Rang De Basanti bags eight Screen awards

Chopra dedicated his Best Film award to his team and in a grand gesture called on Mehra to share the spotlight with his Munnabhai team. “Great cinema is possible only if you have a great team, so let’s celebrate the team spirit,” he said.

Mehra, on his part, recalled “when we started out, there were no takers for the script of Range De Basanti and now it’s no longer our film. It’s the people’s film.”

Kapoor dedicated her first Screen honour to her director Vishal Bharadwaj, sister Karisma Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor.

Interestingly, Bharadwaj’s Omkara that was much criticised for its excessive use of cuss words ended up winning three of the four music awards. Bharadwaj won for Best Music Director, Gulzar for Best Lyrics for Beedi and Sunidhi Chauhan for Best Playback Singer (Female), again, for Beedi. Shaan won the Best Playback Singer (Male) award for Chaand Sifarish from Fanna.

For his evil turn as Omkara’s Langda Tyagi, Saif Ali Khan took home the Best Actor in a Villainous Role.

The other big winners of the night were Shreyas Talpade (Best Actor in a Comic Role for Dor), Kirron Kher (Best Actor in a Supporting Role-Female for Rang De Basanti) and Arshad Warsi (Best Actor in a Supporting Role-Male for Lage Raho Munnabhai). Warsi toasted his win to “Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan who introduced me to the profession and to Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani who gave my profession back to me when it was almost over.”

Well, if Circuit is there can Munnabhai be far behind Sanjay Dutt was felicitated with the Critics Choice Best Actor for his lovable goon act in Lage Raho Munnabhai. For her evocative performance in Dor, Ayesha Takia was chosen as the Critics Choice Best Actress.

The other big special honour went to the team of Khosla Ka Ghosla which was decorated with the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in cinema. The film faced some stiff competition from Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor and Kabeer Khan’s Kabul Express but was chosen for “bringing to light a really big problem of land grabbing in an entertaining way.”

The award night also celebrated the past and the future of cinema. Yesteryear’s lovable twosome Biswajit and Mala Sinha were bestowed with Lifetime Achievement awards, while Kangana Ranaut and Siddharth were hailed as the Most Promising Actors.

Earlier of course, cinema history was created when Kareena Kapoor shared the stage with Helen on the Yeh Mera Dil song from Don. Shahid Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Sunidhi Chauhan, Isha Koppikar and Salman Khan were the other stage blazers. Nobody will forget this night, anytime soon.