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Oscar.com Predictable But Attractive
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Sat Feb 28,10:21 PM ET

By Leslie Walker

One of these days Hollywood will lighten up on the Net. Until then, movie fans may have to stay clear of sites such as Oscar.com if they want to have fun with the Academy Awards (news - web sites). 

Over the past week, the official Oscar.com site's highlight has been a contest to see who can predict -- how's this for predictable? -- the winners of Sunday's ceremony. Nothing creative such as, say, online voting on which star's attire or thank-you sermons stood out over the night.

Oscar.com is nonetheless attracting plenty of visitors: 197,000 in the week ended Feb. 22, up 26 percent over the previous week, according to comScore Networks Inc.

Starting a few hours before Sunday's televised 8 p.m. ceremony, the site will begin broadcasting live Internet video of the red-carpet scene outside Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, followed by the celebration afterward at the Governors Ball. The site also plans to offer Internet video-on-demand packages about the stars' fashion and jewelry, plus press-room interviews after their thank-yous.

Speaking of thank-yous -- could a Web site get much cheesier? -- Oscar.com also plans to feature winners' written lists of all the people they couldn't get around to mentioning during their acceptance speeches.

Oscar.com's video will also be streamed to certain models of Sprint PCS Vision cell phones. It's available courtesy of the four-month-old MobiTV service, which costs $10 a month.

Oscar.com isn't alone in offering dorky Academy Award Internet activities, though. America Online has been handing out digital cameras to movie stars and inviting them to take pictures of themselves getting ready for the ceremony. For each self-styled "celeb candid" that a star posts on America Online, AOL has pledged to donate money to charity. (AOL keyword: celeb candids)

If you want to fine-tune your Oscar bets by seeing who's predicting what, you should check out other sites. Oscar Watch (www.oscarwatch.com) tracks what critics are saying -- among other things, that "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is the overwhelming favorite to win Best Picture. And the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) has its own polls on the best and worst in movies of last year, along with loads of Oscar trivia.

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/listen/read/6927.html