Golden Locks ...

Will Oscar be making aliyah this year with Israel's foreign-language entry, "Ajami"?

Want it or not ... we got it: Tarantino the Terrible -- in the noxious chatterbox way, not talent sense -- has nabbed one 2009 Oscar nod as best director, while his gloriously bloody "Inglourious Basterds" has shown its legitimacy -- complete with nasty Nazis and a Jewish femme with fatal vision -- with an Oscar nomination as best picture.

Oscar has a sense of humor, indeed.

It was in evidence this Tuesday morning, when Hollywood awoke early to see the sun smile on a host of nominees sporting the slogan "Never again" -- as a reaction, maybe, to last year's unholstering of Holocaust films as if there were no bottom -- with the Holocaust's status as a preferred genre MIA.

Meet the folks -- and Ben Stiller's nowhere to be seen -- in "An Education."

Almost: "Inglourious Basterds" is the only mainstream film from last year to deal with the era, in contrast to 2008's onslaught -- "Defiance," "The Reader," "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," "Good," "Valkyrie," "Adam Resurrected" -- that revived the old slur of a saw that Hollywood's Jews would green-light a Holocaust movie, even if it took place in a red-light district.

Maybe, especially if it did.

But the urgency of 2008 ceded to a nein in 2009, in which the Tarantino cartoon -- "That's all, F-F-F-uhrer!" -- had no claim on the seriousness its cinematic predecessors had, being more a pulverize-'em-to-pulp fictional take on Jews beating the Nazis, a "Kill Wilhelm," if you will.

Yet, to be fair, it offered one of the two best performances of the year, Oscar-nominated Christoph Waltz's crazy Hessian (the other, Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges' "Crazy Heart"), whose heinous "Heils!" are comically chilling in an over-the-top movie about beneath-the-dirt human behavior of moral rupture not so long ago.

All those medals ... will Christoph Waltz be adding Oscar gold?

Beyond that, Oscar has a hole in its soul for Holocaust films this year, which may be a shame -- or a celebration for those heartless types who have carped and complained about the glut in the gilded past. (Spike Lee, put down the champagne! Billy Crystal ... okay, you're a member of the tribe so the joke was funny.)

No Real Gift?
But Oscar has no real gift of presents for any Jewish onscreen presence this year; the Jewish experience has been allocated the B-party gig for 2009.

Except for the exceptions, of course: Oscar may be making aliyah this year as "Ajami," Israel's entry in the foreign language category, is smelling sweet of milk and honey these days with its nod, a true tradition in recent years as Israel's film industry has shaken free of fiddling with B-movie genres to provide some well-built successes on a global level.

Back home, on an accomplished level was the chalkboard jungle of a lesson afforded by "An Education," with its sleazy slime of a lying Lothario written as Jewish but, showing the acidity of assimilation, played as Everyman by Peter Sarsgaard, with Oscar noticing Carey Mulligan as the waif he woos for accolades in its best supporting actress category, and the pic itself.

"A Serious Man" has antenna up for serious stereotyping.

On the other hand -- yes, Tevye was a movie critic -- "A Serious Man" ... seriously, did anyone take to heart the Coen Bros latest project, this one about Midwest Jews, so stereotyped that its script seemed schmeared in chopped liver? (Albeit with an award-worthy, if neglected, performance by Michael Stuhlbarg as a woe-bedraggled shmoe who seems to have applied for Job's job at the unemployment office.)

Same time, next year ...

Count on the Coens again -- hopefully with a different result -- as their screen version of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, and all its local flavor of Alaska Judaica, will unspool on screen in 2010.

Why, you can see Jews from your house: Controversial as a novel, will the film -- Alaska as the Promised Land filtered through the at-times vituperative, virulent vision of these Minnesota "twins" -- follow suit?

You betcha!