As in most years, it was a film in the second half of the year that swept more awards than any other. Don’t get us wrong – we are not saying that the sweep was not well-deserved. But we also strongly felt that “TDP” deserved to be the exclusive winner of even the two trophies that it shared with “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara,” for Best Film (Balaji Films) and Best Dialogues (Rajat Aroraa). We must state that the joint winners were simply not in the same league among these two categories.

The year’s biggest hit in terms of cost-profit ratio swept also the Best Director (Milan Luthria), Best Actor – Female (Vidya Balan), Best Costume Design (Niharika Khan & Moiz Kapadia) and Best Playback Singer – Female (Shreya Ghoshal for “Ooh La La”) honors. Again, from the nominees this year, we felt that Bappi Lahiri, her co-singer, deserved the Best Playback Singer –Male trophy much more than any other nominee.

Vidya Balan and Shreya Ghoshal completed a hat-trick at the Screen awards, and both looked resplendent in their saree and gown respectively. 

Rambir Kapoor won for Best Actor (“Rockstar”), the film’s only deserving trophy among Best Music (A.R.Rahman) and Best Male Singer (Mohit Chauhan for “Saadda Haq” and “Phir Se Udd Chala”). Shah Rukh Khan (“RA.One,” “Don 2”) and Deepika Padukone (“Desi Boyz,” “Aarakshan”) won the Best Actor – Popular Choice awards. Priyanka Chopra (“7 Khoon Maaf”) and Prashant Narayanan (“Murder 2”) won for Best Actor in a Negative Role – Female and Male respectively. Dibyendu (“Pyaar Ka PunchNama”) and Parineeti Chopra (“Ladies VS Ricky Bahl”) won for Best Debuts while Saif Ali Khan (“Aarakshan”) and Aditi Roy Hydari (“Yeh Saali Zindagi”) won for Best Supporting Actors.

“Aarakshan” picked up the Ramnath Goenka Award, and won Prasoon Joshi the Best Lyricist trophy for “Accha Lagta Hai” from the film. One nominee mentioned it as “Aakarshan!”

Ekta Kapoor got a special award as “Performer of the Year” for her sustained success at television and films – in the last two years, she has produced five films, one critically acclaimed and four commercially hits. Her proud parents Jeetendra and Shobha Kapoor and brother Tusshar Kapoor looked on.

A special tribute was paid to Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor, and Suneil Anand, Aditya Raj Kapoor (their respective sons) and Neela Shammi Kapoor were present. The Lifetime Achievement trophy went to Asha Bhosle. Other prominent winners included “Shaitan” and “Delhi Belly.”

Shah Rukh Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Vidya Balan, Chitrangda Singh and Sajid Khan were among the hosts, while the performers included all the four stars above as well as Anushka Sharma, Priyanka Chopra and Katrina Kaif.

Others present included Yash Chopra, Kiran Shantaram, Ramesh Sippy, Gulshan Grover, Anurag Kashyap and Kalki Koechlin, Rekha, Neetu Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh and others. As always, the show began with the Marathi awards and two of the four were annexed by another Ekta Kapoor film, her debut Marathi production, “Taaryaanche Bait.”