Oscars and Filmfare
This year, for the first time I was able to watch Oscars and Filmfare within a short span. Filmfare holds a special place in our household as my wife and I have been watching it on television regularly for last 10-12 years. Earlier, the award winners had a curiosity factor as Bollywood wasn’t as common on every TV channel as it is today. Later on, we still kept watching it for some nice performances once in a while, some comedy skits and sometimes just for the sake of it to know who won. This trend continued even after we shifted to US, though we had to watch them on DVDs or sometimes as repeat telecasts on Desi channels. Kids loved the colorful performances and pestered us to forward the award ceremonies. We got our bit of entertainment watching the stars perform; accept awards, give and acceptance speeches and all. For us, Filmfare came closest to an Indian Oscar due to long history, some tradition and long list of legendary names as winners in the past.
Over the years, Filmfare awards started losing their shine as they continuously stooped low to compete with every X, Y and Zee awards, created purely as television shows. Instead of staying above the fray and maintain their brand, Filmfare copied every move that other award shows like Zee and Screen made. We watched helplessly as bizarre new categories were introduced to give awards to every who’s who in the industry. Even that was fine with us. But what made the awards increasing unwatchable was degrading level of performances and poor quality of jokes. Most actors and actresses resorted to obscene gestures, skimpy clothes, remixed songs and tacky lighting to hide their lack of rehearsals and boredom while performing. We started finding it increasingly difficult to sit through the performances and more so through the farce in between as the humor became full of sexual innuendoes and gay jokes.
As for the Oscars, I was never able to sit through the entire Oscar ceremony. The endless hours of television watching celebrities on Red carpet tired us out by the time the actual ceremony started in the evening. The other reason was the fact we hadn’t always watched every film getting nominated or hadn’t even heard about most of them. The ones we sat through like Chicago, or Mouline Rouge, found them very boring, something we couldn’t relate to. The Hollywood films we did enjoy were typically not nominated for Oscars.
But this year was different. This year, I started the TV just when the official Oscar ceremony was about to start. Not sure, if it was stage and décor or overall presentation ceremony or just the effects of watching it live on HD TV, I was so impressed I couldn’t change the channel even for a second. It was simply amazing, a crisp cool show, well anchored, well directed, well presented, lighting was great, stage extra ordinary and length of the program just right. I was surprised to find a non-stand up comedy actor as host as I had heard names of John Stewart and Steve Martin as hosts in the past. But the emcee did a wonderful job. He carried the well written lines and self deprecating humor very well. Without much fuss, the awards got underway with clearly defined categories, nominees gracing the elegant round tables on the front side of the hall. Performances were original including the host himself doing couple of them Broadway style and even in cases where paying tribute to a film song like Jai Ho, the singing was live by our very own ARR and choreography original. Added to that was the pride of watching our very own ARR and Resul Pookutty accepting Oscars, long story short I was might impressed by the quality of the whole show. What was amazing was that the media panned the Oscars next day, finding faults like the eulogies to nominees being too long and other nit picking. You sir, are spoiled for sure.
About a month later we did get the DVD of the Filmfare show. Not sure if it was the Oscar effect but we found this year’s show particularly appalling. It was almost like the shock I got when I exited a Singapore airlines flight in Hong Kong once and boarded an Air India flight. Compared to the world’s best airline with plush interior, young and smart looking air hostesses and brand new aircrafts, the Air India plane was old, dirty, the toilet door not working and air hostesses were old and physically not in shape, almost like the plane and airline itself. Normally I stay away from the “India is the greatest country on earth” and “India sucks” type extreme positions, but in this case the difference was hard not to notice and feel ashamed about.
I got the exact same feeling watching Filmfare after watching Oscars. Why would we put up such a bad quality show in the name of an award show? Remember, this is not about money starved women’s hockey team or even resource constrained Air India for that matter. This was Bollywood, the largest film industry in the world, the attendees were some of the richest people in the world, and they can’t even put up a quality show together.
