The winners of 56th National Awards were announced last night. The awards were given to the films that were released in 2008. Unlike last year, this year South Indian films has got very few awards but Director Bala has made us proud by winning one of the most prestigious awards- Best Director for his 4th Film Naan Kadavul. It also bags another award for Best Makeup (for showing the beautiful Pooja as an unidentifiable beggar). Bengali film Antaheen is adjudged the Best Film of 2008. It stars Rahul Bose with Aparna Sen and Sharmila Tagore. It also gets other three awards for Best Cinematography, Best Lyrics and Best Playback singer-female. I’m soooo glad to know Shreya Ghoshal wins the coveted award for the fourth time in just 6 years. The specialty of this year is she gets the award for two songs. One in the Bengali film Anataheen and in the Marathi film Jogwa. These two movies have got the more number of awards and Shreya is a part in both for the same category. Shreya… U Rock Sweet Heart!!! Marathi film Jogwa bags five awards including Upendra Limaye (Inspector Bhosle of Page 3 Fame) for the Best Actor.
Priyanka Chopra gets the Best Actress award for her stunning performance as Meghna Mathur in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion. I became her fan from that movie and recommended many of my friends to watch it but I didn’t expect she would get National Award. In general, National Awards are given to slow paced art films which get flopped at the BO. Most of them don’t get released in theatres. This time commercially hit movies are awarded. Kangna Ranaut gets for the Best Supporting Actress for Fashion. Rock On is adjudged the Best Movie in Hindi. Arjun Rampal gets the Best Supporting Actor for Rock On. (It’s a decent performance but I don’t think it deserves National Award). I expected A Wednesday would get the Best Film award or at least Best Hindi Film. But still it managed to get the Indira Gandhi award for the Best First Film of a Director. Oye Lucky Oye Oye wins for the Best Popular Film. Jodha Akbar bags two awards. Obviously one is for Best Costumes (Neeta Lulla) and the other for the Best Choreography for the song Azeem o Shahenshah (Chinni Prakash & Rekha Prakash). Unfortunately A.R.Rahman doesn’t get the award for Best Music. Composers Atul & Ajay get that for Jogwa. Nandita Das’ debut film Firaaq gets the awards for Best Editing (SreekarPrasad) and Best Art Direction (Gautam Sen).
The surprise is Vaaranam Aayiram has got the Best Film in Tamil. It’s a good film but not the Best of 2008. When Subramaniyapuram swept all the Filmfare Awards, it didn’t manage to get the National Award. Neither Naan Kadavul is given the Best Film. The thing that shocked me is Dasavatharam didnt get any award. Kamalhassan had put heart and soul to portray the 10 different characters and had woven a neat screenplay. He gets for none. The jury should have given him a Special Award for his achievements in his 50 year career. I’m so sad for that. Such moviesh should be recognized and encouraged. I strongly believed Kamal would get the Best Actor award this time. I’ve to see Jogwa what Upendra has done more than Kamalhassan. But he needs no more awards and recognitions except an Oscar.
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