Cor Blimey

Just picking up the thread from George's post. People not following "news" online yesterday afternoon will probably not know that Aishwarya Rai was actually reported as having won the Best Actress award for Raincoat and I was understandably reeling. As were probably the rest of the sane populace. (This impression was soon corrected, but no one on those news sites seems to have printed an apology). In the melee, we didn't mind the Saif Ali Khan travesty so much. This is a classic Jeeves ploy - Wodehouse books usually have Bertie presented as the suitor to the fathers/uncles of Madeleine/Bobbie/Stiffy etc and then spring the real feller, so that the dad/unca thinks what a narrow escape he's had and readily agrees. Much of the same here :-)

I can think of 10, perhaps even 20 actors off-hand who would have easily had Mr. Khan and his entire family for breakfast in any 5-min role. I repeat my call for having a single large award function if we're only going to have a IIFA-Filmfare style production in all of them. Makes you wonder if Sudhir Mishra suffers from some kind of multiple personality disorder if he's the same man who made Hazaaro.n Khwaishe.n Aisi. Arguably, that doesn't mean he should get all his decisions right and isn't entitled to his opinion, but hard to swallow when the citation reads: "for his (S.A.K's) sheer ease, subtlety and spontaneity in portraying a complex and demanding role". What, in the Dum' Chums?

[Update]
Though being a little caustic about the Best Actor selection, was browsing through the list of awardees, was pleased to see Prabhu Deva win for Lakshya. Haven't seen any of the other major winners, so can't comment. Interesting to see that Santosh Sivan's Tamil film "Navarasa" has won Best Tamil Film award. He has always made offbeat and novel films (probably with the exception of Asoka, which was different from the rest - how good it turned out is a different matter)- this must be one of them too.