'Amour'

Run time: 2 hours, 7 minutes. Best time to go to the bathroom? During the former piano pupil's visit.

Cult Classic: Emmanuelle Riva, the oldest best actress nominee in history, turns 86 on Oscar night. She is known to serious cinephiles as the female lead in Alain Resnais's 1959 film "Hiroshima Mon Amour," which helped spark France's nouvelle vague movement. Leonard Maltin called it "the 'Birth of a Nation' of the French New Wave," Eric Rohmer called it "the first modern film of sound cinema" and Jean-Luc Godard called it "the first film without any cinematic references."

'Beasts of the Southern Wild'

Run time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. You can hold it.

Swim Team: Director Behn Zeitlin looked at 4,000 kids over the course of nine months to cast the part of Hushpuppy before he decided on a 5-year-old, Quvenzhané Wallis. Problem was, she didn't know how to swim, even though moving through bodies of water would be a requirement on the job.

"So we taught her to swim as part of making the film," director Behn Zeitlin said. "There was a scene where she had to run into the water, and we had people hiding in the water to catch the girls, but she was like Jesus on the water. She just ran on top of the water, past the guards who were there to catch her. She was fearless."

'Lincoln'

Run time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Best time to go to the bathroom? Anytime, seriously.

There Once Was A Man Named Abe: Daniel Day-Lewis is a famously Method actor. On the set of "Nine," he wrote his co-stars love letters in character as Guido. And on the set of "Lincoln," he wrote his character's wife limericks, in character as Lincoln, signing them, "Yours, A." And apparently, they were naughty, or at least, very personal.

"I wouldn't tell anybody the content of them," Sally Field laughed. "They're mine, and not yours, and it will always be that way. It was just our way of getting to know each other and preparing, so I wouldn't tell you, even if I did remember them off the top of my head!"

Field said she responded in character as Mary Todd Lincoln, "and she criticized him quite a bit," so her texts back were not very encouraging. "That's kind of what she was," Field said.

'Django Unchained'

Run time: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Best time to go to the bathroom? The KKK raid, unless you're keen on a Jonah Hill cameo.

The D is Silent: The name "Django" was so chosen because of Sergio Corbucci's 1967 spaghetti western starring Franco Nero, which resulted in a number of sequels, well, sequels only in the sense that they shared the character name Django. Quentin Tarantino uses musical cues from the original "Django" as well as Corbucci's "The Hellbenders," Clint Eastwood's "Two Mules for Sister Sara" and Sergio Sollima's "Violent City."

'Les Miserables'

Run time: 2 hours, 37 minutes. Best time to go to the bathroom? "If you go very, very fast, then you can go after 'One Day More,' where the interval would have been," said director Tom Hooper.

Lapdances: Hugh Jackman celebrated his co-star Amanda Seyfried's 27th birthday while on the promo tour by giving her a very public lapdance, even though he plays the adopted father to her Cosette in the film.

"In my household, that's normal," he joked. "Is that not normal in father-daughter relationships? I was singing ('happy birthday') very sweetly to her, and then I looked at her eyes, and you can't maintain sweetness for more than five seconds."

Jackman predicts there might be more lapdances in store -- perhaps on Oscar night?