The first blind item for today comes from Rajeev Masand. It is something that is not that big of a deal. Every time it is award season, ridiculous stories and blind items come out. We have given up watching award shows a while back and since our old lady never misses one (there is nothing better to do), we get a glimpse of it at times. It seems to have gotten worst, it now looks like some kind of drama show that they are making. And what’s this using the popular actors to make them host the show? It is like you are being to a wedding as the special guest and they make you serve the guests also before you get to sit and enjoy. Wait, why does this sound familiar?

Then, there is the award show becoming the Shah Rukh or Salman show! Meaning they take over some parts of the show and make it seem like you are at one of their concerts. With SRK, you get the jokes, the gazillion of special appearances from his heroines and some dance steps and maybe singing. With Salman, you get the same outfit the whole evening, a lazy hosting, appearances in bits and pieces, letting his minions take over, letting his minions perform, a performance by him and his minions (if they refuse to let his minions perform) and if we are lucky, a special appearance from the Romanian lady killing your earbuds with her powerful singing voice (Ek baaar baibei, Selfish hokeh appneh liyeh…).

And the performances! What have they become??! Added sounds, added claps and whistles, it’s like watching a kid’s show where the background score is added to make the kid react! It is all ridiculous.

So overall, award shows have become money-making machines for the organisers. Who can get the most stars and bigger stars to attend, they get to have better sponsors. We don’t really know if the organisers really do make money since they have to pay for all of these stars attending the award shows. The bigger stars are paid handsomely while the smaller actors are not! The organisers think that getting an invite is good enough for them.

That said, we had many good years of enjoying award shows. This was a good period before the Khans, Johars and other annoying people took over.

Enough about us, do YOU still watch award shows?

Check out the blind item below from Rajeev Masand. If you have seen the beginning of the award show in the blind item below, you know that they made this young actor look ridiculous by making him wear a saree. No joke! So many good performances this year and this one performance at an award show took away all the praises he got this year for playing the best friend of a star in a fake biopic film and acting opposite KebabJo’s Aloo Paratha in a thriller. He actually wore a saree as part of his hosting gig! Maybe the money was good, who knows?!

Bollywood Blind Item

Trouble on Stage

As if one needed any more evidence to prove that Bollywood awards ceremonies are a complete sham, the stories get increasingly unbelievable. At the first of the major year-end awards events, the organisers were so focused on making sure that the top stars showed up that they reportedly forgot they had a responsibility to ensure that technicians and filmmakers were fairly represented too.

Turns out that they forgot to invite the producer of one of the year’s top films, and only realised their snafu moments before the team was to be honoured on stage. A quick call made to the producer to check why he couldn’t be spotted at the event revealed that he hadn’t been invited. We’re talking about arguably one of the top three Hindi films of the year, which took the first place on many critics’ best-of-2018 lists.

That’s not all. Two of the five gentlemen nominated for Best Actor were emceeing the event, and none of the organisers thought it might be appropriate not to have them on stage when that particular category was being announced. In a turn of events no one could’ve predicted—but one that the organisers should’ve been mindful of—the award was split between two actors, neither of whom happened to be an emcee. So when the two winners walked up to claim their trophy, four of the five nominees were on stage at the same time, making it awkward for the two who hadn’t won. Apparently, they made their displeasure known to the organisers after the event.

OSOP Guesses

Year-End Awards Event: Star Screen Awards

Film: Stree

Hosts: Ayushmann Khurana and Vicky Kaushal