Inside 100 hours and counting down ...

-- I overreached last spring in suggesting that Jane Fonda might have a nomination possibility for this year's Oscars (thanks to "Peace, Love and Misunderstanding"), but at least I was right in saying that, three decades after her father won a lead actor prize for "On Golden Pond," the time was right for her to appear.  Fonda joins Jennifer Garner, Kristen Stewart and Kerry Washington as the latest to sign on to present at this year's ceremony.

-- Another awards ceremony has moved earlier on the 2014 calendar: the Producers Guild Awards.

-- Framework looks back 45 years at the 1968 Oscar ceremony, delayed two nights because of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. "In the Heat of the Night" won best picture that year.

-- The 15th annual Costume Designers Guild Awards honored "Skyfall" (contemporary) "Anna Karenina" (period) and "Mirror Mirror" (fantasy). Steve Chagollan has details for Variety.

-- "Argo" has earned Warner Bros. Entertainment the 2013 Made in Hollywood award for spending an estimated $31 million on production in the city, writes Dave McNary of Variety.

-- On the same topic, the documentary "'Argo': Inside Story," narrated by Bryan Cranston, will air at 10 p.m. Saturday and 12 noon Sunday on Discovery Channel. The project offers an inside look at the story behind the "Argo" story.

--Cicely Tyson will receive the Legacy Award from the African-American Film Critics Association at a luncheon Friday in Marina Del Rey.  Also being honored at the event are film studio Screen Gems, the Pan African Film Festival and Will Packer and Rob Hardy of Rainforest Films.

-- A vote at Kids Pick Flicks settled on "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" as its movie of the year.

Invoking their best John Belushi from "Animal House," the Oscars have made their stand: "Nothing's over until we say it's over."

The Academy just announced that Kristin Chenoweth and host Seth MacFarlane will participate in a special show-closing musical performance at Sunday's ceremony.

"After the best picture award has been given, Seth and Kristin will perform a special number and we think it will be a 'can't miss' moment," said Oscarcast exec producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron in a statement.

Man, are they truly going all in on the music. Do even the most diehard musical fans have this much enthusiasm for it at the Academy Awards? 

Maybe they think what works for the Tonys works for the Oscars, and what works for Neil Patrick Harris works for McFarlane. I remain unconvinced, but I hope to be proven wrong. It would be much better if this turned out to be a smash and not a "Smash."

Oscar-nominated "5 Broken Cameras" director Emad Burnat, who along with his wife and son was detained as he arrived at the airport in Los Angeles for this weekend's ceremony, has issued a statement depicting his account of the event and extrapolating it to what Israeli-Palestinian relations. 

"Last night, on my way from Turkey to Los Angeles, my family and I were held at U.S. immigration for about an hour and questioned about the purpose of my visit to the United States. Immigration officials asked for proof that I was nominated for an Academy Award for the documentary "5 Broken Cameras," and they told me that if I couldn't prove the reason for my visit, my wife Soraya, my son Gibreel and I would be sent back to Turkey on the same day.

"After 40 minutes of questions and answers, Gibreel asked me why we were still waiting in that small room. I simply told him the truth: 'Maybe we'll have to go back.' I could see his heart sink.

"Although this was an unpleasant experience, this is a daily occurrence for Palestinians, every single day, throughout the West Bank. There are more than 500 Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and other barriers to movement across our land, and not a single one of us has been spared the experience that my family and I experienced yesterday. Ours was a very minor example of what my people face every day."

According to Michael Moore, whose aid Burnat sought during the detention, Burnat's possession of the official Oscar invitation was accepted as proof by immigration officials, and Academy officials were then asked to bring lawyers into solving the crisis.

Update: Moore added more today in a blog post ...

More news about far-flung Oscar travel: 16-year-old Rachel Mwanza, star of Oscar-nominated foreign-language film "War Witch," has been granted a visa to travel from the Congo and will attend awards shows including Saturday's Indie Spirits and Sunday's Oscars.

