The Best Picture category isn't the only thing that bulked up.

What is it about the Academy Awards? Intellectually, it's hard to muster up that much enthusiasm about who "wore it best" (Ang Lee) or how modest Katniss will be in her acceptance speech, hopefully avoiding a First Wives' Club reference that sounded like she was hating on Meryl Streep this time. And yet ... we still feel compelled to watch. Maybe it's because secretly, deep down, we still find it fascinating that the guy who does the voice of Stewie looks like the host of a reality game show about finding true love by having a dance-off on a stripper pole.

Or maybe it's because we're just suckers, who deep down believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild might still possibly have a chance against Argo or Lincoln.

Come join us, will you, on this the most magical of evenings for producers, people who are married to movie stars, and dress designers? We'll be hosting a live chat below. Just click the big countdown button and you're all set. Got it?

Great.

This year we're making our predictions in order of the film and/or celebrity, not the award. That's because this time ... it's personal. No, seriously: between Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck being iced out of Best Director, the Weinstein Bros. not having a snowball's chance in hell of scoring a big win and the fact that we're practically giving an award to Anne Hathaway just to make her stop sing-crying, there's going to be a lot of sore losers tonight. But don't worry; we're using a time-tested formula for predicting the bitter ceremonies, including taking all of the guesses on Twitter and averaging them against Nate Silver's predictions. Then we throw those out the window and  get ourselves angry over Lincoln’s inevitable windfall of awards that should be going to that movie that had all those great New Yorker articles written about it and stars a 9-year-old who wasn't even an actress when she started the film, which is about 50 percent more method than Daniel Day-Lewis's decision to become an Italian cobbler every time he's taking a hiatus from Hollywood.

So enjoy, and don't forget to tune into our live chat on the Oscars, starting at 7 p.m.!

2013 Golden Globes, Bill Murray

If you are too busy watching the Australian cycling thing and can't understand what the hell is going on with Twitter (honestly, we don't know who you follow, but no one on our feed actually bothers naming the winners of these things), here are the latest updates for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Argo
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER:

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Les Mis

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Hugh Jackman, Les Mis

Best TV Series, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: GIRLS

Best Director
WINNER: Ben Affleck, Argo

Cecil B. DeMille's Lifetime Achievement Award/Freestyle Portion of Evening
WINNER: Jodie Foster

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Lena Dunham, Girls

Best Animated Feature Film
WINNER: Brave

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Claire Danes, Homeland

Best Foreign Film
WINNER: Amour

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Best Screenplay
WINNER: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Ed Harris, Game Change

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
(RUNNER-UP: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Julianne Moore - Game Change

Best Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Homeland

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series
WINNER: Maggie Smith - Downton Abbey

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Damien Lewis - Homeland

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Game Change

Best Original Song
WINNER: "Skyfall," Adele

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
WINNER: Life of Pi

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Lining Playbook (Also, best speech? Y/N?)

Hugh Jackman (Getty Images)

Lifetime achievement awards usually go to those who are, well, fairly far along in a lengthy lifetime of achievements. Not that he hasn’t done a lot in his career, but should we be worried about Hugh Jackman’s health? The star of the Les Miserables movie—coming this month, so bulk-order your Kleenex now—joins the ranks of past awardees Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, and Sidney Poitier as this year’s honoree at the Museum of the Moving Image Salute. The party’s at Cipriani, where stars like Rachel Weisz, Anne Hathaway and Alec Baldwin will present a tribute to the Aussie stud. The star of stage and screen got a similar toast at the Tonys this year—by now, he’s perfected his graciously self-deprecating speech.

Museum of the Moving Image Salute to Hugh Jackman, Cipriani Wall Street, 55 Wall Street, call 212-245-6570 for tickets and information.

Sarah Jessica Parker (Getty Images)

Australia’s given us some of our best stars: Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Paul “Crocodile Dundee” Hogan, Cate Blanchett... So we’re eager to attend the New 42nd Street Gala, which is honoring the Australia Council for the Arts for creating theatrical works for young kids. (You don’t need to be in Perth to see them: the shows travel around the world.) The evening’s co-chairs include perpetual arts advocate and newly minted Glee star Sarah Jessica Parker and socialite Adelina Wong Ettelson; honorary chairs are Aussie theater-booster Hugh Jackman and his lovely wife.

The New Victory Theater, 209 West 42nd Street, 7pm, tickets and information can be found at newvictory.org.

Whoa, slow down there, Anne Hathaway. We know that after eight watered-down vodka cranberries, things can get pretty emotional in this private karaoke booth we've rented for your birthday. We know that your ex-boyfriend, the Italian schemer Raffaello Follieri, to whom you gave your heart away for the first time, got out of jail very recently. That has got to bring up a lot of mixed emotions for you.

