28 Feb – For those who watched the Oscars yesterday, French director Michel Hazanavicius's silent movie "The Artist" took home the honours for Best Picture, amongst four others for Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Score and Costume Design. For those who did not, well, now they know, but whether moviegoers or fans have watched the much-celebrated event is irrelevant, because not all of the movies made it to the cinemas in Malaysia, much to the local moviegoers' chagrin. Out of the nine movies nominated for Best Picture, only three were shown on the big screen in Malaysia, which were "The Descendants", "The Iron Lady" and "War Horse", while among the contenders for Best Animated Film, thankfully 3 out of the 5 nominated movies were shown here; "Rango", "Kung Fu Panda 2" and "Puss In Boots". However moviegoers were baffled as to why the French animation "A Cat in Paris" and the Spanish "Chico & Rita" would be nominated over Spielberg's Golden Globe-winning "The Adventures Of Tintin". According to a local movie fan, "In 2010, Oscars was the battle between the maker of the biggest blockbuster and his ex-wife (James Cameron "Avatar" and Kathryn Bigelow "The Hurt Locker") and then in 2011, it was a face-off between a raw American Western; "True Grit" and a royal British drama; "The King's Speech", but for this year, are the jumble of odd movies that are mostly not screened here even interesting?" Local critics also deduce that this year's Oscars was one of the most irrelevant events to Malaysians as even Singaporeans had the opportunity to catch almost all of the major nominated movies, with the exceptions being "A Cat in Paris" and "Chico & Rita". When asked a local distributor as to why this years' big winners such as "Hugo" and "The Artist", was not released in local cinemas, the answer was that the release date was undecided and may be subject to change, while Singapore is more flexible with its target audience. Oscar films "Hugo" and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" were initially planned for a release in Malaysia, but was later removed due to unnamed reasons for the former and explicit content for the latter.