The running theme at the 71st Academy Awards - as they are officially called - will be history. Two of the five movies nominated for the best picture are set in the 16th century (Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth). Three others revolve around World War II - Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, and Life is Beautiful.

The makers of four of those films have also been nominated for Best Director, the lone exception being India's Shekhar Kapur who directed Elizabeth. It is the first time in many years that there is an Indian dimension to the Oscars, but although the film has been widely appreciated, critics say it does not have the sweeping feel and scope of a Best Picture.

The Washington Post's movie maven called it a"jewel of a film...an honorable film deserving to be mentioned in a year when competition was tough". Of the seven categories it has been nominated, it stands a good chance to bag the statuette for Best Actress, for which the Australian Cate Blanchett will be up against Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love).

Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is the odds on favourite to win the Best Picture and Best Director awards, but Shakespeare in Love, which has nominations in 13 categories, is a popular choice expected to win a clutch of the prized 13 and half inch gold plated statuettes.

As is typical in these era of hype and marketing, Shakespeare's makers Miramax has spent a fortune (about $ 15 million) promoting the film. In fact, some critics say if Shakespeare has outgunned Elizabeth, it has more to do with Miramax's deep pockets as compared to the more modest efforts of Gramercy, which commissioned Kapur for Elizabeth.

The outsider at the Oscars - literally and metaphorically - will be the Italianmaestro Roberto Benigni and his delightful film Life is Beautiful. Not since Costa Gavras Z in the sixties has a film been nominated for Best Picture both in the general and foreign film categories. In that sense, Life is Beautiful is a sentimental favourite.

The film has seven nominations overall, three of them for the Chaplinesque Benigni (Best Director, Best Writer and Best Actor). Only a few others have scored such a triple nomination - Orson Welles, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty to name three.

But although everyone agrees Life is Beautiful is beautiful, critics say it again lacks the mega-quality which normally wins the votes (like Titanic, which sank other contenders last year). To get a sense of what the Oscar is all about, one has to only recall the words of New York Times long time critic Janet Maslin, who when Gandhi beat ER to the Best Picture in 1983, said they have mistaken the Oscar for the Nobel Prize. Ergo, BIG is IN.

The Oscars ceremony itself will be making history, the firsttime in 71 years - the last 46 televised - that it is being held on a Sunday. Hollywood's Never on a Sunday mantra had much to do with protecting its box office, but the compelling forces of television marketing has finally broken the tradition.

Whoopi Goldberg will be hosting the show which will be watched by billions across the world.

But despite all the hoopla Hollywood manages to generate, it turns out that the real picture is slightly different. One LA Times poll last month showed only one per cent of Americans have seen all five Best Picture nominations, and 61 per cent had not seen any.