Daughter getting Heath Ledger's Oscar — when she's 18. [THR]

· E! reports that Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens will be among the performers to help nurture this year's Oscar renaissance, hopefully teaming for a Best Picture reenactment of Slumdog Millionaire's romantic latrine-escape sequence.

The death of Mickey Rourke's chihuahua, Loki, continues to reverberate today, as the actor has finally announced his replacement Oscar date (and hinted that he may be pulling out of Iron Man 2).

Today on The View, Ebert usurper Ben Lyons took his place next to Elisabeth Hasselbeck in what could only have felt more like a Defamer-targeted Last Supper if Joaquin Phoenix had crashed it, rapping.

Among the myriad ways to enliven your Oscar viewing experience, the In Memoriam montage pool may be the only one entitling you to cry and win big money simultaneously.

If the numbers truly don't lie, then neither Brad Pitt nor Angelina Jolie will collect Academy Awards on Sunday. But who needs Oscars when America's auction-scavenging elite are on your side?

Whenever Mickey Rourke makes a PR gaffe on his road to comeback semi-redemption, at least we can be assured that he'll go overboard trying to rectify it. So how is he course-correcting his homophobic slur?

The Polk Awards, honoring those quirky characters who still practice "journalism," were announced today, and you can see all the worthy winners here. In a gross oversight, however, Arthur was inexplicably shut out. [E&P]

Superstar statistician Nate Silver has used data upon data to accurately forecast some of baseball's and politics' most complex developments. So how to follow up the election? How else: by being wrong at the Oscars.

Hey, America's #1 numbers whiz Nate Silver has already figured out who will win all the Oscars! Thanks for spoiling the "female Super Bowl," Nate, you misogynist. Click through to see the future of cinema:

We've heard lots of vague allusions to the "intimacy" and "coziness" promised by this year's Oscar reinventors, but Hugh Jackman prefers to be a little more specific. And by "a little," regrettably, we mean it.

Danny Boyle's next: A chick flick? [Variety via HE]

Mickey Rourke's Oscar-date roundelay shrunk Thursday night with a creative — and we'd say pretty firm — denial that he's considering Courtney Love.

Wall-E's umpteenth Oscar snub: Peter Gabriel bails out. [DHD]

Count Oscar-greeter emeritus Army Archerd among those laughing his ass off at plans to sneak surprise presenters and attendees into the show via parachute in the dead of night.

Laments for Mickey Rourke's pure, bygone beauty usually reflect as far back as his breakthrough in Diner. Yet one filmmaker's attic-rummaging has officially yielded the definitive Mickey-as-he-was resource.

Surely this year's Oscars telecast is enshrouded in more secrecy than any other. WHO will be appearing? WHAT will they be doing? HOW will the trophies be distributed? (We think we actually cracked that one.)

There's a lot of drama surrounding the Oscar race for Best Actor, but it's not about whether Sean Penn will triumph over Mickey Rourke—it's which lovable trainwreck Rourke should bring as his date.

It looked innocent enough, but now we hear that the loving, open-handed greeting Sharon Stone bestowed Sunday night on BAFTA-nominated Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel had "cougar attack" written all over it.

Hollywood may never fully recover from the WGA-strike-plagued awards season of 2008, marred by trophy presentations on Veoh, a potluck Governor's Ball, and—most shocking of all—the complete cancellation of the Vanity Fair party.