Sideshow: Old-timers' day at the Oscars

Hollywood royalty turned out to fete the recipients of the Oscars' lifetime achievement awards over the weekend.

Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, Kirk Douglas, Steven Spielberg, and others dressed in black tie to honor acting legend Lauren Bacall, prolific B-movie producer Roger Corman, and noted cinematographer Gordon Willis.

The Governors Awards have traditionally been part of the Academy Awards telecast. To streamline the annual show, scheduled for March 7 with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin hosting, the career ceremony is now being held separately.

Presenting the award to Corman, whose expansive credits include such classics as Attack of the Giant Leeches, Club Vampire, and Dinocroc, Quentin Tarantino gushed: "Roger, for everything you have done for cinema, the Academy thanks you, Hollywood thanks you, independent filmmaking thanks you. But most importantly, for all the weird, cool, crazy moments you've put on screen, the movie-lovers of planet Earth thank you."

Bacall's film career goes back to 1944's To Have and Have Not. After receiving her statue from Douglas, the 85-year-old actress gave a saucy acceptance speech, concluding: "I'm very grateful they think I'm deserving of this honor, but I do welcome it. And the thought that when I get home I'm going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting!"

There is nothing like this dame.

Even the Boss can make mistakes.

On Friday night, hailing his fans at a concert at the Palace of Auburn Hills near Detroit, Bruce Springsteen shouted out, "Hello, Ohio!"

He compounded his geographical faux pas by making several other Ohio-specific references between songs.

Finally, guitarist Steve Van Zandt approached the rock colossus at the microphone and whispered in his ear.

A clearly chagrined Springsteen apologized for what he characterized as "every front man's nightmare."

It's the end of the world as we know it. And 2012 is doing fine.

Despite tepid reviews, Roland Emmerich's apocalyptic epic ruled the box office this weekend with a $65 million take. That exceeded expectations for the latest extravaganza from the doomsday director who gave us The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day.

A Christmas Carol continued a strong run with $22.3 million in ticket sales. After that, revenues dropped off sharply, although Precious was still impressive, earning more than $6 million in limited release.

The week's other major studio release, Pirate Radio, hit nothing but static, with a meager $2.9 million bounty.

Sarah Palin may be a first-time author, but she already has learned the most important rule for vaulting your tome to the best-seller list: Don't give Oprah all the juicy stuff.

Save some for Babs.

Today comes Palin's much discussed on-air tete-a-tete with Ms. Winfrey, in which the former vice presidential candidate details her rude introduction to the national media last year, when she was bushwhacked by CBS anchor Katie Couric.

Tomorrow, the day Palin's memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, comes out, the politica appears on Good Morning America for an interview with Barbara Walters. Among the revelations: Palin confesses that she discovered rather late in the game that her daughter Bristol, then a high school junior, was sexually active. The precise moment came when Bristol informed her parents that she was pregnant.

"That's why I was so shocked," Palin tells Walters. "Truthfully, we were devastated."