Results | Blue Notebook | Editor's Pen

Hello everybody!!!

This year’s Blue Notebook truly reflects the spirit of cinema. What an year 2012 was. Incredible, to say the least. We saw alternate cinema getting a strong ground in mainstream cinema, we saw indie doing so well and we saw emergence of actors, who till now were part of the crowd nobody remembered. What an year…

Three technical Categories… Best Art Direction. This was supposed to be tricky as the nominations covered a range rarely seen before. India won. The sleepy urban Kolkata and fiery raw rural Wasseypur. Yes… the honors goes to Kahaani and Gangs Of Wasseypur. The second technical category was Best Editing. Frankly, we found that there was hardly any contest. The most well edited movie of the year was Kahaani. Last and perhaps our favourite – Best Music. Vicky Donor seemed to lead the chart till the last morning and we saw an Usain Bolt in Cocktail who grabbed the award in the last moment with a small… real small difference.

We always argue that Bollywood, more than often, lack good stories. 2012 will be remembered as an exception. We had great stories. Kahaani, story of a pregnant women takes entire nation hostage with love, affection and care. Who would have thought that we will have a thriller there, I mean a thriller of that sort. However, the Best Story was an equally mesmerizing story of a couple, a doctor and a sperm donor. Chadhdhaji’s Vicky Donor turned out to be real Aryaputra.

National awards are dominated by regional cinema. Here goes our little tribute. Best Regional Language Film – Kaksparsh which won a close battle with Eega. The way we see cinema within India, we explore beyond borders as well. Along with blockbusters, we had  a small Kenyan movie as well. The Best Foreign Language Film was a contest between two films. The Dark Knight Rises lost. Argo won.

Coming back to mainstream…

Most compelling performances would include likes of Manoj Bajpayee, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Richa Chaddha in Gangs Of Wasseypur, Irrfan Khan in Paan Singh Tomar, Vidya Balan in Kahaani, Anjali Patil in Chakravyuh and Ranbeer Kapoor in Barfi. Contest was tough. Votes were split and there were many close calls. The Best Actor Male for 2012 was Irrfan Khan closely defeating Tigmanshu Dhulia. From Votes point of view, in the Best Actor Female category, we had a clear winner… Vidya Balan. Going by her records in Blue Notebook, we will have to think about giving her Lifetime Achievement Award soon. Chronic Offender.

Best Director! The winner has fought against odds. Over the time he has become symbol of rebellion in Hindi Cinema. People say he is the posterboy of Indian Indie. The award goes to Anurag Kashyap. However, it’s worth mentioning that it was a close call between Anurag, Dibakar and Sujoy. Brilliant cinema. Brilliant filmmakers.

Now the most awaited one. What was the best film of 2012. Its difficult to point out one winner. We have two joint winners. A tie shows the intensity of contest. The Best Film of 2012 are Gangs Of Wasseypur and Paan Singh Tomar. Rural India swept the country off its feet.

On that note, lets hope that 2013 will raise the mark.

Love

Sujoy Ghosh

Gautam In Cocktail | Actor's Eye

In recent times, in fact since the day the movie Cocktail has released I have read many articles blaming the lead Gautam to be of low character and not clear of what he wants in life. That the character is a hypocrite, who dumped the girl he used to hang out with just because she was very open minded, extrovert, outgoing and an independent working girl whom his mother wouldn’t have approved of, doesn’t go down well with me.

First of all Gautam did not choose between a working and a non-working woman because if one sees the complete movie he would know that both the leading female characters, sooner or later, had a job. The differentiation he did was between those two ladies out of whom one indulged in drinking day & night whereas another did not, one used to pray to god and another did not (Though may not be an issue for many but Saif's character may be preferred it that way), one wore decent clothes in front of people you are meeting for the first time and another did not (I really don't advocate wearing just a shirt in front of any stranger to be decent, putting aside the fact that Boman & Dimple were Gautam’s uncle & mother). Why do we always mix dressing decently with dressing conservatively? I don't understand. Last but not the least the difference of love interest, according to the story and a dialogue in the movie, also lied in the fact that one girl came to him very easily and one just ignored him which he took as a challenge.

Keeping in mind the above facts I don’t feel the character was a hypocrite and just chose one girl over another since he was bored of the first one or wanted to please his mother because in that case he wouldn’t have stuck to his true love till the end when he had an easy option of Veronica by his side. It was just that he fell for the first girl because of his similar lifestyle and later the goodness of the other girl made him realise his true call in life.

Written By: Gaurav Karmakar