ROBEEL HAQ'S REPORT: BOLLYWOOD'S REPETITIVE AWARD CEREMONY!

The film award season has officially begun in India. I assume it’s an exciting time of year for most Bollywood fanatics. The biggest superstars in town wear their glitziest outfits, energetically perform on stage and compete against each other to win prestigious trophies. Sounds fun, right? Bizarrely enough I would rather hibernate until the season is over!

Here’s the problem. Bollywood award ceremonies have over exposed themselves. The sheer number of ceremonies set to take place over the next few months is overwhelming. It seems the word selectiveness doesn’t exist in the Bollywood dictionary. To make matters worse, there’s little to differentiate one ceremony over the other. The same people win the same awards and give the same scripted acceptance speeches with the same overwhelmed expression. The audience normally consists of the same bored looking faces too - apart from when cameras suddenly focus on someone in particular and they are forced to look unbelievably happy and excited. Its lucky they are used to performing in front of cameras - these ceremonies truly test their acting abilities!

The first in a long list of such functions was the recent Screen Awards in Mumbai. Most of the winners were painfully predictable, although we can credit the judges for providing some shocking(ly bad) decisions. Let my ranting truly get started! How on earth did the substandard direction in last year’s blockbuster Hum Tum bag Kunal Kohli the Best Director gong? The film may have succeeded at the box office and provided its audience with some entertainment - but is it worthy of such acclaim? To make the pill ever more bitter to swallow, they even awarded Rani Mukherjee with the Best Actress award for the same movie. Rani is a talented actress but her role in Hum Tum hardly required histrionics. Did the judges even bother to watch Urmila Matondkar and Shilpa Shetty effortless handle complex roles in Ek Hasina Thi and Phir Milenge? Its these performances we should be encouraging in Indian cinema, but alas the judges didn’t agree. I guess that’s the whole point - you can’t please everyone. No doubt there are people jumping up and down with joy at these decisions (and I’m not referring to Kunal and Rani themselves) and they will continue celebrating when further weird winners are announced at the Filmfare Awards and the Zee Awards and The IFFA Awards and the countless others too. My biggest complaint? With so many different award ceremonies, I really wish one would dare to think outside of the box and offer a different perspective!

EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY ROBEEL HAQ