Ramblings

The Flimflam Awards

On Saturday night, I watched the Filmfare Awards after many years. There was a time when Filmfares were a must-watch event like the Oscars. But given the predictability and the plethora of Indian awards shows, I lost all interest. After all these years, not much has changed except that the present crop of female actors is doing the Hollywood-ishtyle cocktail dress thingie instead of the black\white sari routine. Filmfares continue to be long-winded, mismanaged, dreary and utterly predictable affairs. This time I also noticed the Filmfares do not seem to have enough categories to really recognise the entire gamut of contribution to Indian cinema. So, I decided to go ahead and hand out some award to the deserving few.
Abhi Tak Maintain Hai Award: …goes to the one and only Madhuri Dixit. Neither matrimony, nor maternity seems to have robbed her off her oomph. When she launched into her “Dola re, dola re” number from Devdas at the awards, there was a collective roar from the crowd. The other nominees in this category were Rekha and Hema Malini. Rekha has been winning this award for the last 10 years, so the jury decided to award it to Madhuri this time.
The KLPD Award: No marks for guessing. Aishwarya Rai’s on-stage performance of “Kajra re” was good enough to make a one-horned rhino’s libido wilt.
The Lost In Translation Award: … to Hollywood motor mouth Will Smith for mangling the Mukherjee part of Rani’s name.
The Orbit Chewing Gum Award: Javed Akhtar was the hands-down winner for imperturbably masticating on God knows what, even when they were announcing that his wife Shabana had been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award. Shahrukh Khan has won this award the most number of times, but was thankfully absent this time.
Khali Pate ka Sawaal Hai Award: Baldhead baddy Prem Chopra has stepped into the void created by Amrish Puri’s demise. Rakesh Roshan award bal-bal mis kar gaye.
The Mr Anderson Lookalike Award: Shiamak Davar, in his black suite, shades and earpiece, looked exactly like Hugo Weaving’s memorable character in Matrix. The fact that he did some very robotic dance movements also seemed to help his cause.
The Sahara Parivar, Sukhi Parivar Award: Abhishek Bachchan was the proud winner. After winning the Best Supporting Actor Award for Sarkar, he thanked not only his father, mother, sister, brother-in-law, but also AMAR SINGH JI!
Lifetime Achievement Award: …has to go to the TV production chappies for the Filmfare functions. Year in, year out, these guy have unfailingly cut away to Rekha the moment Amitabh has gone up on stage to receive some award or the other. This time, they made sure that whenever Abhishek was in the spotlight, they turned around to pick up Ash’s reactions.

(Photo: Courtesy http://cinema.sholay.com)