MUMBAI: A movie that does well in its year of release is appreciated with awards and nominations in the earlier part of the next year. The next few months of 2008 will see a slate of award ceremonies for Bollywood. And the nominations for the 14 th Annual Star Screen Award for 2007 are the first to be out.

These nominations mean a lot of cheer for maverick director Anurag Basu’s Life in a Metro. Of the 27 categories, UTV’s Life in a Metro has been nominated for 14 categories, close on the heels of Taare Zameen Paar, which was given 15 nominations.

The nominations include Best Film, Best Director (Anurag Basu), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Male/Female) for Sharmaan Joshi and Konkana Sen Sharma respectively, Best Background Music (Raju Singh), Best Music (Pritam), Best Playback Singer (Male) for Soham’s soulful Inn dinon as well as Best Lyrics (Sayeed Quadri), Best Story and Screenplay (Anurag Basu), Best Dialogue (Sanjeev Dutta), Best Editing ( Akiv Ali) and Best Sound (Hitendra Ghosh).

“We are delighted with the nominations for Life in a Metro. The film purely speaks about the city life, which connects to everyone globally and hence is appreciated by the masses. The film has an Anurag Basu signature which is intelligent, real and entertaining. Content is King at the end of the day and UTV has proved it with Life in a Metro,” UTV Motion Pictures EVP-creative and projects Ram Mirchandani said.

The awards will be given away on 10 January. The sole yardstick for judging films for these awards was cinematic excellence. Life in a Metro thus claims a big stake on creative as well as technical awards.