2006 - The Year That Was - III

Naseeruddin Shah made a promising entry into the Directors’ club. Priyadarshan continued to churn out run of the mill slapstick comedy once again with little success. Shirish Kuner’s much touted debut turned out to be nothing but a damp squib. Ravi Chopra and Sanjay Gadhvi reprised their previous acts. However, only the latter met with some amount of commercial success.

J. P. Dutta went askew with his interpretation of the famous courtesan. Kunal Kohli was spot on with his casting coup. However, this year belonged to Rakeysh Mehra, Rajkumar Hirani and Vishal Bharadwaj for churning out the biggest (and probably the best Hindi films that we have seen in recent times). Over and above these biggies, some of the fresh and new talent to emerge are Dibaker Banerjee and Homi Adjania.

It would be very difficult to cover all the movies that were released this year. However, the attempt is to capture some of the best cinema we had this year including some of the biggest mistakes / duds of the year. So, here is my take on the highlights of the year 2006 that is about to whiz past us in a few days time.