But couldn't you have picked like, a Whitney Houston song or something? Maybe a little Patsy Cline? We mean, we are all friends here and do what you want, but you just seem like you are way to into singing Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" right now, and we think we speak for the group here when we say it's making us all feel a little uncomfortable. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5slbuWpZwjg
Honestly, you know who I feel bad for? Not Hugh Jackman, whose love of song is only rivaled by the disappointment of his female fans over his love of song. And not Russell Crowe, who only really has to do "Stars" and the Confrontation song before picking up his check and going home to throw a cell phone and some peasant paparazzo. Not even Amanda Seyfried, since she's sort of a neutral substance that is never really affected by all the crappy films she's in.

No, we feel really bad for poor Eddie Redmayne, who is still the second least important "star" of the film adaptation, despite his breakout performance in My Weekend with Marilyn. Poor Mr. Redmayne. Well, at least we can stop imagining Marius as inexplicably chubby. And we bet you will not be able to stop from tearing up when he kicks in during "A Little all of Rain."

A good, another round of kamikaze shots. No, Anne, give us back the mic. We're not going to let you go twice, even if it is your special day, and you really are feeling like Sally Bowles' "Maybe This Time."

Harry Houdini, ladies and....ladies! (Getty Images)

But that's not all.

The producers’ announcement described the musical as a “contemporary look at the life and death” of Houdini, and Mr. Sorkin made particular note that the show would not be a comprehensive biography. In a statement he said the musical would focus on “an epic battle that took place between the world’s greatest illusionist and a trio of women, known as ‘Spiritualists,’ who convinced millions of people, including the editors of Scientific American and The New York Times, that they could communicate with the dead.”

A musical that's not a comprehensive biography of a famous figure? Well, we never!

The Houdini project, which has been long-stalled in the production stage, has a soundtrack by Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz, with  Kurt Andersen (last seen complaining about how nothing is new anymore in Vanity Fair) as a creative consultant. (Originally he and Danny Elfman were attached to write and compose the show.) Somehow, Mr. Sorkin has managed to write the book for the play while developing a show for HBO about Keith Olbermann a news anchor who is not Keith Olbermann.

We'd line up for tickets, but the show hasn't even found a stage yet. That's fine: to see the lines of women currently snaking around Mr. Jackson's current musical review, the play could take place in Bubba Gump Shrimp and it would still sell out every night.

Jackman.

Hugh Jackman!

Yes!

Camera ready and slinging his rippled torso, with his undulating thighs drawing gasps and sighs from sold-out audiences nightly and white-picket-fence teeth catching the sparks from the footlights like diamonds, he hits the stage throbbing, and two hours later you leave with your knees shaking. You don’t know what hit you. But you know you’ve been to the theater.

There is nothing Hugh Jackman can’t do onstage—and in the one-man show called (what else?) Hugh Jackman—Back on Broadway at the Broadhurst, he pretty much does it all­—frontward, backward and upside down. Except for early legends like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Marilyn Miller, I’ve been present for most of the show business summits and I am here to tell you I have never seen anybody, male or female, who had it all in one package like this boy from Oz. He’s made so many stupid Wolverine movies I’m surprised people with taste, intelligence and savvy remember what he’s capable of with a tube of greasepaint and a follow spot. Movies make money to fill the bank account, but Broadway makes magic to feed the soul. This is one movie star who is just a Broadway Baby at heart. In this sexy, funny, heart-rending, toe-tapping, foot-stomping, one-man extravaganza, he proves it, and sends his audience over the moon, screaming for more.

The screaming starts before he even appears, brightly booming Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oh What a Beautiful Morning!” offstage, and oh how I pity anyone who missed his Curly in the National Theatre production of Oklahoma! in London. Entering in neatly pressed clothes that cling to him like the hands of thousands of women (and men) who dream of such things, he’s the hip-hoppy, fresh-shaven all-American, kangaroo-sparring, jumping, leaping, flirting and breaking the Broadway sound barrier. He grinds his hips toward the people in the first row, accompanied by the appropriate drum rolls, and the high-price orchestra seats go berserk. He mentions the mezzanine and the mezzanine screams. Between songs, he shows still photos and film clips that demonstrate (while poking fun at) the three ingredients of his success—diet, training and genetics—then brings the house down with a shot of himself as an Aussie teenager in gym shorts with skinny legs and knobby knees. Proving, once and for all, what the bench press has done to make him a star.

The patter is candid, self-deprecating and charming, but when he swings into action as a song-and-dance man, you know this is no 8x10 glossy manufactured by the overzealous press department of a Hollywood film studio. In a clever pastiche of the Fred Astaire number “I Won’t Dance,” he sails through every rhythmic beat from “Begin the Beguine” to “Shake Your Booty.” Throwing himself on one knee, he recaptures Al Jolson, bringing the crowd to its feet on a rousing “Let Me Sing and I’m Happy,” followed by a tribute to the city that has given him an open-arms second career, belting out Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” with mood-changing Technicolor footage of the Manhattan skyline acting as a bracingly effective emotional backdrop. The charisma and versatility take him from riffing about his one-night triumph in Carousel at Carnegie Hall to oy-vay eye rolling over his work as a fearless vampire hunter in the embarrassing Van Helsing. He has a sense of humor that captivates and enthralls, even about his bad movies. Then he can turn around on a dime and end act one with a passionately delivered, magnificently modulated and perfectly pitched “Soliloquy” that stops the show. And that just takes you up to intermission.

