Kerala State Film Awards 2008

With much fanfare, the Kerala State Film Awards for 2008 have been announced and thankfully, there have not been many controversies. T V Chandran did cry foul and veteran actor Thilakan joined him but considering the kind of accolades Adoor Gopalakrishnan has been receiving from all over the world, we will have to conclude that Chandran has been hit by pangs of jealousy and Thilakan is getting slightly senile as testified by fellow actors of the Malayalam Film Industry. As usual, most of the awards went to movies that the public has not yet seen- Oru Pennum Randu Aanum, Bhoomi Malayalam, Vilaapangalkkappuram and Bioscope bagged most of the 29 awards and none of them has had a theatrical release (Except Vilaapangalkkappuram that was released a couple of weeks after the awards were announced) Since I am not a privilaged movie goer I have not had a chance to take a peek at any of the movies listed above but I am particularly aghast at a couple of awards- the most prominent being awarding "Innathe Chinthavishayam" as the most popular film with aesthetic appeal. Now, this is one movie that made its scriptwriter- director Sathyan Anthicaud quite unpopular and look at those badly shot song sequences and preachy dialogues- you call that aesthetic appeal? The State Award Jury seems to be particularly kind to Anthicaud this honor coming in consecution to the highly undeserving best scriptwriter award for "Vinodayathra" (Its heart was in the right place but its script was all over the place!) I was shell shocked to know that Shankar Mahadevan won the best male playback singer award for "Kalyana Kacheri" from Maadambi- that badly written, badly shot and awfully sung song up for an award- give me a break!!! Thankfully, Lal and Anoop Menon bagged well deserved awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively. Its such a great feeling to know that the jury did not get carried away by the clout of Mohanlal and Mamootty who have been churning out mediocre to bad performances with a certain regularity over the past few years... It is difficult to rate the jury as good, bad or average considering the fact that most of the awards went to films that the public had not seen. If it was not for those couple of awards that went to undeserving hands, I would have called it fairly "fair" this time around...