And The Oscar Goes...

BESTING A FORMER FLAME Kathryn Bigelow (middle) beating ex-hubby James Cameron for Best Director

THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED OSCARS has managed to achieve only a few triumphs and some instances of strained jokes on stage, and somehow failed to generate a wholesale impression of memorable appearances and quips even if it has a bankable duo manning in the middle.

This year's Oscars has all the trappings of spurious hand-me-downs, consolation prizes and positioning, where one could almost feel the dissimulation of giving the golden statue to those who are in need of that presence. It has that hysterical predictability in that by the time Kathryn Bigelow humbly accepted the award, newsreels were on their way of printing its second page of its classified ads.

Avatar went out of nowhere by the time Christoph Waltz went on stage as a supporting inglorious basterd. Suddenly the aliens of James Cameron, like Elvis in years past, has left the buliding. So silent and so precious as when M'nique delivered her intense lines of forgoing what is popular and instead doing what's right, a not so subtle indictment to that mischievous Clooney smile and that manic temperament of a Bullock.

But for some it took a while for them to conclude the the event was anything but triumphant. It was successful, but modest. This was evident, even from the start, that the Academy decided to raise the population of nominated pictures from having five entries last year to ten this year, in an attempt to boost the ratings of the event, to reclaim back its aplomb, its crazy heart in the mainstream race, since it has been bombarded with a host of independent films for a couple of years now.

Although Steve Martin cracked all the funny jokes, Alec Baldwin, on the other hand, was too marshall in the delivery, much like a veranda extension of his 30 Rock character. Some who attended the fete remained true to their signature roles on screen; Kristen Stewart remained boyish beside a werewolf, Meryl Streep being a Mama Mia that she is, Ben Stiller was as droll as ever even with an Avatar campaign, and George Clooney, well, need I repeat that same smirk all over again?

The entries, however, were technically and artistically sound in their own rights as in the case of District 9, blending real life conspiracies with state-of-the-art blandishments, a slight depiction of Terminator turned upside down by taking its cue on the war against terror. The idea of transporting a salt box house in the animated feature, Up, with a bunch of balloons that can only be found right across the Notre Dame of Kidapawan College seemed viable to the lovely bones of Job's daughters. And the pleasure of depicting Nelson Mandela more like a talent scout of the Manchester United.

Save for the trailblazing choices of this year's major awards, almost all of them first time winners, the festival was greeted with just a ferment of its once fabulous reputation. The emergence of indie films in part, which has dominated the scene lately, paved the way for this year's Oscars to lodge a dense filigree of entries and establish once more the appeal and excitability of being a forerunner of provocative and memorable films.

The films cited somehow lacked a cult following (except, of course, with Avatar to the technologically fanatic), as in those films created by the John Hughes, who was honored for his contribution of making legendary, trend-setting flicks such as The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Home Alone. Films that exude an inveterate influence in the succeeding generation of movie making. This year, however, was more like a compliance of a subtle skin, tragically in a Filipino fashion, where a spurious production of films can be seen in lieu of an incoming Metro Manila Film Festival. Films, domestic and foreign, do share their own kind of recession after all.

The disappearance of Farrah Fawcett could have been the backbreaker, although the committee reasoned that one of Charlie's Angels was best remembered by her TV roles, and that the inclusion of Michael Jackson in the montage of late actors and actresses was probably the ignition that took Alana Stewart, Fawcett's closest confidant, to protest right in front of Larry King, but eventually cooled off after news of Corey Haim's death.

In all it was an Oscar of reclaiming the lost art of delineation. It took pains of emphasizing, through a highlight in the nomination for the Best Animated Short, the precocity of a really sensible film, that it was more like a portentous execution of developing a structural tale instead of salivating too much on its tools and strangle a potentially good film.

That would have been quite a take if Kinatay was included in the lineup.