The Oscar celebration got off to an early start at Granita on Sunday afternoon as locals settled into salmon galette and chardonnay while viewing the most famous red carpet event in the world. Every year, Wolfgang Puck’s Malibu eatery pulls out all the stops for an Academy-worthy bash. The place was abuzz with speculation — who would take home the gold?

But first things first — and foremost — fashion. Would Jennifer Lopez delight us with a slit-up-to-here, bare-down-to-there sizzler? Would Geena Davis leave little to the imagination? And where, oh where, was Cher? We watched as packs of paparazzi popped away and entertainment reporters fawned breathlessly over the stars.

The crucial question — what would they be wearing? “Randolf Duke said everyone would be sexy, but not overdone,” observed Mary Zimmerman, as the A-list arrivals walked their walk. Zimmerman and pal Bonnie Apfelbaum marveled as Sigourney Weaver waltzed down the way, a vision in crimson. J. Lo did not disappoint with her sexy off-the-shoulder stunner (how does she do it?). Local nominee Ed Harris made his own fashion statement looking like a parish priest gone posh. Gum-smacking bad boy Russell Crowe also opted for unusual neckwear and long-haired James Coburn could have easily been mistaken for a lost member of ZZ Top. We watched with great anticipation to find a true crime of fashion. Luckily, Icelander Bjork came through as the evening’s ugly duckling dressed as road kill from Swan Lake.

OK — time to vote. Ballots were passed out amid much debate and there was a wide divide which separated friends and even family. “I’ve got ‘Gladiator,’ she’s got ‘Crouching Tiger,’ ” noted Zimmerman. “We don’t agree on any movies,” sighed Apfelbaum. “And our husbands aren’t even here yet.”

“I think ‘Gladiator’ will win because it was the biggest Hollywood blockbuster epic,” said Richard “Magic Mitts” Liss. “And I’m also going with Ed Harris; I’m taking a long shot.”

Eleven-year-old Brandon Kaplan was especially knowledgeable. “I’ve seen all of the best picture nominees, actually — even the ones rated R.” His vote — “Gladiator.” But the Circus Maximus didn’t score quite as well when it came to its hunky hero. “I don’t know about Russell Crowe,” said Bob Helper. “The guy’s stealing women away — married women.” (Well, Bob, that was last week).

With all keeping score, the awards were under way. Winners like “Traffic’s” Benicio Del Toro and Steven Soderbergh drew great applause.

In the category of best commercial the Oscar went to … Britney Spears, whose Pepsi spot was more exciting than most movies I saw this year, knocking everyone off their can, and is guaranteed to sell quite a few sodas.

As the ceremony kicked into high gear, chef Jennifer Naylor rolled out entrees of grilled swordfish served with fresh asparagus and a fennel puree that could make the toughest Oscar winner weep. By the time “Gladiator” got its due, we were polishing things up with coffee and chocolate and giving the evening a epic-sized thumbs up. “It’s great we have this every year,” said Zimmerman. “And what a great place to have it.”

With so many memorable moments, some of us took time to reflect on movie making, the creative process, passion, vision and unity — or as Steve Martin put it — “We are all here together because of a single common love — publicity.”

Twisted, turning, anguished figures, yearning for something beyond their grasp. The “lumpy dark figures” were seen for the last time this weekend at Pepperdine University — the exhibit’s first stop on a national tour.

“But are these figures the works of a genius?” Michael Zakian, director for Pepperdine’s Frederick R. Weisman museum, asked his audience rhetorically during a farewell gathering on Thursday night.

Dozens of art lovers had come to get a last look at the 30 selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collection entitled “Rodin’s Obsession: The Gates of Hell.”

It was a better turnout than Auguste Rodin would have gotten in his own lifetime, explained Zakian about the sculptor who, like most great artists throughout history, was shunned by his peers.

His three-dimensional studies of the human condition contrasted with contemporaneous works by popular and appreciated sculptors like Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, creator of the Statue of Liberty.

