Review of Producers Guild Apsara Awards 2008

I got a chance this past weekend to see the Producers Guild Apsara Awards. This is the first time I have had a chance to see this particular award show and I understand these awards are being given by the producers and other members of the film industry, so it is a little different from the other awards that are normally given by different media like Filmfare, Screen India etc.

The show was okay and went the way most shows go these days , with so many performances between awards that sometimes we forget that it is an awards show not just a variety entertainment show. There were a couple of cringe worthy performances by Rakhi Sawant and Katrina Kaif that could easily have been replaced with something better and more classy. Kareena Kapoor dancing to the songs of Jab we met is becoming a drag, almost every award show this year had one performance of hers to this same song from the same movie.

On the positive side Jaaved Jaffry as host is almost always a good bet as he entertains and does some really good impressions. His impression of a Punjabi who runs a salon was hilarious.Here is the video of Jaaved doing the Punjabi impression, it comes on after a few minutes (at about 3:35) into the video...



And here is his another short impression of his that was entertaining, it comes on after Bipasha's dance performance (at about 1:06)



Ganesh Hegde, a choreographer whom I have heard a lot about, but saw performing for the first time gave a pretty good performance.

The most surprising thing about the award ceremony was not so much what was there as what was not there. The awards were for movies released in 2007 yet not in one single category did I see a mention of the movie Taare Zameen Par, the music of the movie was not nominated, the singers of the movie were not nominated, the actors, director and producer, none of these people were nominated in a single category. Amazing isn't it ? I really thought the movie was pretty good and would at least be nominated in some categories. Chak de another good movie of 2007 seemed to sweep the awards in a lot of categories.