Compared to Oscars, Filmfare felt like function in our local village school where the son of Headmaster and the grand son of school manager would always emcee the show. Similar to my village school program, Filmfare hired the two crown princes Ranbir Kapoor and Imran Khan as the hosts. Ranbir Kapoor proved that he has as little show hosting talent as he has acting wise. Dear Ranbir, stay from hosting the shows, please, if you cannot stay from acting altogether! Imran Khan did marginally better simply by being a bit more natural and trying a little less harder than Ranbir. Both crown princes couldn’t carry a single joke, not that it was entirely their fault, the writing was juvenile and jokes were either retarded or gay. Compared to the two crown princes, the two ladies Deepika and Konkana carried themselves well.
Not that any effort was spared. There was everything for the sake of it, a big venue in Yashraj Studio, Red carpet, another concept copied over and ladies wore gowns just like at Oscars (where are the Saris gone?), men wore tuxedoes(Where are the achkans and other Indian attire, otherwise so visible in fashion shows?), just like Oscars. Stage also seemed grand but somehow something was missing. I am not fully against copying best practices but why make a tacky copy it. Why not Indianize it or improve upon it or even better come up with your own original concept that may be classier? I am sure the Industry doesn’t lack talents, money or resources..
As opposed to the Oscars, there were two many award categories, almost one for every member of the leading camps or royal families in attendance. Because of the number of awards, and then commercials scrammed almost like an IPL match, nominees weren’t paid enough attention, sometime no clips were shown of their performances in stark contrast to Oscars where each nominee was paid a 2 minute tribute by past winners in the category. There were no tribute paid to the winners either in most cases except to the Lifetime achievement awardees, only some joked cracked at their expenses albeit in a subdued manner due to Gowarikar’s rage at Star Awards.
Unlike Oscars where nominees were seated in the front, here Bachchan family and SRK family graced the front row, alongside I think Yash Chopra. Performers were lazy and unrehearsed and seem like doing it for money or some other reason, there was no pride in their performances. To add insult to the injury, Junior B. was the highlight of the show, his performance coming in the last. Another request, Junior B., sir, you are not meant for show business, you seem like a smart well educated young man, will do very well in many other fields in life, Sir, this acting secting, nach gana is not for you, you are not meant for it, please save the Bachchan name and find something else to do. To hide how bad the performers were doing, remix songs and flickering lights were used so that you cannot make out the steps. Agh..
May be I am taking it too seriously, but in the end, I am left with some nagging questions
• As a society and culture, why we do not take pride in quality and originality? Particularly when we have all the money and resources and talent to do it right? What stops us from doing a classier job?
• Mr. Bachchan and SRK and Yash Chopraji, you are probably among the most successful people in India right now and among the richest in the world? Why your egos are so fragile and insecure that you feel insulted unless you are given the front row seats?
• TOI Group and Filmfare, you guys had such a good brand with rich history behind it, why are you hell bent on killing it? Is the only way to compete with newer, lower quality a show is by stooping down to their level? Is there no reward in maintaining your dignity and brand? Another parallel I see is with NDTV competing to be like Aaj Tak and numeruous other news channels.
• All other stars and Performers, do you all know that the world is watching and many times the world perceives India and Indians through you because of your reach? Do you have no sense of responsibility, no shame? For once, I agree with Aamir Khan. Would you someday, start behaving like Hindi or Indian film industry and grow out of this Bollywood image?
• Why do we have such lack of good hosts in India? Why do we get such wooden, unnatural people with no sense of stage or stand up comedy as hosts – RK and IK this year, Diya Mirza. Even Farah Khan at Screen awards, who is otherwise very funny, did a terrible job.
• To all of us who watch these shows, why do we insult our intelligence and watch these crappy TV shows thereby making them commercially even viable?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I thought this year’s show was much better than the last 3-4 years.Ranbir and Imran looked fresh as I am bored to see Shahrukh and Saif hosting every other award function.I never really watch the performances and switch channels.The best part were the awards.I think they were given to the right candidates.(although like every year I have some complaints but this year its much lesser).
