The 14th Annual StarScreen Awards are officially known as NOKIA Star Screen Awards. As such they have been sponsored by Nokia, Broadcast by Star on The Screen (Indian Express Group) credibility.
The whole show was very well conceived and performed with some truely delightful scoops such as the hilarious and incorrigible hosting by Sajid Khan, Shreyas Talpade and the comedy was simply awesome. There were some refreshing performances by Ritesh Deshmukh and Sajid Khan and stupendous performances by the Enchanting Urmilla Matondkar and the Grand King Khan SRK. Both SRK & Urmila are always able to deliver maximum impact as usual and enthrall the audience into an awe.
Yet another magnanimous heart warming moment was the touching Life Time Achievement Awards to the Veteran Actor Manoj Kumar, which was especially nostalgic as I am sure that most people in my age group of late 30s and early 40s may have some nostalgic memories of their childhood entangled with the dialogues, emotions, values, lilting melodies of the immensely Patriotic Movies of this great Hero. So the evening was too magical.
Yet despite such a great show one could not help observe the pouring of most awards to Aamir Khan’s Tare Zameen Par & CHak De India. Whereas TZP probably got more number of awards, the main awards of best Actor & Best Film etc went to Chak De.
While I would reiterate that all SRKs performances are simply brilliant and always deserve an award, example his memorable performance in Swadesh etc. as also Amir’s Movies which never fail to evoke the shivers and bring tears to the threshold of the eyelids just as your glad and grateful happiness just barely holds them back as you move down the rollercoasters of emotions.
But apparent deliberateness with which a number of very deserving Movies eg Mani Ratnam’s GURU was kept out of some very should be nominations where movies like Jab We met were nominated, does somehow make the mind wonder whether SRK becoming of NOKIA’s brand ambassador versus Abhishek being Motorolla’s brand ambassador.
The Moranis and Amitabh Bachan incidents at some earlier award functions, the so called SRK versus Amitabh cold war rumors and thinking a little more wildly some old wounds of the Indian Express etc. have anything got to do with the fare metted out to some quite talked about movies of the same period, so very conspicuously absent in the Nominations as were Big B & Family, Akki etc.
I do hope my wild thinking is only over imagination. Because it would be sad to see Film Awards go ashtray the way Cricket went a few years back. My YES recommendation is only for the creativity in the show. I would like to reserve my comments as the mind continues to stumble on my faith in the awards esp nominations process.