A New Dawn: My Blog's HIndie Awards

The Second Annual HIndie Awards

An Introduction

For weeks now, I've been closely following the Awards season and road that will lead to the Academy Awards. Every point at this time of the year, my rage grows. Not at the nominees of the Oscars and the Academy (for missing some obvious worthy films) but rather at the system of awards in place in Bollywood.

There's no denying the pathetic lust as well known director Mahesh Bhatt would put it, Bollywood has for the Oscars. Yet the reason for it remains unknown, so let me shed my two cents.

The Hindi film fraternity has a fascination for the Oscars because despite being THE OSCARS, those only awards that would really matter even from a Hindi film awards perspective. Bollywood unlike regional Indian cinema, is obviously unwilling in most cases to make the kind of movies that could win them National awards. 

 

India's got to wait in line, cause Leo's been begging for that Oscar

This in most part leaves most Hindi films in the year, even the best  ones to scramble for awards that have to little to no meaning at all.

Hindi film awards are presented by media outlets, rather than let's say a film board like The Academy. The makers of these award shows are more interested in which stars will show up, who will dance and what awards they'll have to hand out to every single person that attended.

Awards from most Bollywood shows mean squat, their just a haphazard way for the industry to provide relief through mutual masturbation, and for these big corporations and media houses to make tons of money. It's sad, but it's true.

 

And the Award for Least Expressions on screen goes to...Katrina Kaif, Nargis Fakhri...sorry Jacqueline Fernandez...oh who cares, they're all expendable

Not to say that the films that are good don't deserve awards, it's just at the end of the day on an awards night; it's the awards that matter the least. Even in fair years like 2011 and 2012, award shows would be about low IQ jokes, dance numbers and stars over films.

It's why it got me thinking. What could be done to fix the Indian film award system?

There's no denying that the Oscars are flawed, yet theirs is the system that works the best along with the Globes and the BAFTA's etc.

So I tried thinking of how the Indian film fraternity could co-opt the structure of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Then I realized, that's the dumbest idea I could think of. Their two big plot holes to the system.

The first is that The Academy works on a basis of structural bodies for most aspects of the Awards. Example theirs an acting body and so on. These bodies are filled with lots of members from the fraternity, relating to the aspect.

First of all, the Hindi film industry isn't as huge in terms of prestigious number of people who can be members. Certain boards would be really small compared to others, such as the writers guild which would be full of directors. This way the idea of guilds and bodies would be negated.

Secondly is if the idea of bodies would work for the structure, the fact that the Industry is so tight knit and closed out; we'd have the same problem as we do with media awards again. The Hindi film industries small closed out structure has a huge reason; nepotism. It's such an incestuous bunch of people, that for any award to be voted on there would be heavy biased. 

 

If it were up to Bollywood, then their own star sons and daughters would win all awards...although to be fair Alia Bhatt (center) has actually been fantastic this year

So this was stupid, but then I thought of something. Sure I want to in some capacity work there, but fuck the Hindi film industry.

I'll use the other part of my stupidly planned awards show for myself. The next part isn't really an original idea, heck I used it with the Golden Globes.

Now sure the Golden Globes aren't the best awards show format. Some would even say the division between Comedies and Drama is a bit insulting to the former genre, because Drama always ends up last on the show indicating it's importance over the other.

Still I like that the structure then allows for multiple nominees and at times it doesn't feel like some of the best of the year were left out. The Globes also has a tendency not to be as bait-y as the Academy.

So in vein of the globes and my own Bollywood awards from last year, I created this structure;

Best Picture
Best Director	Best Screenplay
Best Cinematography	Best Editing
Best Dialogue	Best Documentary
Best Actor in A Lead Role Male	Best Actor in A Lead Role Female
Best Actor in A Supporting Role Male	Best Actor in A Supporting Role Female
Best Newcomer Male	Best Newcomer Female
Best Soundtrack	Best Score

As you can see, I updated a bit. I'll be doing the main award numbers the way most Hindi film awards do, so there's no vfx/production or costume design.

Secondly, last year I had seven nominees for the major awards, so that stays here. The difference is in each category, there can be a minimum of five and a maximum of seven.

The next big thing is that unlike the Globes, I also divided the supporting categories between genres.

Finally the big question is my film award. Due to the two sides being divided, there's a chance that not the top ten best Bollywood films of the year are featured.

To explain, all ten best of this year could be from the drama genre. Thus the last three will miss out due to the awards structure.

As such I will put up singular posts for each of these awards like with my Underdog awards, but I will also do a Tintin's top ten Best Bollywood films of 2014.

Only difference being that in the top ten post, I will rank the films but only provide a pros/cons list and score but no in depth explanation. Though I will review the number one film of the year separately.

Also unlike the Globes, where they always favor drama over comedy, I'll decide the awards for acting presented on a best ranking system for each section. Such that if female supporting drama is better than male drama, then it will go last on its separate post e.g. Part 9. 

'Nuff Said, 

Aneesh Raikundalia