Inside Movies The Place Where Movies and Stars Align

Al Pacino sure loves to play cops and robbers.

The actor who has made a career of playing hard-driving detectives ('Serpico,' 'Sea of Love,' 'Heat') and nasty bad guys ('The Godfather,' 'Scarface,' 'Carlito's Way') will next pin on a shield for 'Son of No One,' a police thriller starring Channing Tatum that begins shooting in New York next month. The film is being directed and written by Dito Montiel and centers on a young cop (Tatum) assigned to the working class neighborhood where he grew up, with an old secret surfacing and threatening to destroy his life and family, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter.

Those who think Hollywood favors only the young should take heart, because this year's crop of Oscar-nominated actors are almost all over 35 -- which makes the nominations of young actresses Anna Kendrick, 24, Carey Mulligan, 25, and Gabourey Sidibe, 26, all the more remarkable. The trio of first-time nominees (best actress hopeful Mulligan starred in 'An Education,' Sidibe in 'Precious,' and Kendrick has a supporting nod for 'Up in the Air') joins a select group of extraordinary actors -- many of them precocious kids and teens -- who have captivated the Academy's attention.

Here's a look at Oscar's golden wunderkinds, from scarily gifted tweens like Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin to teen stars River Phoenix and Leo DiCaprio, to breakout twentysomething ingenues from the Big-Studio Era like Jennifer Jones and Audrey Hepburn.

As the cliché goes, it's an honor just to be nominated for an Oscar. Well, actually, it's more than just an honor. You also get a certificate. And a pear-Gorgonzola salad.

Monday was the annual Oscar nominees' luncheon at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, a chance for all this year's nominees to mingle and relax and pretend for a couple hours they're not secretly rooting for their rivals to lose. 121 nominees showed for the event yesterday and participated in such annual Oscar luncheon traditions as the class photo (the Los Angeles Times has a good 360-degree panoramic version of this) and the yearly plea from the telecast producers to keep those acceptance speeches under 45 seconds.

The luncheon also provided reporters in attendance with a steady stream of celebrity quotes from the nominees, as well as news from Oscar show producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic about what changes to expect during this year's broadcast -- all of which you can read about below.

Tim Burton's trippy depiction of Lewis Carroll's beloved tale 'Alice in Wonderland' (releasing March 5) is sure to captivate audiences with its dazzling imagery and astonishing cast. Just make sure not to expect a remake, rather a sequel of sorts.

Set several years after Alice's first trip down the rabbit hole, the film follows her venture back to the enchanting fantasy world she once knew. Once there, she reunites with familiar friends, all having maintained their peculiar nature, and must face the wrath of her nemesis, the Red Queen.

Leonardo DiCaprio is kind a big deal. With 'Shutter Island' set to blow the collective minds of moviegoers across the country, we had a chance to sit down with the film's stars -- Leo and Sir Ben Kingsley -- to talk about all of the intensity and drama that went into shooting the Martin Scorsese-directed film.

So what did we learn? For one, Leo would never compare his acting skills to those of Robert De Niro and also that he could hold his own in a Boston pizza parlor. As for Sir Ben, we get into his brain about playing a psychiatrist and also how Leo held up against the Oscar winner.

More than 100 of this year's Oscar nominees attended the annual nominees luncheon in Hollywood on Monday, and in the annual lecture about acceptance speeches that is served with the rubber chicken, they learned the winners among them will be test dummies for a new Oscars acceptance speech rule.

They were told to have two speeches prepared in case they win: one to be short and sweet, telling the live audience in 45 seconds or less what the Oscar means to them; and a second, as long as necessary, in front of a "Thank You Cam" backstage, where they can thank everyone from their agent to the maid's dog.

Bill Mechanic, co-producer of the Oscars, told the nominees that the long thank yous are 'the single-most hated thing about the show."

Before James Cameron became the richest man in Hollywood, he was the blockbuster director behind 'Aliens' and 'Terminator.' And fanboys in the '90s went nuts when he announced that he was going to work on the first-ever 'Spider-Man' film. Alas, the movie got caught up in development problems, and Cameron had to abandon the project.

Well, now it appears that Cameron is back in Spidey's web. Jon Landau, Cameron's co-producer on 'Avatar,' recently told MTV that they have met with Marc Webb, director of the upcoming 'Spider-Man' reboot.

"[Webb] wants to do the next one in 3-D, which they've announced that they want to do. So, we want to try to support that as much as possible," Landau said.