Alokananda Chakraborty
Media

Movie channels gear up for the Oscars

After Valentine’s Day, the next big thing for English movie channels seems to be the Oscar Awards

Amidst the surfeit of televised movie events, one show that stands tall is undoubtedly the Oscar Awards. Short for the annual awards given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, California, the Oscars are the ultimate in show business and a must-watch for movie-buffs across the world.

In the Indian sub-continent, the awards ceremony will be telecast at 6.30 am on March 1 on STAR Movies, which means that die-hard Hollywood fans will have to wake up early in the morning of that Monday to catch the action live. On their part, rivals in the English movie business are unwilling to yield space, working hard to woo audiences in the run-up to the event.

HBO, for instance, has an on-going month-long extravaganza with Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning movies telecast back to back on weekdays from 9.00 pm. Titled Greatest to the Latest, movies included are classics such as Ben Hur as well as new-age blockbusters such as Spider-Man.

ZEE MGM, on the other hand, plans to devote the weekends, namely, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, to the Oscars at 9.00 pm. Unlike its counterparts in the English movie space, the channel has decided to go in for a screening of Academy-nominated and Academy-winning films in the month of March, that is, post the awards ceremony on March 1.

The list of movies to premiere over the weekends include Philadelphia, Donny Brasco, The Last of the Mohicans, Iris, My Left Foot, Bugsy, Robinhood: Prince of Thieves, Life is Beautiful, Silence of the Lambs, Chicago, Gangs of New York and Amelie.

For the channel, which is set to telecast the main event, the story does not end with the awards ceremony. It too has an ongoing festival of Oscar movies slotted late into the night at 11.00 pm with flicks such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Pearl Harbor and A Beautiful Mind included in its bouquet of offerings. © 2004 agencyfaqs!

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