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If the Oscars are about awarding the best in Hollywood, the Razzies are about rewarding the worst! A tradition started by John Wilson holding potluck dinner parties at his house to coincide with the Academy Awards presentation became a formal awards ceremony and has now been ongoing for 3 decades.

The Razzies of the Golden Raspberries are presented for “Celebrating 29 years of Dishonoring Hollywood’s Worst”. They are there to poke fun at all the actors and filmmakers who presume to take themselves a bit seriously, who are presented with "golfball-sized raspberry" which sits atop a Super 8 mm film reel, as against the Academy awards which is the “Giving out of little gold naked men” for the Oscars.  This is an opinionated bunch of nominations that does not respect box office takings or star statuses.

The presenters make no bones about how all the nominees (collectively) suck and it would presumably take a keenly developed sense of humour to actually come up on stage and accept an award that names one the “Worst” of anything. Halle Berry was famously declared worst actress a few years ago, and she sportingly came on stage, accepted her ‘Award’ and made a long, mock acceptance speech where she thanked everyone and which had everyone in splits. She accepted her award while holding her Academy Award for her performance in Monster's Ball in one hand and her Golden Raspberry Award trophy in the other! Names such as Steve Martin, Eddy Murphy, John Travolta, Sandra Bullock, Mike Myers, Ben Affleck find mention among the Razzie Nomineess, to name only a few.

This is a useful way to cut  a lot of self important people down to size in the movie industry. It would be useful to have a Bollywood version of the Razzies; but wait we do have some worthies who got into the nitty gritty of the Worst Bollywood Films of the year 2009. India.com compiled a helpful list of 18 worst films, neatly categorised into "Overrated", "Unreasonably Horrid" and "Vomit Inducing":

    * Paa was named most overrated, for casting a 6.3” (Amitabh Bachchan is a tall man by any standards) man in a role that should rightly have been essayed by a person under four feet height.
    * Chandni Chowk to China was the among the "Unreasonably Horrid" because it was made with “a five year old to write a screenplay, approach big stars, invest millions on sets and costumes, compose boring songs and extend the length of the movie to 3+ hours."
    * Kambakht Ishq is in the vomit inducing category, described as the Akki-Kareena suckfest, which is an “unmitigated disaster featuring painfully over-the-top performances”.

Some other honourable mentions go to films such as Agyaat, London Dreams, Aladin, Main aur Mrs Khanna, Luck, Jail, Blue, What’s Your Rashee, as being among Rediff's 10 Worst films of 2009