(From top to bottom) Gwen Stefani and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator, Clint Eastwood and Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby, Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur, and the Lord of the Rings Oscar winners

With just a few hours to go and all the votes in, the Oscars, with an expected television viewership of more than a billion, is all set to become the biggest celluloid event of the year, yet again. While you can catch all the action live on STAR Movies at 6 am (repeat prime-time telecast at 8 pm) on Monday, the race for the big ?un this year, the Best Picture award, is between The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray and Sideways. Metro looks back at the method and madness of this all-important category.

The big winners: Started out as Best Production award in 1928, the Best Picture nominations usually are those movies that also score big in the other acting and technical categories. Best Picture winners Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950) hold the joint record for the most nominations (14) earned by a single film, while Titanic along with Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) has won the most number of Oscars (11). Titanic?s awards didn?t include any acting prize while Ben-Hur bagged two acting awards. Surprisingly, The Lord of the Rings? did not even have a single acting nomination.

Other Best Picture winners to win big at a single ceremony include West Side Story (1961) which won 10 statuettes, Gigi (1958), The Last Emperor (1987), The English Patient (1996), all three winning nine awards each and the eight-Oscar-winning films ? Gone With The Wind (1939), From Here to Eternity (1953), On The Waterfront (1954), My Fair Lady (1964), Gandhi (1982) and Amadeus (1984).

This year, the only film that has an outside chance of winning big is Martin Scorsese?s The Aviator, which has been nominated in 11 categories.

The firsts and the onlys: The first year (1927) of the awards saw two films winning the Best Picture honour, Wings and Sunrise. Wings was also the only silent film to win the trophy. The Last Emperor was the only Best Picture winner to have been produced outside of the US and the UK. The only three films to have won the top four awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress) are It Happened One Night (1934), One Flew Over The Cuckoo?s Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

The four Best Picture winners to have won every award for which they were nominated are It Happened One Night (five out of five), Gigi (nine on nine), The Last Emperor (nine on nine, again) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (11 out of 11). The Turning Point (1977) and The Color Purple (1985) won 11 nominations each but not a single Oscar. Gangs of New York last year won 10 nominations but no award.

The Best Picture winners that failed to win any other award are Broadway Melody (1929), Grand Hotel (1932) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Cabaret (1972) won as many as eight Oscars but failed to win the Best Picture trophy. The first foreign-made film to win Best Picture was Laurence Olivier?s Hamlet (1948). Gone With the Wind (1939) was the first all-colour film to win in this category while Schindler?s List (1993) was the first black-and-white film to win the top award since The Apartment (1960). The credits for the Spielberg film were in colour, though.

The only foreign language films nominated for Best Picture have been Grand Illusion (1938, France), Z (1969, Algeria), The Emigrants (1972, Sweden), Cries and Whispers (1973, Sweden), The Postman (1995, Italy), Life is Beautiful (1998, Italy), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Taiwan). The first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture was The Bells of St. Mary?s (1945), the sequel to Going My Way (1944). All films of The Godfather trilogy were nominated for the Best Picture Oscars as were the three Lord of the Rings films. The first remake to win Best Picture was Mutiny on the Bounty which took off from In the Wake of the Bounty (1933).

Gone with the Wind (1939) is the longest Best Picture winner at 3 hours, 42 minutes. Marty (1955) is the shortest at 1 hour, 31 minutes. The first R-rated film to win the award was The French Connection (1971) while the only X-rated film to win the same was Midnight Cowboy (1969).

What Oscar wants: A cursory glance at the 76 years of the Academy selections will tell you that they have a pattern to pick their nominations and eventual winners.

While comedies and thrillers are strict no-nos, dramas with socially relevant themes and biopics are the favourites. Children?s films and independent productions are given the miss while lavish studio epics are lapped up in a big way.

Biopics or films inspired by real-life individuals have always had a runaway success at the Oscars. From The Life of Emile Zola (1937) to Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to Patton (1970) to Gandhi (1982) to The Last Emperor (1987) to A Beautiful Mind (2001), biopics have always ruled the roost. This year, too, three of the five Best Picture nominations ? The Aviator (Howard Hughes), Ray (Ray Charles), Finding Neverland (JM Barrie) ? are biopics but The Aviator?s huge canvas makes it a more likely winner compared to the other two.

Only a small number of sports dramas have been recognised by the Academy, with two of them ? Rocky (1976) and Chariots of Fire (1981) ? going on to win the Best Picture trophy. This year, again, Clint Eastwood?s Million Dollar Baby, about an ageing boxing trainer and his female prot?g?, could well do what Raging Bull (1980), Jerry Maguire (1996) and Seabiscuit (2003) failed to do.