Academy Awards

Fargo, the dark, comic film about a bungled kidnapping in the Midwest, won six Independent Spirit Awards Saturday at a ceremony honoring independent film in Santa Monica, Calif. The Gramercy Pictures film, up for seven Academy Awards tonight, won for best feature film, director Joel Coen, actress Frances McDormand, actor William H. Macy, screenplay and cinematography. Another Oscar contender, actor-director Billy Bob Thornton, took the best-first-feature award for Sling Blade.

Sergei Bodrov's Prisoner of the Mountains begins with the bonds that develop between two Russian soldiers who are chained together after being captured by Chechnyan rebels. But the unique strength of the film stems from the more paradoxical links that grow between the hostages and those who guard them. This deservedly honored movie - it won the grand public prize at the Cannes Film Festival and is the Russian contender for best foreign-language film at Monday night's Academy Awards - is an antiwar movie of cumulative power.

Ready or not, tonight's the night for the Academy Awards show, at 9 on ABC (Channel 6). When you review the program's bumpy history, a major question arises: Can a host make or break the annual Oscar telecast? Past and present producers of the Academy Awards ceremony seem to think so. Most agree on one thing: It's easy for participants to get bogged down in the seriousness of the evening's honors and awards. And though a solemn attitude may be great for a Nobel Prize ceremony, it can spell death for a three-hour show that's supposed to be entertaining.

Abington High School will deck its Hall of Fame with six new inductees Oct. 21, including an Academy Award winner. The newest Hall of Famers are David E. Stone, Class of 1965, Academy Award winner for sound for the films Die Hard, Top Gun, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Bram Stoker's Dracula; William G. Zimmerman, Class of 1950, athlete and coach and a member of the Pennsylvania Wrestling Coaches Hall of Fame; William S. Ripley 3d, Class...

I'll tell you, it's hell getting old. I not only can't stay up for World Series games any more, I can't make it through the Academy Awards. I start out bright as a People magazine subscriber, but as the evening wears on, things start running together, and I begin to doze off. And in the doze, I dream. I dream up my own Oscar ceremonies, awards to real world people engaged in real world dramas. For example, here are the Oscars I gave out the other night, while the Motion Picture Academy was discovering (Surprise!

Quick. Name Al Pacino's greatest performances. Panic in Needle Park; The Godfather; Serpico; Dog Day Afternoon; The Godfather, Part II, and Sea of Love. So which one earned the bantam-sized heavyweight his Oscar? After going 0-for- 6 in nominations, Pacino won last year for . . . Scent of a Woman. Hoo-hah, indeed. Now, Katharine Hepburn, the most-nominated, most-winning performer in Academy Award history. (She's 4-for-12.) Greatest performances? Probably Little Women, Alice Adams, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, Summertime and Long Day's Journey Into Night.

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.

CBS president Howard Stringer said it best: "It's the only time culture sneaks onto prime time. " He was referring to the annual Kennedy Center Honors, which will be broadcast tonight on his network. Walter Cronkite hosts the two-hour gala, taped Dec. 5 at the Kennedy Center's Opera House in Washington. The 1993 laureates are a stellar group indeed: gospel legend Marion Williams (who makes her home in Philadelphia), retired late night television host Johnny Carson, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, conductor Sir Georg Solti and dancer-choreographer Arthur Mitchell.

If it hadn't been for the chefs' blazing white coats amid the black tuxedos and sparkly cocktail dresses, you would swear that you were at the Academy Awards. Unhappy losers grumbled. Winners beamed and dreamed of the dollars the publicity might bring them. Presentation and acceptance speeches were all too often windy and wooden despite celebrity emcee Morley Safer's urgings to be brief and "try to have fun. " But Monday night's marathon James Beard Awards program (the third)