A two week delayed post about the Bollywood Filmfare awards that was conducted on February 23^rd. 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.

Amidst all the chaos that is attempting to get decent marks in my unit test, I finally caught up with the much hyped Taare Zameen Par. Of course, it came highly recommended from my sister who said she could not resist crying and my college friends who said they were brought to tears even though they don’t know Hindi. So in the end I finally gave up and saw the movie and for once, in a long time, I can definitely say the hype is truly deserved.

Taare Zameen Par is a movie that will force its way into the deepest and darkest corners of your heart and firmly find for itself a place there. It is riddled with wonderful performances literally from each cast member and even the ones who appear in the smallest of roles end up touching our hearts. It is arguably one of the best movies of 2007 (if not the best) and any person – whether parent or child – would do themselves good by experiencing it.

Taare Zameen Par follows the story of Ishaan Awasti (Darsheel Safary), a 9 year old dyslexic boy who cannot understand studies how much ever he tries. His father, however, thinks that he is just a stubborn boy who does not want to study and after getting angered by the increase in complaints against him decides to put him into a boarding school against the wishes of his wife, elder son (who is a topper in school) and of course, Ishaan himself. How Ishaan overcomes his condition with the help of recently appointed art teacher Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan) and realizes his true potential as an artist forms the rest of the story.

You’d be hard pressed to convince anyone after watching the film that this is Aamir Khan’s first directorial venture. Aamir has cleverly sidestepped showing us what cool directorial tricks he has up his sleeves (this being his first movie and all) and instead given us a true, non-cinematic look at the life of Ishaan Awasti and his family. The movie works out more like an experience (similar to reading a great book) than a movie and in the process helps us identify with the main characters a lot better.

Story and Screenplay from Amol Gupte (who was initially supposed to direct the film also) is top notch. Apart from the initial sequences (which give us a look into the life of Ishaan and his family) which are a bit slow moving, the movie keeps you gripped and never lets you go right from the sequence where Ishaan is dropped off in the boarding school to the climax. The dialogue writer also deserves a lot of praise in making the movie feel realistic and a lot of the dialogues really hit the nail on the head without venturing into the preachy territory which would have felt out of place in the movie. The scene where Aamir Khan visits Darsheel’s house and the one where Darsheel’s father visits Aamir at school are fine examples of the dialogue writer’s excellence.

With all the applause Darsheel Safary has been getting, it is really a moot point discussing his performance but I am going to do it anyway. Being cast as the central character, the movie had a lot riding on Darsheel’s performance and it is worth reiterating that he delivers on all accounts. Whether with his facial expressions or body language, he really brings the character of Ishaan Awasti to life and is truly the hero of the film. Aamir Khan shines in a role that expects him to underplay a lot but he gets to deliver all the best lines in the movie and, as expected, does full justice to them. Tisca Chopra comes out with an outstanding performance whether as the mother who loves her son too much to let him go or as the wife who cannot go against her husband’s wish when the latter decides that a boarding school is the best choice for his son. Vipin Sharma as Ishaan’s father is dignified in a role that requires him to be stern and sentimental in equal parts. Other notable performances come from Sachet Engineer as Ishaan’s elder brother and Tanay Chada as Ishaan’s best friend at school.

If movies like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom led you the believe that the trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy can come up only with foot-tapping peppy dance numbers, then with wonderful music in an offbeat film like this one they have proved that they really have become the complete package when it comes to Bollywood music. Shankar Mahadevan’s wonderfully sung Taare Zameen Par… and the haunting Maa… are clearly the pick of the lot with beautiful lyrics from Prasoon Joshi. However, other songs like Jame Raho… which plays in the background to scenes presenting the family’s morning routine or Bum Bum Bole... which has the entire class room up and dancing really prove the trio’s superiority and all of this while never feeling out of sync with the movie. The movie’s animated sequences also deserve a special mention for bringing the quirky thoughts that play in Ishaan’s mind to life.