Time For An Oscar Playoff System

By Steven Rosen

The just-ended baseball playoffs were so great ? so exciting, so suspenseful and so much fun ? that it?s a shame we can?t also have Oscar playoffs.

Well, actually, we could. And maybe we should, too.

If a ?quality? independent movie?s success these days is dependent on an Oscar nomination and its attendant buzz, hype and speculation, why not double its chances to find an audience? Divide the Oscar season in half ? the first six months and second. Have nominations and voting for each half, then let the ?winners? slug it out, World Series-style, in a much-ballyhooed showdown.

By Steven Rosen

LOS ANGELES -- Leave it to John Waters to see the sexual possibilities of a blow to the skull.

The debonair and perversely witty director of such films as "Pecker," "Hairspray," "Cry-Baby" and "Serial Mom" just happened to be reading a medical article on concussions that noted such accidents can produce carnal lust in some victims.

Before he could shout "Kinsey!" the idea for "A Dirty Shame" was born. In this NC-17 comedy, so rated because of its pervasive sexual language and subject matter, a group of such "sexcussion" victims battles the anti-sex "neuters" for control of a drab, working-class section of Baltimore, Waters' hometown and the site of his films. The Fine Line Features film gets its national release Friday.