Agree with most of what you have written. Filmfare has not only fallen in award presentation ceremony but also in quality of awards. Mostly,most-populer bags all the awards and many deserving dont even gets nominations. To make a fun of this they have created one critics award too.
I have really stopped caring who gets the award as it does hardly match my judgement. I really feel that many a deserving candidates goes unnoticed in these awards.
Well I dont really care much for the Filmfare awards nowadays.Haan lekin itna zaroor hai ki this time the award selections in itself was definitely quite good & a big big big improvement over what’s been happening over the years.
“Compared to Oscars, Filmfare felt like function in our local village school where the son of Headmaster and the grand son of school manager would always emcee the show”…Well said A Singh…same case with our films
Your so called comparison between Oscar and Filmfare would pass into my favorite trash bin called oblivion if not for couple of statements that needs to be questioned
A)”presentation ceremony or just the effects of watching it live on HD TV” — O.K. Sir u have a HDTV bought from Best Buy on a cold night of Novemebr showing all the human brutality to be the first in line when Best Buy opens, but we are happy to be ignorant about that.
B)”The other reason was the fact we hadn’t always watched every film getting nominated or hadn’t even heard about most of them.” — Yeah, expecting from you to know about “Revolutionary Road” or “MILK” is too much, even “The Reader” which had a fairly good release in AMCs must have gone past you while you were busy watching…”Sing is Kinng”.
So, this year OSCAR attaracted you, as I presume, for ARR and Slumdog and you ended up doing what millions of IT-Clerk in US commits religiously daily –”Bashing India”
and this calls for a few questions :
1) Who told you that Filmfare has to follow pattern of Academy, i.e making nominees to seat in front ?
2)Who told you that watching Filmfare in DVD rented from next door Patel store is a legal thing and moreover after watching that ranting in a public forum like PFC is perfectly OK?
3)So, when you don’t understand real indie (not indian)movies/good movies that gets nomination in OSCAR and hoepfully by now waiting for next harry potter( or is it next week’s Wolverine, I doubt) to release, whats the point of watching OSCAR? Is it for jolie’s cleavage or for paul giamatti’s bald head?
4) and lastly, you went to US to dig your gold and never been accepted to the true US culture, then why do you try to shake off your inheritance by insulting Indian pop culture ?, After all, I would not expect you to buy a $13 ticket for the next Milos Forman/Mike Nichols/Sam Mendez movie this summer over Kambakt Risk and Rab-ne-thakadi-thodi.
Believe me sir, you NRIs have done nothing neither for your own or adapted country, then having the next release of Bollywood for $2 pirated DVD every Tuesday and listening to Himesh concert should make you feel proud and Filmfare is just an extension for giving you a glimpse of the culture in which you grown up. As Cinema is just another form to you to provide an escape from a rather ‘eat-shit-die’ life and nothing to do with being “passionate”(which you have ceased to become long ago), my humble request,better shove all the Benjamins saved in your BOA account in your own mouth but don’t cut the branch of the tree on which you are sitting.
Thanks.
@6 labor_day_sale…too hot…not entirely true..but brings forth some irregularities…But dont you think it was taking out too much on NRIs and A Singh in particular…he has the right to write what he feels…we dont have to make personal statements to prove a point …you are doing good even otherwise…
@Ram_V,
Nowadays, it has become quite fashionable to live in foreign country and bash Indian popular culture. Phrases like “India can never have a brad pitt”, “Indian heroines can never be as good as Angelina Jolie” etc pop up regularly in most of NRI-socializing joints along with how bad our Government is doing.
These people whose only cultural salvaion lies in smelling the sweet scent of Benjamin’s not so printable body part suddenly turns out to be movie critics/artists just for the sake of living abroad and having access to various channels of entertainment yet to reach India (Tivo,fast Wi-Fi,Netflix,Digital 3D etc). But does that qualify them to be the omniscient figures to comment on everything of India in a bad light?
