Nippon Vanitha Film Awards

The months of January- March in any year are the months of film awards. Up north, we have the Star Screen Awards and the Filmfare Awards to look forward to. Lesser known entities like Stardust Awards also exist. But an industry that is catching up with Bollywood as far as distribution of awards is concerned is definitely the Malayalam film industry. It started with the Asianet Film Awards in January. Vanitha has followed it up with the Nippon Vanitha Film Awards which were distributed in Kochi sometime in February. Surya TV rose to the occasion and telecasted the distribution of Vanitha Awards on the evening of 30 March. As expected, Mammootty and Meera Jasmine bagged the top honors. Mohanlal was adjudged the most popular actor. Vinodayathra won Sathyan Anthicaud the best director award while Katha Parayumbol bagged the best film award. Innocent and Samvrutha bagged the awards in the supporting category. Kalabhavan Mani and Suraj Venjarammodu were adjudged best villain and best comedian respectively. Anil Panachooran and M Jayachandran scored in the music category while veteran K J Yesudas and newbie Shwetha Mohan were adjudged the best singers. Bhama won the award for the most promising debut while Manoj Pillai was adjudged the best cameraman. There were enough for the audience in terms of entertainment. Dance performances by Shwetha Menon, Koena Mithra, Isha Sharvani and Sada were not very impressive. However, Karthik, Stephen Devassy, Chithra Iyer, M G Sreekumar, Rimi Tomy and Shaan enthralled the viewers with their vocals. Comedy skit by Sooraj Venjarammoodu and team evoked a few good laughs while Sujatha and Shwetha took the audience on a trip down memory lane by singing good old melodies of the past which were made immortal by P Leela, P Susheela, Madhuri, Vani Jayaram and S Janaki. In total, the event was well staged and well timed. The Manorama group proved it once again that they are professionals when it comes to staging events of this nature!