Vogue's March issue is "our biggest Spring issue ever!" And Jennifer Hudson is, well, their biggest cover girl ever. (This isn't about her. This is about a magazine that puts emaciated people on the cover every month.) But seriously, right now the 50% of Jennifer Hudson that was Photoshopped out of this picture is all "and I am telling you, I'm not going." To no avail, of course.

· Celine Dion, the French Canadian chanteuse extraordinaire with seemingly insurmountable daddy issues, will be premiering a new song at the Oscars: "I Knew I Loved You," an Ennico Morricone composition with all new lyrics by Alan and Marilyn "Papa Can You Hear Me?" Bergman. [AP]
· Five time Grammy nominee James Blunt will be performing at Elton John's annual Oscar party at the Pacific Design Center. Whether that's an improvement or not over last year's entertainment, triple Grammy winner John Legend, we couldn't tell you, though it doesn't exactly surprise us that Elton's a real adult-contemporary Grammy whore. [ABCNews]
· Melissa Etheridge, nominated for An Inconvenient Truth's "I Need to Wake Up," compares the Oscars to the Grammys: "Being an Oscar nominee is a hundred times more intense. It's old school. They have rules—and they do things by the rules. The Grammys are more laid back." Translation: You're far less likely to stumble across a hastily scrawled sign reading, "DOIN SOME GROUPIES. DO NOT DISTURB" backstage at the Oscars. (But it's not out of the realm of possibility.) [LA Daily News]
· Bill Condon is putting together a Dreamgirls reunion performance, featuring Jennifer Hudson and "my Dreamgirls sisters," as she put it at Monday's luncheon. They'll start rehearsing just as soon as they can convince an increasingly unhinged Beyoncé to emerge from the bathroom in which she's been running a lipstick over her mouth while rocking back and forth and repeating, "You're still prettier, babygirl!" since last Thursday. [Orlando Sentinel]

If you stopped watched American Idol after the audition rounds, you'd be forgiven if you somehow mistook the reality colossus as the search for America's greatest schizophrenic. (Symptoms: "delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized behavior, dressing inappropriately, crying frequently...") Once the parade of psychotics passes by our TV sets and back into the crazy jungle, however, the cream eventually does begin to rise to the top—whether through pure talent, or with the help of a story about one's father's botched murder-suicide attempt. Jennifer Hudson definitely fell into the former camp when she stumbled onto the Idol stage in Season 3, but perhaps her current dizziness from trying on Oscar gowns has given her temporary amnesia regarding just how long-range and accurate 19 Management's sniper-fire can be:

· Sacha Baron Cohen may be the Oscars' only hope at getting a younger, wider audience to show up to this year's telecast, though of course there's no guarantee any time he spends at the podium won't be filled with references to how convincingly Ellen DeGeneres has hidden her testisatchels. [The Envelope]
· The Oscar ballots are in the mail and must be returned to Pricewaterhouse-Coopers by 5 p.m., February 20, where a small army of accountants will tabulate them and shout things like, "Yup! Another one for Forest!" [Variety]
· "Oscars" has seen a 440% jump in search engine queries since the nominations were announced, with increases for nominees Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, and, most popular, "Helen Mirren without underwear." [Earthtimes.org]
· Jennifer Hudson told Oprah she will be performing a song at the Oscar ceremony. And we are telling you it won't be the one you want to hear, but "Love You I Do." And we are also telling you that jokes involving this particular lyric have long overstayed their welcome. [Broadwayworld.com]
· Abigail Breslin also mentioned to Oprah that her date for the evening will be Curious George—her stuffed monkey. Bi-Curious George, meanwhile, still hasn't announced who he'll be bringing. [Hello]

· The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle name United 93 last year's best film, Martin Scorsese best director, and Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker best actress and actor. They stray from the pack with the addition of two unusual categories, "Obviously Worst Film," and "Not So Obviously Worst Film," which go to Basic Instinct 2 and Bobby, respectively. [Oklahomafilm]
· Utah Film Critics Association also award United 93 their best film prize, but opt to give Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón the best director nod for Children of Men. Best actor goes to Sacha Baron Cohen—the only category not to feature a runner-up, proving Cohen had unanimously astounded Utah's tastemaking elite with his Jew- and Gypsy-leery character's picaresque adventures. [Variety]
· The African-American Film Critics Association lavishes their love upon Dreamgirls, naming it best picture, Bill Condon best director, and giving best supporting acting awards to Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson. Forest Whitaker wins best actor, and in the "one of these things is not like the other" slot is Helen Mirren for her work in The Queen. [The Envelope]

Once a year, our nation's most esteemed movie critics lock themselves inside smokey, windowless rooms, and heatedly debate, Twelve Angry Men-style, the relative merits of what they have seen over the previous twelve months. It can often escalate into full-on violence—at the New York Film Critics Circle deliberations this year, for example, The New Yorker's David Denby reportedly had The Observer's octogenarian critic-in-residence Andrew Sarris in a half nelson in a dispute over Ryan Gosling's performance in the film of the same name—but inevitably, a consensus is reached, giving obsessive Oscar prognosticators key pieces of evidence to jot down on index cards and affix in perfectly aligned columns to their bedroom walls. A round-up of the results of four major critics' lists:

Before a flawlessly put-together mob of angry Gays storms the courtyard of the 8000 Sunset shopping complex to topple the 68-foot statue of Jennifer Hudson they have erected in her honor, the star of Dreamgirls has released several statements intended to counter remarks attributed to her yesterday in a Dallas gay newspaper in which she allegedly called homosexuality "a sin." Her MySpace blog entry puts her current mood at "depressed," and goes on to say that "some paper is saying that I have a problem with gay people. Its just mean and wrong... Anybody that knows me, knows that just ain't true." A second statement, sent to The Advocate (whose current cover features Hudson) and forwarded to us, had this to say:

There exists in all of Gaydom perhaps no greater paradox than the one represented by the inner struggle of the Bible-thumping diva, who would have no career if not for the Gays who idolize them, but whose strict religious upbringing teaches them that God looks unkindly on the shirtless, sodomizing hordes gazing worshipfully up at them from the dancefloors below. No, not even Jennifer Hudson, recently anointed Gay Man's Messiah for her up-from-the-American-Idol-ashes, Beyoncé-upstaging turn as Effie in Dreamgirls, is immune from the fanbase-alienating phenomenon. The Dallas Voice recently interviewed Hudson—who until now has expressed a very pro-Gay attitude in the media—and found the Next Big Thing still carries with her some old-fashioned attitudes: