A two week delayed post about the Bollywood Filmfare awards that was conducted on February 23rd. To mention all that happened at the show is pointless so I am going to stick to what I though of the awards and which of the award choices were questionable to say the least. To start with, the ceremony itself was a nice occasion and, as usual, King Shahrukh Khan and his able partner in crime Saif Ali Khan were present to keep the ceremony a light-hearted affair throughout. Their Na-Real awards was just icing on the cake when added to their on-stage antics and funny conversations.

Well, enough of that go here for a list of all the awards. As I mentioned above, a few of the awards that I thought were questionable were:

Best Supporting Actress – Konkona Sen Sharma for Life in a Metro
Personal choice – Tisca Chopra for Taare Zameen Par

I have not seen Konkona Sen’s performance in Life in a Metro but I thought this award should have gone to Tisca Chopra for Taare Zameen Par. The whole point of such awards is to encourage new talent and Tisca Chopra was one of the finds of last year (anybody remember any of her previous movies). As I stated in my review, she was nothing short of outstanding in her role as the loving mother of Ishaan Awasti.

Best Music – A.R. Rahman for Guru
Personal Choice – Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy for Taare Zameen Par

This is one of those awards that I think was presented for the popularity of the composer rather than for actual music. Don’t take it the wrong way, Guru had some great music but best of 2007, I am not so sure. I though Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s wonderful music in Taare Zameen Par deserved that award. To come out with such great music in such an off-beat film and to make that music gel with the film takes a work of genius and that is exactly what the trio proved they are with TZP.

Best Dialogue – Imtiaz Ali for Jab We Met
Personal Choice – Taare Zameen Par

Not yet seen JWM also but if I have to take my sister’s word for it, she says the dialogue is nothing out of the ordinary, standard love story stuff. I though the dialogue writer of Taare Zameen Par (name anyone?) definitely deserved this award. In most movies like TZP, dialogues tend to be preachy and I expected TZP to be the same. To my surprise, I found all the dialogues straight out of life and some of them like in scenes when Aamir visits Darsheel’s house had an almost immediate impact on me.

Also, I have no idea why there were no Best Villain and Best Comedian awards. Maybe due to the lack of enough nominations but still there were many people who deserved those awards. Well, truly only one deserved the award for Best Villain (a no-brainer really!) and that was Arjun Rampal for Om Shanti Om. Anybody who watched the film would have come out feeling detested at his character and that is what the goal of the Villain in the film is. As far as the Best Comedian award is concerned, the whole cast of Dhamaal contributed to the film being a laugh riot but Jaaved Jaffrey had all the best dialogues and some of the funniest scenes, so I thought he should have been given that honor.

Other awards that got under my skin were Lifetime Achievement for Rishi Kapoor (what is his contribution to Hindi cinema anyway) and Best Male Newcomer for Ranbir Kapoor -- yeah right, his only claim to fame being Rishi Kapoor’s son. Apart from that he imitated Hrithik Roshan every frame of the movie right from voice tone to body language.

The happiest news for me was King Khan winning Best Actor for Chak De India. To be honest, I think he has been given awards for movies that maybe he did not deserve like for his chocolate lover boy roles and such. However if there was ever an award he deserved it would be for Chak De India. Shahrukh was simply awesome in a role where he had to be subdued and understated for long periods of time. I think it is one of his best performances ever since he came out of being an anti-hero and became a full hero.

And of course young Darsheel Safary winning the Critic’s Best Actor award was also great news. I have had many arguments with my sister over Darsheel being nominated for Best Actor. I think there is a reason the Best Child Performance award is there and it is to commemorate performances like his in Taare Zameen Par (but that is an entirely different discussion altogether). However, Darsheel’s performance in TZP deserved something more than a Child Artist award (because he was the hero of the movie after all) and it was fitting that he got such an award.

Other deserved awards were Best Lyricist to Prasoon Joshi, Best Story to Amol Gupte and, of course, Best Director to Aamir Khan all for Taare Zameen Par. It was interesting to note that most of the awards were neatly (and deservedly) split between two of the best movies in recent times, Chak De India and Taare Zameen Par.

Bollywood had a great year last time around. With movies like Chak De India, Om Shanti Om, Dhamaal, Namastey London, Guru and the icing on the cake, Taare Zameen Par, there is a lot to live up to. 2008 looks promising with movies like The Name is Khan, the hindi remake of Ghajini and others lined up for release in the coming months. I can only hope that 2008 turns out to be as good an year as 2007, if not better.