmfare, Star Dust, Apsara, Zee Cine awards, …every prominent film magazine or media channel is now hosting an award ceremony. At this rate, the number of award ceremonies will out beat the number of actors in Bollywood shortly!
It’s imperative that with this huge competition, the organizers are tying up with the big who is who of Bollywood as brand ambassadors of their awards. Now it’s a personal affair. Imagine Big B promoting IIFA awards, supposedly the only award ceremony to be held each year at an international venue, mainly to lure the NRI audience. Why not! Overseas markets are stronger than ever and with the huge ‘missing India’ sentiment amongst the NRIs, movies that fall flat in India can still prove to be big grosser in the international circuit. SRK is no less promoting Zee awards with his mate Subhash Chandra (of Zee network). Funnily enough Big B and his clan boycott these awards every year religiously owing to an incident of disrespect to Big B a couple of years back. Coming to boycotting, it’s a well known fact that Amir Khan never attends any of the Bollywood award ceremonies. Ofcourse, when Lagaan was nominated for Oscars, he promptly dressed up in his best Armani suit and flew to LA. Little did he know then that it takes a bunch of slum dwellers to drive home with Oscars! Well, I can kind of relate to him.
Yesterday night I was watching this amusing Star Dust awards. My inspiration of this blogging! In the first ten odd minutes I was certain on who is going to get the awards. You see a line up of Karan Johar, Big B, Junior B, Akshay and Ajay Devgan in the first row. No SRK, No Hrithik (He did not have any releases in the last couple of years anyway) and No to many of the stars who did not want to waste their time watching histrionics of non-dancers like Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor. It was already clear to me: there won’t be any awards for them. As a corollary, all the ones who are present will get awards!
So, the premise was set.
Making up the guest list must be real hard for the organizers. There is this SRK camp Vs. Bachchan camp, Priyanka Vs. Kareena camp, Vinod Chopra Vs. Sajid Khan camp, etc.,
One thing that helps is that we also have ‘aanbieding’ (dutch for sale offer): Buy one; Get one Free offers. For instance, you invite Kareena Kappor and you get Saif for Free. However you can’t beat this offer: You invite Big B and you get Junior B, Aish, Jaya aunty Free and the bonus offer is Mr. Amar Singh . Had he spent fraction of his time he spends accompanying Big B on social service, India would have less things to worry about.
Coming to the program itself, I was amused to see Vivek Oberoi and Dia Mirza hosting the awards. Looks like the recession has also hit the Bollywood ceremonies. The organizers must have got them on board for pea nuts. Or did I hear, Vivek and Dia paid to be on stage! Well…considering their market value and hunger for publicity, I will not be surprised.
The show was on…some witty dialogs of the hosts ..thanks to script writers…they always do a wonderful job. The first few categories of awards are always something I admire. The technical awards such as cinematography, background score, arts, etc are less lobbied and hence are quite close to well deserved awards.
The real fun starts with the last few categories.
Best actress in a supporting role: I was rooting for Supriya Pathak for Wake up Sid.
The camera zooms on Kirron Kher and there she wins for Kurbaan!
With all due respect for this fabulous actress, what was that movie about! She was hysteric and loud in the movie. Anyways, she is a good actress..so I can suck this one up.
Best actor in a supporting role: The nominations were, Sharman Joshi for 3 Idiots, Junior B for Paa, Hrithik Roshan for Luck By Chance (How did this movie make it to nominations!), Rishi Kapoor for Luck By Chance (It’s really Lucky!)…The winner? obvious right…Junior B. Poor Madhavan who delivered a fabulous performance in 3 Idiots was not even nominated!
The list went on one after another. The Dream director award to Imtiaz Ali beating Rajkumar Hirani of 3 Idiots! Best actor in a comic role to Ajay Devgan for All the Best beating Govinda, and so on. I really wonder how they gather nominations…Beat this: Delhi 6 was nominated in couple of categories!
The final moment was there. The star of the year –Female. The nominations were Katrina Kaif (outstanding), Vidya Balan (impressive in Paa), Rani Mukherjee (although Dil Bole Hadippa had its share of weaknesses, I thought Rani had delivered a decent performance) and ofcourse Kareen Kappor (Kurbaan!).
I almost fell of chair when the winner was announced…Kareena Kapoor for Kurbaan! Apart from a couple of dumb dialogs in the movie and few dare bare scenes, she was completely lost in the proceedings of the movie.
The icing on the cake was when Kareena, on the winning speech said “Oh Karan, we have truly made a fantastic film”!!! Don’t forget to check out this video on youtube …hilarious!!!
The moral of the story? ….Don’t miss any bollywood awards, make your guesses and enjoy the play! Signing off till the next awards...!