When the star-studded opening night crowd staggered back to their seats, the neatly creased black pants and pale blue shirt were gone and out pranced a honey-dripping, erotically charged party boy in skintight gold lamé, plucking memories of Peter Allen and The Boy From Oz out of the air like falling sequins singing “I Am Not the Boy Next Door.” No, he’s not. Leaping to the top of the grand piano to wail “Between the Moon and New York City,” then leading six gorgeous chorus girls through Warren Carlyle’s intricate Fosse-inspired choreography on “I Go to Rio,” he fills the stage with so much nonstop movement and music you don’t know what to look at or listen to first. It just hits you at the same time, like Fourth of July fireworks. Credit for the sets goes to that ace scenic designer John Lee Beatty, but honestly, except for a curtain of gold ribbons that descends from the ceiling on the Peter Allen medley, there is no set. Hugh Jackman is the set, and there’s no need to gild the lily.

Still, there is more. Illustrating his curious adolescence in Australia as a rough and tumble athlete who loved show tunes, coming home bloody and battered from rugby practice to watch Guys and Dolls on the telly, he stages a stupendous salute to the glorious age of movie musicals. Throwing the dice to a soaring climax on “Luck Be a Lady,” he reminds us that a revival with Hugh Jackman as Sky Masterson would be dream casting. When he taps like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain, then high steps through the elegant paces of Fred Astaire on “Stepping Out With My Baby” from Easter Parade, I wager you can hear the ovations over the traffic jams in Times Square. Turning serious about the mystery and spirituality of his country toward the end, he turns the stage over to a captivating group of aborigines who accompany the star on their own instruments while the screen behind them turns into a montage of Australian geography and wildlife and Mr. Jackman sings a haunting “Over the Rainbow.” The effect produces goose bumps, touches the soul and leads to another standing ovation. Whipped into a lather, the audience had to be coaxed to sit down one more time, as Mr. Jackman knocked them out of their socks again on a bouncy Bobby Darin-styled “Mack the Knife.” And there’s another role I’d like to see him tackle.

I’m not mad about one-man shows, but Hugh Jackman is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of happening. He doesn’t lease the stage. He owns it, like Judy Garland, and uses every square inch of the space. Soon he’ll return to the claws and beards of werewolves, vampires and boxing robots on a Hollywood soundstage. For the next 10 weeks, in Back on Broadway, he’s playing the greatest contemporary entertainer in show business—himself. I’ve never seen anyone like him, and you’ll be both foolish and a great deal poorer in life to miss him. Bring your own razzle to the Broadhurst. Hugh Jackman provides the dazzle. Between his electrifying talent, and the legions of fans who send their love back at the stage in appreciation, he creates an interplay, a rapturous splendor, of the disciplined energy that is art.

rreed@observer.com

Kardashian and Humphries.

It’s a Kard-astrophe! Only 72 days after reality entertainment star Kim Kardashian and her husband Brooklyn Nets (if that is their real name) NBA star Kris Humphries tied the knot, the duo is now filing for divorce. We really thought these two kids could make it…at least through another season of Kourtney & Kim Take New York.

Poor Kris: he’s apparently devastated over the idea that the love of his life…not to mention his ca-ching money train…is leaving the station so soon. Oh well, what’s the infamous saying? All’s fair in love and Dior.

So New York lost one Kardashian, but gained back Conan O’Brien, who performed live at the Beacon Theatre Monday night. Sounds like a fair trade to us! The fire-haired Coco told audiences that he “came 3,000 miles to do that” – where “that” referred to a visual gag involving a ghost human centipede. We can’t decide what’s more disturbing: that imagery or the fact that we missed it.

You’d think Coco would have roused all of the A-list guest-stars to appear for his NYC re-debut, but fans were (to put it nicely) mildly disappointed to find that the only name worth mentioning on last night’s roster was Mayor Bloomberg. What was he doing at the Beacon talking to Conan? Probably avoiding any rogue Occupy Wall Streeters planning to egg his house. But last night Hugh Jackman was on the lineup, and who doesn’t love the all-singing, all-dancing Wolverine Aussie?

That said, Mayor Bloomberg might not actually be the most frightening thing in the city this week: after CBS aired Morley Safer’s interview with Ruth and Andrew Madoff, we expected half of NYC to be outside the family’s door with torches. Finally, villains that both the rich and poor can loathe alike! What doesn’t divide us unites us. No one seems to believe that poor Mrs. Madoff wasn’t in on her husband’s Ponzi scheme, but we’re willing to entertain the possibility that they had one of those Kris Humphries-type marriages--where half the couple doesn’t even know when they’re about to be served with walking papers, Still, we aren’t heartless,and Mrs. Madoff’s description of her son Mark nearly produced a sympathetic tear or two. But then we imagined her drying her own tears with crisp $100 bills from the money she’s been allowed to keep. To be fair, she’s probably not alone. We imagine Kim Kardashian doing the same thing.