Oscar Nominees Luncheon -- before most of them become losers

The cool thing about the Oscar Nominees Lunch is that you actually get to hear from a bunch of people who you haven't already heard giving sound bite acceptance speeches at 16,084 previous awards shows. Yeah, it's the trite-est of trite cliches that nobody's a winner or a loser when they toss back a few and sit down to medallion of grilled goat cheese and Indochina-spiced beef with avocado mousse at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It's also kinda true.

Hal Holbrook, bless his dignified soul, will probably be gunned down on Oscar night by "No Country's" Javier Bardem, but at the luncheon, the-man-who-would-be-Twain said something that would probably have slipped into his acceptance speech.

Ivan and Jason Reitman: cool! Julian Schnabel saluting Viggo Mortensen as his "son-in-law" and recommending that we, the assembled press, buy VM's album? Classic.