India's official entry for the 79th Annual Academy Awards II

Anyways, now that Rang De Basanti has been nominated as India’s official entry to the 79th Annual Academy Awards, I feel that it has a good chance of making it to the final five. The main reason for it in my view is that the movie would be able to stand on its own keeping in mind the theme of the film and its relevance in today’s time.

Further, the presence of Aamir Khan in the film should ring a bell for the jury members as Aamir Khan was in the United States of America in the year 2002 when his film Lagaan was nominated as India’s entry to the Annual Academy Awards and was in fact nominated in as one of the five films in the Best Foreign Film category. The previous occasions when Indian films were nominated at the Annual Academy Awards were Mehboob Khan’s Mother India and Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay. Interestingly, Deepa Mehta’s “Water” is Canada’s official entry for the 79th Annual Academy Awards.

Here is wishing Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra, Aamir Khan, Ronnie Screwala and the rest of the team of Rang De Basanti all the very best and hope that they manage to bring Indian cinema on the world map.

India's official entry for 79th Annual Academy Awards I

The announcement for India’s official entry to the 79th Annual Academy Awards (Oscar Awards) was made yesterday. The competition was very tough as this year, Bollywood has had a very good run at the box office. There were movies like Lage Raho Munnabhai, Omkara, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Krrish and Rang De Basanti that were in the fray for being selected as India's official entry for the 79th Annual Academy Awards. Finally, the results were out yesterday and Rang De Basanti has been nominated as India’s entry to the 79th Annual Academy Awards this year.

In my view, out of the above movies that were in contention, the only movies that had a real chance of nomination were Lage Raho Munnabhai, Omkara and Rang De Basanti. I was very sure that Krrish and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna would never make the cut for the simple reason that although both being commercial blockbusters, they had nothing to offer that would be worthy to represent Indian Cinema at the 79th Annual Academy Awards. On the other hand, Lage Raho Munnabhai, Omkara and Rang De Basanti were all movies that would have made Indian cinema stand out amongst world cinema at the 79th Annual Academy Awards.

Don - VII

I am totally excited to see Farhan Akhtar’s Don. Not because of Shahrukh Khan but because of Farhan Akhtar and because of the fact that I totally loved the original Chandra Barot’s Don.

I have lot of respect for Farhan Akhtar as a director and a story teller. I thought Dil Chahta Hai was a fantastic debut for Farhan Akhtar and he followed it up with an even better Lakshya. Although Lakshya did not do very well commercially, I thought that it was a very good film in terms of storytelling and performance. According to me, Lakshya will definitely go down as one of better performances of Hrithik Roshan.

One interesting trivia about Farhan Akhtar’s Don was that Hrithik Roshan was supposed to play the main lead of Don / Vijay. However, it didn’t work out as a result of which Farhan Akhtar approached Shahrukh Khan for the role which was gladly accepted by Shahrukh Khan.