Academy Awards

WHY ON EARTH were the Academy Awards held on Palm Sunday this year? Doesn't Hollywood and the academy know that Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week and commemorates the day that Christ rode into Jerusalem? This was not the appropriate time for Hollywood to honor its best in filmmaking achievements. The academy should have rescheduled the ceremony for after Easter. If they could reschedule it after Martin Luther King was killed, when Reagan was shot (holding it on the Wednesday after Easter)

Rwandans, Bosnians and Indonesians are dying . . .to see what Gwyneth Paltrow will wear to the 72nd annual Academy Awards! But despair not, citizens of Kigali, Sarajevo and Jakarta. Regardless of the hardships you've had to endure over the past few years - the massacres, ethnic cleansings and political upheavals - you will get to see the Academy Awards in all their overlong glory - provided, of course, you have television sets. And electricity. The Academy Awards and the Golden Globes both license the rights to their programs to other nations around the world.

East Coast viewers who annually lurch off to bed after yet another interminable Academy Awards broadcast may fantasize about editing Oscar down to a manageable length. But Sony Music Video, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is actually doing something to sort the wheat from the chaff. The company will offer a 90-minute anthology of Oscar's best moments from 1970 to 1991. The tape will be priced at $19.98 and will be released in February - the month when the Academy Awards nominations are announced and Oscar interest begins to mount.

Why should any of us care who wins the Academy Awards? Some Oscar choices over the years have been absurd, and it's more of an inside-the-industry popularity contest and fashion show than a recognition of quality. Yet, moviegoers enjoy comparing their choices with those of the Hollywood insiders. Other people are thrilled by any competition, even though they may not have seen half the films in the running. And TV has turned it into such a spectacle, it's a must-see, just to stay "with it. " We admit to being swept along by the hype, in spite of ourselves, even though we're sure some of the choices will appall us.

Are you an Oscarologist? If you answer correctly eight or more of these questions, consider yourself a grad of the college of Academy knowledge. 1. The Oscar winner who is the child and grandchild of Oscar winners: (a) Michael Douglas (b) Jane Fonda (c) Gwyneth Paltrow (d) Sofia Coppola 2. The Academy Award winner who can boast that Mom and Dad are also winners: (a) Robert Downey, Jr. (b) Angelina Jolie (c) Liza Minnelli (d) Anjelica Huston 3. The first Academy Awards ceremony was held at: (a)

I got a telephone call about 12:30 a.m. Monday. It was a family member asking if I was watching the Academy Awards, in which Halle Berry had just become the first African American woman to win a best-actress Oscar in the 74-year history of the event. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. Denzel Washington had just won for best actor, the first black to win that top honor since Sidney Poitier received it in 1963 for Lilies of the Field. I haven't done a scientific study.

Make-believe. Fantasy. Made-up people and stories and worlds. When much is broken, make-believe can help salve the wounds. Sunday night in Los Angeles, a bunch of professional make-believers got together and had some fun at the 75th annual Academy Awards. It was, to be sure, an awkward affair, a show muted by war thoughts, by fraidy-cat advertisers who pulled out at the last moment. But it mostly managed to sidestep the ugliness, in a needed respite from the grim clash in Iraq.

How can John Huston's "The Dead" be named Best of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics, yet not even be among the five movies nominated for Academy Awards? That's typical of the paradoxes emerging every year when the Academy lists its top-runners. You might also wonder how a just-better-than-average thriller like "Fatal Attraction" is among the top five, but not "The Dead" and other top-class films like "Empire of the Sun" and "House of Games" and "Radio Days. " Even allowing for wide differences in taste, this annual cinema sweepstakes always raises more controversy than consensus among people who still think "best" really means "best" to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Next Monday is the night we wait for each year: the Academy Awards ceremony. But you don't have to wait to cast your vote. Every day this week you can pick your favorites in a different Oscar category. Just call the number below from your touch tone phone and follow the directions. On March 21, look for the complete line-up of the Oscar Phone Poll winners in the Daily News Yo! section, along with an Oscar scorecard to help you follow along with that evening's actual winners. TO VOTE FOR BEST PICTURE call 854-2955.