And the Envelope, Please

FOUR QUESTIONS to keep in mind when you watch the 59th Annual Academy Awards at 9 p.m. Monday on ABC: Who's gonna win? Who deserves to win? Who doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of winning? Who would you choose if you could vote for whoever the heck you wanted?

Permitme to pontificate a bit...

BEST PICTURE

Gonna: Platoon. Because it's the "moral choice." Because it made the cover of Time Magazine. Because everybody has decided it's the Vietnam film on account of it's so goshdarned literal. I'll take Colonel Kurtz or Russian roulette players over this war-is-hell pic any day of the week.

Oughta: Platoon. Like it or not, It's the best film of the five.

Snowball: Children of A Lesser God. I'll read one of Helen Keller's waffle irons if this picture wins.

Wanna:.....she wore Bluue Vellllllvet! This was the only outstanding American film released in the past year. But it's subversive with a capital S, so the Academy nominated Lynch for Best Director, but neglected to give him a Best Picture bid. Did the same to thing to Woody Allen's Manhattan, and lotsa others. Hey, Frank! Pass the gasmask!

BEST DIRECTOR

Gonna: Oliver Stone, Platoon. Because Best Picture and Best Director are peanut butter and jelly. Here's a preview of Stone's acceptance speech: "I'd just like to thank...boo hoo hoo...all those kids who...boo hoo hoo...in the Big 'Nam. This one's for you, dudes! Take no prisoners!"

OUGHTA: OLIVER Stone. The direction was awfully slick, especially the combat scenes. I liked the animated fighter plane that zoomed over Tom Berenger's head at the film's climax.

Snowball: David, Lynch, Blue Velvet. Yeah. Maybe a severed human ear will host the ceremonies, too!

Wanna: David Lynch, Blue Velvet.

BEST ACTRESS

Gonna: Kathleen Turner, Peggy Sue Got Married. It was an okay performance in a terrible movie, but Sissy Spacek has already won, Marlee Matlin has a funny name, and nobody wants to hear Jane Fonda give a speech about her new political work-out video, Sandinista's Aerobicising Against Apartheid.

Oughta: Sissy Spacek, Crimes of the Heart. She was real good in this so-so movies. I toast that little loony with a glass of lipsmackin' lemonade.

Snowball: Sigourney Weaver, Aliens. Think about it. Think about what this nomination says about the taste and integrity of Academy members. Think about a screaming baby alien exploding out of Weaver's chest halfway through her acceptance speech: "I'd like to thank my parents, and my high school elocution teacher, and...Oh, excuse me, I must have gas...What the...Oh, my God!...SQUEEEEA AAL!"

WANNA: MELANIE Griffith, Something Wild. It's ironic that the Academy will honor Kathleen Turner for a performance Melanie Griffith performed better. In both movies a woman's world is turned upside down when she attends her high school reunion. Only in Something Wild the world is our world, whereas the world of Peggy Sue is, err, Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

BEST ACTOR

Gonna: Paul Newman, The Color of Money. Because he's never won before, and they figure they owe him, and it's like voting for Reagan: if you didn't do it, you couldn't understand it.

Oughta: Bob Hoskins, Mona Lisa. Uncontestably the best male performance of the year.

Snowball: Dexter Gordon, Round Midnight.

Wanna: Bob Hoskins, Mona Lisa.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Gonna: Tess Harper, Crimes of the Heart. This performance sucked the root. But they'll give it to Harper because it had just the sort of nutty Southern Belle Phoniness the Academy gobbles up...as opposed to Spacek's genuine Southern nuttiness, peanuts down the Coke bottle etc., which was acting, not caricature.

Oughta: Dianne Wiest, Hannah and Her Sisters. Best of the bunch, and a fitting representative of Hannah's excellent and otherwise unrecognized quintet of supporting actresses.

Snowball: Maggie Smith, A Room With A View. She won for California Suite, and didn't deserve it then. Why throw a bad actress a chewed bone twice?

WANNA: ELLEN Greene, Little Shop of Horrors. Hey, why the hell not? She acted circles around the other nominees--and she can sing, too.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Gonna: Michael Caine, Hannah and Her Sisters. Because he was in five million other movies, including Mona Lisa, and he gave the same performance in each, and nobody knows exactly why they like this man, but they want to validate their insecurities, so they'll give him the Oscar.

Oughta: Tom Berenger, Platoon. Just a tad bit better than Willem Dafoe's Good Angel, Berenger's performance as Bad Mother Barnes gave this movie an edge it would otherwise have lacked. I'd like to see them split the Oscar--live, on stage, with a grenade or something.

Snowball: Denholm Elliot, A Room With A View. He'll be watching the Awards show from his room in the Best Western, flipping back and forth between it and My Three Sons, mooning the screen, throwing Beer Nuts at it.

Wanna: Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet. It's a strange world, isn't it? Hopper gives the performance of a lifetime and then gets nominated for Hoosiers, which is Rocky in hightops. Life can be pretty cruel. But Hopper could walk off with the award just out of Academy spite. And let's hope he spews Pabst Blue Ribbon over the whole worthless bunch of them.

And the envelope please...?