MUMBAI: The movie awards season is in full swing. Star World will air the British Film and Television Academy (Bafta) awards on 20 February at 10 pm.

Bafta has two awards ceremonies. Next month on 12 February honours films while nominations for the television awards will be announced on 14 March 2005, with the ceremony taking place on 17 April 2005.

Martin Scorcese's epic The Aviator leads with 14 nominations and the big story doing the rounds is that two of the most critically acclaimed films of the year Sideways and Million Dollar Baby have been shut out. The profile of any awards show is dependent on its ability to predict the Oscar Awards. Bafta has stumbled in a big way on that front.

At another high profile awards show - The Golden Globes, which aired on Star World a couple of days ago, both the above mentioned films won awards. The reason being given by industry observers for Million Dollar Baby not being on the Bafta list is that very few people saw Clint Eastwood's feminist themed boxing film. The same thing goes for Sideways.

Along with The Aviator the other best picture nominees at the Bafta's are the British filmVera Drake, the mind bender Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, The Motorcycle Diaries and the biopic Finding Neverland. The last film deals with how writer J,M. Barrie found inspiration to create Peter Pan.

Vera Drake which deals with a woman performing illegal abortions is also competing for the best British film of the year along with Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban , Finding Neverland and Shaun Of The Dead.