“The Statue of Liberty is just a figure standing with her arm straight up in the air holding a torch,” Zakian pointed out. “There’s no sense of body. She is covered with these heavy robes that just drop to the ground and her facial features are perfectly smooth and symmetrical. So perfect that she doesn’t look real. There’s no sense of life, no sense of a living figure in any way whatsoever.”

In stark contrast, Rodin’s bodies are creatively posed to reflect the temperaments of the subjects.

In one piece, for example, three identical figures pull or are being pulled by an invisible rope that leads towards the earth. Their muscles strain from the intensity of their actions and the unnatural flatness over their heads, necks and shoulders give the impression that a great force is weighing down upon the “Three Shades” (or spirits).

“Perhaps it’s the weight of a sin,” said Zakian. “When it was only one figure, the name of the piece was ‘Adam’ and what did Adam do? He wondered whether he should eat the fruit when he was told not to. He was vacillating, pulling forward, pulling back, not knowing what to do. Rodin was taking an event as powerful and profound as Adam’s fall from grace and putting that meaning into the figure itself. If Bartholdi portrayed Adam, what would he make? A guy with an apple and a bite out of it?”

The “Three Shades,” like most of the works in the gallery, was originally designed for the “Gates of Hell” — an 18-foot portal that would have opened up to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. The architect for the new museum, Edmund Turquet, gave the prestigious commission to Rodin after his life-size plaster model of a nude male caused uproar because of its convincing detail.

The theme of the door was undoubtedly left up to the artist. “Rodin could have selected the work of any French author or even Shakespeare, who was popular at the time,” said Zakian. “Instead he chose as his inspiration ‘The Divine Comedy,’ by the Italian Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri.”

In the story, readers are led along the route the soul would take towards salvation through the Inferno (hell), Purgatory and finally to Paradise (heaven). Of the three stages, Rodin chose to base his work on the darkest, Dante’s “Inferno.”

The tormented figures that would eventually grace the faade of the gate were produced individually in the artist’s studio and later bolted to the portal from behind. “The Three Shades” were placed at the top of the portal; below that, Rodin planned to place a model of Dante himself sitting in a familiar pose deeply contemplating the woes of the world around him.

Known today as “The Thinker,” Rodin’s image of the poet as strong and muscular broke with stereotypes from classical antiquity that reserved brawny renderings for athletes, and soft, gentle features for intellectuals.

“It’s kind of like fusing the nerd and the jock into one person,” said Zakian. “He looks as if he’s a spring just coiled ready to explode. But the energy that this spring holds is his mind, his mental energy.”

To visually enhance the tension, Rodin posed “The Thinker” unnaturally, with his right elbow on the left knee. All his muscles bulge at once, a physical impossibility, Zakian remarked.

“Rodin felt that bodies were more than just a physical form. We are a body but we’re also a soul. By exaggerating the muscles in such a way, Rodin tried to create a sense of that inner life.”

That was his genius.

For 20 years the artist created and reworked his infernal characters for his monumental portal. Most of the figures served as prototypes for his most celebrated sculptures, including “The Thinker,” “The Three Shades” and even his famous “Kiss.”

Yet, in an ironic twist in the story of Rodin’s life, the museum was never built and his portal never cast in his lifetime. As with most revered talents, moreover, it took the public 40 to 50 years to catch up to his vision.

The initials “SMP,” written in chalk around a vandalized school bench, do not stand for “stupid moronic persons,” as you implied in your March 22 Sirens column. They stand for “smoke more pot.” This is common teenage code, much like “420.” I’m sure I speak for the entire community when I say that if only the vandals had taken their own advice and smoked more pot, then surely they would have sat down and enjoyed that bench instead of damaging it and defacing it so selfishly and soberly.

Eric Zicklin

This is a response to “Can’t sidestep the dog issue,” and I do hope it gets published, for I know a lot of Malibu Road residents have written letters to your newspaper and did not get published. You must be fair.

You mean everyone is badmouthing two people who don’t like dogs on Malibu Rd.? This is not badmouthing, it is the truth, they are not made up stories. Contrary to your belief, all of us dog owners know the laws, we would be the biggest fools not to clean up our expensive backyards, not only do we clean up after our dogs, we clean up after visitor dogs. Even prior to this madness, residents of the road were united in an effort to educate visitor dog walkers, we posted signs along the road informing them of the law and the fines.

