Best Actress has nothing on Best Actor. Consider the lineup of male performers with a legitimate chance of being nominated: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, Denzel Washington, John Hawkes, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Jackman, Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck and Jamie Foxx. Truthfully, I could make an argument for any of those guys -- especially Cooper, who is a revelation in "Silver Linings Playbook"; he gives a performance that will forever change how audiences view him as an actor.

Crosby, Stills & Nash weren't looking for a friend when they hired David Geffen. They had plenty of those already. "We knew we were in a shark tank," ...

Memo to President Barack Obama from your powerful friends in Hollywood: You are the president of the United States, clothed in immense power. Now use it. That, at least, seems to be the message of Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's surprisingly riveting examination of the 16th president's campaign to persuade that unruly collection of hicks, fanatics and thieves known as the House of Representatives to pass a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Lincoln's Republican party outnumbered their Democratic rivals, but Constitutional Amendments require a two-thirds majority. So the challenge was to keep the Republican caucus in line and pick off about 20 votes from the other side. And so the arm-twisting began. If that sounds familiar, it should. It's reasonable to think that this film couldn't and wouldn't have been made at any other time.

Well, it's official: We're now less than two months away from the 85th annual Oscar nominations. Are we having fun yet? ("Party Down" references never die.)

Spielberg's film will have big support from the acting branch (three acting nominations seem like a forgone conclusion), Tony Kushner's script is a mortal lock for Best Adapted Screenplay, its below-the-line contributors (specifically composer John Williams, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and editor Michael Kahn) are all respected past winners and nominees and it's the most culturally relevant film of the bunch -- perhaps even more than either "Argo" or "Zero Dark Thirty."

The first-ever screening of Tom Hooper's "Les Misérables" received a rapturous standing ovation on Friday afternoon in New York. Audience members -- ...

One last Argo vs. Lincoln vs. Les Miserables note: Can we imagine a scenario where one of them wins Best Picture and another wins Best Director? Like Les Miserables and Ben Affleck, or Argo and Steven Spielberg?

Musician, motivational speaker, club owner and television host Andrew W.K. made headlines this weekend when he announced on his website that he was tr...