350 movies in 31 days should suit couch potatoes just fine

Tom Cruise played a sports agent who lost most of his clients in 1996 s Jerry Maguire.

Movie fans who love the classics should clear their TiVos, stock up on popcorn, and prepare themselves for a month s worth of Hollywood s best, all served up on their home TVs.

Cable network Turner Classic Movies will begin its annual film festival, called 31 Days of Oscar, tomorrow, and by the time it wraps up on March 2, more than 350 Oscar-winning and nominated movies will have been shown all of them uncut and commercial-free.

Included in the lineup are more than 35 titles making their first appearance on TCM. Among them are the first winner of the Best Picture award, 1927 s Wings (Monday), as well as such cultural touchstones as Five Easy Pieces (tomorrow) and Easy Rider (Feb. 7), plus such box-office hits as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Feb. 10), Steel Magnolias (Feb. 16), and Maverick (March 2).

Also new to TCM this year are more modern films, such as Atlantic City (Saturday), The Trip to Bountiful (Saturday), Apocalypse Now (Feb. 8), and Amistad (Feb. 17).

During the massive movie festival, prime-time programming for each night of the week will feature movies from a particular time period, with Monday nights devoted to films of the 1920 and 30s (42nd Street, Gone With the Wind), Tuesdays to the 40s (Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy), Wednesdays to the 50s (Vertigo, On the Waterfront), and so on, with each Sunday night devoted to movies from the 1990s to the present (Jerry Maguire, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven).

In addition, the daytime lineups will feature themed collections of movies, such as adventure films (Northwest Passage, The Naked Prey), comedies (A Day at the Races, The Pink Panther), science fiction movies (Forbidden Planet, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), coming-of-age movies (The Yearling, The Sterile Cuckoo), mysteries (The Maltese Falcon, Murder on the Orient Express), musicals (Brigadoon, An American in Paris), John Wayne films (How the West Was Won, True Grit), war movies (From Here to Eternity, Sergeant York), Alfred Hitchcock movies (Psycho, The Birds), and more.

Hosting the month-long festival is film critic Robert Osborne, author of a series of books on the annual Academy Awards ceremonies, including a history of the Oscars. This year s Academy Awards ceremony, barring labor strife, will be televised Feb. 24 on ABC.

Following are the first seven days worth of films. A complete schedule can be seen on the network s Web site: www.tcm.com.

TOMORROW

6 a.m. The Adventures of Robin Hood. (1938)

7:45 a.m. Mogambo (1953)

9:45 a.m. King Solomon s Mines (1950)

11:30 a.m. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

1:45 p.m. Krakatoa, East of Java (1969)

4 p.m. The Naked Prey (1966)

5:45 p.m. Northwest Passage (1940)

8 p.m. Jaws (1975)

10:15 p.m. The Hospital (1971)

12:15 a.m. Network (1977)

2:30 p.m. Five Easy Pieces (1970)

4:45 p.m. Darling Lili (1970)

SATURDAY

7:15 a.m. 2010 (1984)

9:15 a.m. Forbidden Planet (1956)

11 a.m. Them! (1954)

12:45 p.m. The Time Machine (1960)

2:30 p.m. The Black Hole (1979)

4:15 p.m. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

6:30 p.m. The War of the Worlds (1953)

8 p.m. Gandhi (1982)

11:15 p.m. Atlantic City (1981)

1:15 a.m. The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

3:15 a.m. Mephisto (1982)

SUNDAY

6 a.m. Anchors Aweigh (1945)

8:30 a.m. Brigadoon (1954)

10:30 a.m. The Harvey Girls (1946)

12:15 p.m. The Band Wagon (1953)

2:15 p.m. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

4 p.m. Gigi (1958)

6 p.m. An American in Paris (1951)

8 p.m. Sense and Sensibility (1995)

10:30 p.m. Quiz Show (1994)

12:45 p.m. Kundun (1997)

3:15 a.m. The Wings of the Dove (1997)

MONDAY

5:30 a.m. The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935)

7 a.m. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

9 a.m. The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)

11:15 a.m. The Eddy Duchin Story (1956)

1:30 p.m. The Joker is Wild (1957)

3:45 p.m. Night and Day (1946)

6 p.m. The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

8 p.m. Wings (1927)

10:30 p.m. Sunrise (1927)

12:15 a.m. The Broadway Melody (1929)

2:15 a.m. 42nd Street (1933)

4 a.m. A Nous La Liberte (1931)

TUESDAY

5:45 a.m. The Green Years (1946)

8 a.m. Captains Courageous (1937)

10 a.m. The Yearling (1946)

12:15 p.m. The 400 Blows (1959)

2 p.m. Little Women (1949)

4:15 p.m. Janie (1944)

6 p.m. The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)

8 p.m. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

11 p.m. All the King s Men (1949)

1 a.m. Casablanca (1942)

2:45 a.m. Rebecca (1940)

5 a.m. Body and Soul (1947)

WEDNESDAY

7 a.m. Five Star Final (1931)

8:30 a.m. The Front Page (1931)

10:15 a.m. When Ladies Meet (1933)

11:45 a.m. Teacher s Pet (1958)

2 p.m. Libeled Lady (1936)

3:45 p.m. Citizen Kane (1941)

5:45 p.m. Foreign Correspondent (1940)

8 p.m. Vertigo (1958)

10:15 p.m. Rear Window (1954)

12:15 a.m. The Country Girl (1954)

2:15 a.m. Bullfighter and the Lady (1951)

4:30 a.m. Wild is the Wind (1957)

FEB. 7

6:30 a.m. The Brothers Karamazov (1958)

9 a.m. The Three Musketeers (1948)

11:15 a.m. A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

1:30 p.m. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)

3:15 p.m. A Farewell to Arms (1932)

4:45 p.m. Hawaii (1966)

8 p.m. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

10:45 p.m. Lolita (1962)

1:30 a.m. Easy Rider (1969)

3:15 a.m. The Reivers (1969)

5:15 a.m. The Whisperers (1967)