Priyadarshan, as the chairperson of the 2017 National Awards, was pulled up on social media for picking Akshay Kumar as the ‘best actor’ for 'Rustom'. Assault, assault, assault…." We heard a voice screeching this, out of the blue. It wasn't from a character in the movie playing before us. I looked around. It was from one of the three, fellow National Award judges sitting behind me in the wholly empty Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi. I could instantly sense his pain. This was the 50th or 51st feature film, each usually two to three hours long, that we'd watched together, back-to-back, with short lunch and quick smokes, in between. There was yet another day, and at least six to seven movies to go, and by the final evening, I found myself pacing up and down the hall, gawking closely at a Bengali period film, set in a village during the British Raj, that I felt had mistakenly been plucked out of the National Archives. I turned away from the screen, walked a full...
Bollywood to Hollywood