Filmfair Awards 2004

The choreographed farce that is the Filmfare Awards will be upon us shortly. Given that it's been over a decade that I lost both faith and interest in them and given that I watched more new Hindi films last year than ever before, here's my own choice of winners. The picks are obviously narrow and mainly restricted to the films I saw, so they will be quite contentious, but definitely more believable than the FF bash. Here goes (* indicates Films I haven't seen):

Best Film: Maqbool (Ab Tak Chappan is second for me)
Best Director: Vishal Bharadwaj, Maqbool (... and likewise Shimit Amin)
Best Actor: Nana Patekar (Ab Tak Chappan) (Hrithik Roshan - Lakshya, a close second)
Best Actress: I invite entries here. I have no idea. Perhaps Zaara Zinta or Rani M for "Hum Tum". Perhaps even Kirron Kher for "Khamosh Paani"*
Best Supporting Actor: Saif Ali Khan (Ek Hasina Thi) (Toss up with Pankaj Kapur for Maqbool, but I thought Saif Ali Khan really deserved applause what for him was a big departure)
Best Supporting Actress: Rani Mukherjee (Yuva) (Revathy in Ab Tak Chappan came close)
Best Story: Maqbool
Best Screenplay: Yuva
Best Dialogues: Vishal Bharadwaj, Abbas Tyrewala (Maqbool)
Best Music: A.R.Rahman (Meenaxi) (Not Veer-Zaara* simply because of Lata M; S-E-L for Lakshya would be closest)
Best Lyrics: Javed Akhtar (Most of his stuff last year - Lakshya, Swades, VZ)
Best Male Singer: Sonu Nigam ("Do Kadam Aur Sahi", Meenaxi)
Best Female Singer: Sadhana Sargam ("Aao Na...", Kyun! Ho Gaya Naa*)
Best Mass Entertainment Film: Main Hoon Na*
Special Mentions: Christopher Popp for his cinematography in "Lakshya", Rajat Kapoor for the Daler Mehndi Doll in "Raghu Romeo", the ever-persevering Anurag Kashyap for his multifarious dialogues in "Yuva", Kunal Vijaykar in "Ab Tak Chappan", Prabhu Deva for "Main Aisa Kyun huun" in "Lakshya" and Farah Khan & Kunal Kohli for their quizzing-friendly "tributes" in their films.

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