From the press room at Monday's Oscar Nominees Luncheon, Sophia Savage compiles quotes from the stars who answered questions after they walked the red carpet. The words come from the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem, Helena Bonham Carter, Colin Firth, Jeff Bridges, Amy Adams, Nicole Kidman and Michelle Williams … But Jesse Eisenberg (Getty Images photo, below, by Kevin Winter) has the most memorable line when he compares awards season to some rituals from his childhood: "I had to go to bat mitzvahs every weekend and this is like the same thing. You have to put on a suit every weekend to go meet with a lot of Jews." (Thompson on Hollywood)
More from the luncheon: Bob Tourtellotte details the invitation the Oscar show producers extended to the mothers of all this year's nominees. They want the "mominees" to participate in the run-up to the show by sharing memories and tweeting – and if they don't know how, said co-producer Bruce Cohen (strangely misidentified in the story as his movie-producing partner Dan Jinks, who is not producing the Oscar show), "we will teach them how to do that." (Reuters via Yahoo! News)
The last few weeks have been filled with awards shows that aren't televised – and while it's true that perhaps the PGA or DGA or ADG aren't entirely ready for prime time, the Writers Guild is giving viewers a taste of what they missed. The WGA West has put the opening of its West Coast ceremony, a musical number from "Modern Family" stars Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet, on YouTube. It's called "Write It Gay," and it's energetic. (YouTube) The WGA East, meanwhile, has done the same for Kristen Schaal's "sensible opening number" to its New York show; she may not have a TelePrompTer during her monologue, or a working microphone during her song, but it's safe to say she takes awards shows in a different direction as she serenades "all you semi-well-dressed nerds." (YouTube)
Reid Rosefelt, who goes way back with the Weinstein brothers, offers some perspective on the guys behind the company that current has the Oscar frontrunner with "The King's Speech" – but, he says, conducts itself more like the cast of characters in the film it supplanted. "Trying like hell to get a bucketful of Oscars for movies like 'The King's Speech' is just what they do," he writes. "It's actually 'The Social Network' that captures who they are." Rosefelt says as somebody who first worked for Harvey and Bob Weinstein at Miramax in 1983, and was mighty impressed by "these two outsiders [who] came in and reinvented the entire business as I had known it." (My Life as a Blog)
For a few years AMC Theaters has been offering ambitious moviegoers the chance to see all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscar show. They did so at first by creating single-day events where the five nominated films would screen back-to-back – and when the Academy expanded to 10 nominees last year, AMC turned the screenings into two-day events on successive weekends. They're doing that again this year, booking two groups of five films into 113 theaters in 43 different markets. But they're also going a step further: for truly intrepid (or maybe certifiable) moviegoers, 15 theaters in 13 markets will host 23-hour marathons of all 10 films one after the other, beginning at 10 a.m. on February 26 with "Toy Story 3" and ending just after 9 a.m. on Oscar morning with "The King's Speech." But is anybody who watches all 10 in a row like that going to be able to stay awake for the Oscar show itself? (AMC Theaters)
