Salaam Bollywood Awards, Issues and more Issues

The first one is that there are so many awards that the National Award has lost its significance and the second, more practical one is that people no longer care. Kangana Ranaut adjudged the Best Actress for Queen has won the award from every single organisation and announced it very early in the year that she will not be attending any award ceremony, which is quite a contrast from Vidya Balan, who attended every award event and collected her trophies for both ‘The Dirty Picture’ and later ‘Kahani’.

Let’s hope that Kangana will be present at the ceremony in Delhi to accept the certificate from the President of India. Some newspapers tried to make a headline of filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj dedicating his national award for ‘Haider’ to the land of Kashmir and Anupam Kher reacted that Kashmir does not need Bharadwaj’s award. Similarly some channels called up to ask if the Dadasaheb Phalke award was too late for Shashi Kapoor, I don’t think so.

We need to understand that many artistes are in the queue for the honour and the government does what is best within the circumstances. When the award was given to Pransaab a few years ago everybody said the honour came to the actor too late, I say at least he got it in his lifetime, what is the joy of an honour to the family when the artiste is no more. Shashi Kapoor is in frail health but had the presence of mind to smile when he was told by the family that he was bestowed with the honour.

Shashi is the third Kapoor in the family to be given the title after Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor. The honour is not for him being a superstar but for his foray into international films, his production house making socio political films like ‘Junoon’, ‘Kalyug’, ‘Vijeyta’, ‘Utsav’, and most important - for resurrecting his father’s Prithvi Theatres, easily the most important destination in theatre world of Mumbai.

The box-office was a no show this week with four releases but all small budget films with no star cast. While ‘Dozak’, which has been awarded at many festivals, failed to get an opening, ‘Black Home’, a dark story about the ongoing in a remand home was too depressing and ‘Dilli wali zalim Girlfriend’ a poor copy of rural romance.

There were some expectations from Phantom Films’ ‘Hunterr’ promoted as an adult comedy but the film failed to attract audience despite explicit scenes. It is about time our independent filmmakers understand that success is not about big and small budgets, not about star value and certainly not about brand banners. It is about substance, about story and sincerity. I dread to watch another bunch of smaller films releasing this week, be it ‘Yahan sab ki lagi Hain’ or an erotic ‘Barkhaa’. The issue is never the budget the issue is intent.

That ‘Dum Laga ke Haisha’ has worked is a triumph of content, and if the story is in order nothing can go wrong with the film. So forget about the festivals, forget about promotion and forget about chasing the stars, if your story is good the audience will automatically come to theatre and the stars into your films.

Director Rajiv Verma has been promoting ‘Bachpan Ek Dhoka’ as veteran actor Helen’s comeback film, which is untrue because director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the 90s brought back Helen in ‘Khamoshi’ the Musical as Monisha Koirala’s grandmother and later in ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ as Salman Khan’s mother so ‘BED’ is in no way her comeback film.

The director is upset because the actor has refused to promote the film and from what appears Helen is justified in her stand. After watching the film, she has requested Rajiv to delete a scene with Jesus Christ out of religious sentiments. Rajiv agreed, but later back tracked. When Helen got to know this, she refused to co-operate with him any further.

I would say well done Helenji. - Bhawana Somaaya/ @bhawanasomaaya