There were no winner surprises at all in the Idea IIFA Awards Dubai held at the Airport Expo on Friday evening. As expected, Black swept the popular awards for the best lead actors male and female, supporting actor female, director and film; Abhishek Bachchan took home the best supporting actor award for Sarkar and Kajre Re once again proved to be the most popular song of 2005.
Good surprises
But the awards did have quite a few other surprises - all good ones.
The show started just half an hour late; the seating arrangement actually allowed everyone, including the media (shunted right to the back of the auditorium) a good view of the stage and performers; several new award categories honoured the contribution of those who stay behind the scenes and go unrecognised; many South Indian stars were invited to present the awards; and best of all - the big stars finally showed up at this grand finale of the seventh IIFA Weekend and Awards hosted by Dubai.
Spectacular
The show was an entertaining and visually spectacular celebration of Hindi cinema.
But it was nice that organisers Wizcraft gave it an Arabian flavour.
The sets with domes, arches, latticed windows, Arabesque motifs and even a Bedouin tent evoked an Arabian Nights feel and the show began with a UAE folk dance.
Preity Zinta's performance was a tribute to the Arabian influence on Hindi film music and Akshay Kumar arrived on a camel.
There was also a special award for the movie that was the biggest money earner in the UAE.
The audience was thrilled to see their favourite stars Saif Ali Khan, Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar, Fardeen Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta, Dia Mirza and Katrina Kaif performing on stage; but it was also good to see several newcomers such as Upen Patel, Akshay Kapoor, Neha Uberoi and Sikandar Kher getting a spot in the limelight.
It was fun to watch the popular stars of today performing to their hit numbers, but Saif's brilliantly executed tribute to Rishi Kapoor was a refreshing change of pace, bringing back memories of another era.
Choreography
The choreography by Shiamak Davar was excellent, especially his creative presentation of Black and his troupe of dancers as well as Anna Singh's costumes were brilliant.
Lara Dutta, Fardeen Khan and Karan Johar did a good job as hosts of the show, demonstrating that this generation of filmmakers and stars take their work seriously but have the ability to laugh at themselves and their films.
Some things never change
Though the event was quite well organised some things never change. People who had paid up to Dh1,850 for tickets still had to wait for almost an hour in the sweltering heat before being allowed into the auditorium. Why can't audiences be allowed into the foyer while they wait for the show to start?
People continued to stream in even an hour after the show started. And as usual the latecomers stood around in the aisles blocking the view of those who had taken their seats on time and spoke loudly to each other or on their mobiles and were generally a nuisance.
The ushers were completely clueless. Instead of meeting people at the door and directing them, they hung around in the front watching the show allowing huge queues of latecomers to build up in the aisles.
And after the queues subsided, the ushers stood in the aisles to make sure that our view was still blocked.