Therefore, whenever I see critics/intellectuals/artists emerging by the power of green bucks it reminds me of Rittik Ghatak, it reminds me of Bunuel and add to that the ‘See how green my west is” attitude and I could not stop to let my anger speak.
hope real PFCers will understand.
wooooh…labor day sale…take a chill pill buddy…dont just make sweeping generalizations like that…there is a better way to vent your angst..
@labor_day_sale…you have valid points…no doubt..but discussion will be diverted in some other direction once personal comments creep in and valid issues will be trivialized..thats all…a small correction, the Master’s name is Ritwik Ghatak..
What a stupid post. Both Oscars and Filmfare suck big time. Just because there was Indian representation at the Oscars did not make the show any more enjoyable than in the past. The nominations and winners at both shows are predictable. The big stars sit in the front at both shows and the performances are ridiculous at both shows.
Not everything Western is better. Get real. Big inferiority complex at work here.
i have gotta say that the guy has a point … how else will one explain the numerous articles on TOI every year about how Filmfare is the Oscar of India. Honestly i feel that they should carve their own niche and let the other award shows hunt for the little scraps of attention that they anyway huting for. I mean come on man a Special Mention Cerificate fot Purab Kohli, who i must say did act well but one has to ask the question what the hell is that category even doing in a premier award show. I honestly feel Filmfare needs to get its act together otherwise they will be swimming with the other bullshit award shows that are parading the so called stars for around 3 hours on our television screens.
Both are influenced by filmi politics.. very much biased.
Anindya,
That’s what I thought when it started bu then RK and IK disppointed. I didn’t like it when SRK-SAK started anchoring it. It became too much of SRK show at times, anchoring, performing and receiving awards all in the same hour. They should pick hosts for their hosting talent not based on how big names they are. But then, I am not sure we had too many choice. I think Sajid Khan does a decent job for Screen awards.
Sethu,
I agree, award selection wasn’t bad, you have to anyway pick among the films we had. I was happy to see OLLO being recognized in parts but disappointed that Abhay Deol was ignored. It’ll be interesting to see what they do next year when Dev D will be elephant in the room. Do they recognize it, in parts or leave it alone and just pretend that it didn’t happen.
Lee,
Don’t worry there is no inferiority complex here, as I said I am not a regular follower of Oscars so there might be truth in what you are saying about nominations. Overall, however, Oscars, even though predictable in terms of types of films will get recognized, have been able to maintain a perception about fairness. But my post was about this year’s presentation ceremony and I liked it and that was not just because because Indians were being recognized. I did like the amount of recognition and respect given to all the Nominees. It seemed about Nominees and winners and not so much about big stars, which is the purpose of it anyway.
labor_day_sale
Take a deep breadth, hold for 5 sec, then exhale slowly. Now repeat 10 times. See, if that makes you feel better.
#6@labour_day_sale
I dont want to start a discussion on the point u started. But it also has increasingly become a trend to bash those who live outside India(or in India) and compare India with rest of the world.
But people generally miss a point that those compare India have a strong feeling(hope and wish too) of India(n) doing even better in the world and they compare things because of that feeling. I am in US and when ever i see a better thing here I wish if India has the same thing.
@14..I think you have missed out on screen awards this year.Sajid Khan made a complete mess and got rebuked by Ashutosh Gowarekar(he normally does not lose his cool but not this time) for his comments.And he replied by saying,”kisi ke baap mein itna dum nahi hai ke mere anchoring ke baare mein kuch bole”….or something like that.I dont think that chap is going to anchor an award function for a long time to come.
Hmm The Emcee at teh Oscars was Hugh Jackman himself! And he is bloody talented!
And IMHO Filmfare awards were the most when SRK and Saif hosted it. Ranbir and Imran just could not measure up!