There wasn't as much euphoria in the terms of the number of hits during the last 12 months. In fact, 2006 still stands out as one of the biggest and brightest years in the new millennium.

Hit list
Of about 150 films released, including little ones and dubbed versions, 17 did well. The biggies were Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om , Shimit Amin's Chak De! India, David Dhawan's Partner, Anees Bazmi's Welcome, Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par, Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met, Sajid Khan's Heyy Babby, Vipul Shah's Namastey London, Priyadarshan's Bhool Bhulaiya, Prashant Chadha's Aap Kaa Surroor and Mani Ratnam's Guru.

The satisfactory list included Mira Nair's The Namesake, Anurag Basu's Life in a Metro, Rahul Dholakia's Parzania, Manish Acharya's Loins of the Punjab Presents, Sagar Ballary's Bheja Fry and Madhur Bhandarkar's Traffic Signal.

The poor openings of this week's releases, Anurag Kashyap's Return of Hanuman and Raju Khan's Showbiz, seemed to give credence to the still-persistent superstition the films released in the last week of the year are doomed to flop.

Flop show
Return of Hanuman's opening collections were in the range of 15 to 20 per cent.

The Bhatt Brothers' Showbiz opened with less than 10 per cent collections. In some small centers, shows of Showbiz were cancelled because of zilch audience.

The trade believes the collections of Return of Hanuman could pick up because of the holiday audience. But like it or note, the chances are bleak.

Taare Zameen Par and Welcome continued to do good business during their second weekend. Although Welcome sawa fall in collections after its first five days, it has done well generally, with record-breaking first week billings in some parts of the country.

Taare Zameen Par has held steady at multiplexes. Evening shows are house full almost everywhere. There are no releases scheduled for this Friday. Phew!