You said it yourself, the “public” parking lot at Zuma. This is a different issue, these are our homes, and we take pride in our neighborhood, perhaps you should talk to your neighbor, as the saying goes, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

L. P. Lerner

City attorney shift

There’s a bunch of things going on at City Hall, not the least of which is that the council in a 3-2 vote just decided to give a 60-day termination notice to their city attorney, Steven Amerikaner, and hire instead the newly formed law firm of Jenkins and Hogin. The Jenkins, of course, is our first city attorney, Michael Jenkins, formerly a partner of the firm of Richards, Watson and Gershon but now struck out on his own. His partner, both in business and in life, the Hogin of Jenkins and Hogin, is our former city attorney and present Interim City Manager Christi Hogin, who is anxious to get back to lawyering and out of the city-managing business. The vote was not unanimous with both Mayor Tom Hasse and Mayor Pro Tem Joan House in opposition — not so much because of the change but more because they felt it was done in too much of a hurry and should have gone out to bid (or at least that’s what they’re saying publicly). It apparently wasn’t Amerikaner, whom they all appear to respect, but maybe more a question of costs. However, what has become more apparent with each passing week is that Councilmembers Sharon Barovsky and Ken Kearsley are on one side, and Hasse and House are on the other. Councilmember Jeff Jennings appears to be the man in the middle, who sometimes goes this way and sometimes that. Other opposition to the new city attorney, primarily in the form of letters to the editor, appears to be coming from the usual suspects who were instrumental in pushing Hogin out last time as the city attorney and don’t seem too happy about her return.

Bond committee splitting

The Ad Hoc Citizens Committee, push for a $15 million bond issue to buy public open space has been meeting regularly. At the last meeting, Ozzie Silna, a member of the committee and the major financial backer of Proposition P in the last election, announced that the Wetlands people who have been a significant part of the bond committee were backing off and going to take a less-public role. Essentially, they were fearful that the wetlands issue might detract from the coalition’s ability to get the two-thirds vote necessary to pass the bond. One of the primary goals is to get new ball fields, and their backing off was described as a generous gesture to make it easier to pass the bond issue. HoweverBeneath the surface was a much touchier issue. It’s been rumored for quite some time that the Wetlands people — or perhaps someone on their behalf — were going to file a lawsuit against the city in connection with Prop. P, which passed in the last election but had 100 or so fewer Yes votes then Proposition N, which supposedly knocked Prop. P out. Or so they said. The bond coalition was fearful that if the Wetlands people finally decided to sue the city, it would spell doom for the bond issue. Now everyone will have to wait and see if the Wetlands withdrawal was truly just a generous gesture to help the bond pass, or just a strategic preliminary move before filing a lawsuit.

Growth of government-funded faith-based charity

I recently attended a conference at Pepperdine University called “Faith and Public Policy” that was intended to examine the roll of “faith-based” organizations in the Bush administration’s national thrust to deliver more of our social services through churches and other nongovernmental and frequently religion-based organizations. With the welfare reform of a few years ago, the burden of maintaining a safety net is falling more often on private religious institutions, much as they did throughout this nation’s history. Typically, they deliver services more cheaply and efficiently than do many of the larger public bureaucracies. However, there are some significant costs. Some argue that it is part of the steady chipping away of the constitutional separation of church and state, which in the long run is bad for the state and even worse for the church. In a multicultural society like ours, if the government begins to fund the activities of religious institutions, those groups that are funded begin to show up at the polls to support the candidates that fund. Keeping certain people in office becomes, they believe, the godly thing to do — which makes many people very, very nervous, including me. Having spent many years covering politics and politicians, I can say one thing about almost all politicals: If there is one thing they ain’t, it’s godly. There was never a politician alive that didn’t want to put God onto his campaign committee, and if he can do it at public expense that’s even better. So, for many of us, the jury is out on faith-based funding from the government. And the real question for the churches is: No matter how pure your intentions are, can you take their money without getting corrupted?