"We are beyond thrilled and relieved that the governments in the U.S., Canada, and the DRC will allow Rachel entry so she can celebrate the film's many accomplishments with us," said "War Witch" director Kim Nguyen.  "Rachel's story is truly a Cinderella tale — abandoned by her family and living on the streets as a child, her life has been transformed by the making of the film.  To have her journey end on the red carpet is beyond anything she could have dreamed of." 

Representing Canada at the Oscars, "War Witch" also has 12 noms for the March 3 Canadian Screen Awards and nine for Quebec's Jutra on March 17.

As presented by Conan O'Brien ...

Oscar exec producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, speaking to Pete Hammond of Deadline, give the distinct impression that a tight Oscarcast is out of reach. 

Deadline: You have a big musical theme for the Oscar show this year with a lot more entertainment planned than usual. How are you going to bring this in at three hours?

Zadan: They would like it to be three hours and we are doing as much as we can to bring it in as close to three hours. It’s not going to be three hours but we will try to get it close to that.

Meron: What Oscar show has been?  If you look at the past shows as we have done they are not. Take a look at the Grammy Awards. They hand about 11 awards in 3 1/2 hours. And we have to do all 24 awards plus we want to do our theme which is music of the movies.

Hopefully, we will share their vision – otherwise it's really going to be a long night:

Meron:  At the end of the day we have to be happy with our show. That’s the key. Because it’s a kind of no-win proposition doing the Oscars. People are probably already lining up to throw their bricks at us. But in the end if we’re happy with it that’s all that matters.

Zadan: We’re not saying the show is better than any other show. We aren’t saying this is the Oscar show. What we feel is we are doing the show we want to see. In our minds we saw an Oscar show in our fantasy of what we would like to see as an Oscar show. And we’re recreating that fantasy. Is it going to work? We don’t know. What we don’t want to do is play it safe.

So yeah, the headliners in the latest performers release from the Academy are Jennifer Hudson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but the name that grabs my attention the most is Russell Crowe, whose singing in "Les Miserables" got such a, you know, mixed reception.

In any case, Crowe doesn't figure to get much solo time when the performers list also includes Hudson ("Dreamgirls"), Zeta-Jones ("Chicago"), Adele ("Skyfall"), Shirley Bassey (the Bond movies), Norah Jones, Barbra Streisand and "Les Miserables" co-stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tveit, Samantha Barks and Helena Bonham Carter.

"We are pleased to have been able to amass so much talent to create the celebration of musicals of the last decade that we envisioned,” said Oscarcast exec producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron in a joint statement.  “We are thrilled that so many talented actors have agreed to bring our vision to life.”

The Oscar ballots are in, so stop the campaiging and prepare for kvetching ...

• The "Buzkashi Boys" boarded their plane Monday and were en route to Los Angeles for the Oscars. Background on their odyssey here.

Update: Word came Wednesday morning that Turkish Airlines has donated the cost of the international plane tickets, and that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul will cover costs of domestic travel for the boys and all lodging while in America.

• Maureen Dragone, Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. historian, died Feb. 8 at 93. 

• The latest in Oscar presenters: Michael Douglas and Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, Salma Hayek Pinault, Melissa McCarthy, Liam Neeson and John Travolta.   

• Eight-time Oscar writer Dave Boone talked to NPR's Audie Cornish about the doings backstage.

• For you "Lincoln" and Lincoln aficionados, Bob Timmermann's review of Douglas R. Egerton's "Year of Meteors" (at One Through Forty-Two or Forty-Three) captures all the craziness of the 1860 presidential election.  

• Pablo Berger's "Blancanieves" won 10 awards, including best film and original screenplay, at Spain's 27th Spanish Academy Goya Awards on Sunday. Juan Antonio Bayona won director honors for "The Impossible." John Hopewell has the report for Variety.

• "Calin Peter Netzer's Romanian social drama 'Child's Pose' won the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear for best picture Saturday, while David Gordon Green took the Silver Bear for director for 'Prince Avalanche,' the only win for a U.S. pic," reports Ed Meza for Variety. "Two of this year's Oscar nominees, Kim Nguyen's 'War Witch' (repping Canada) and Nikolaj Arcel's 'A Royal Affair' (repping Denmark) won prizes at last year's fest, while Iranian helmer-scribe Asghar Farhadi's 2011 Golden Bear winner 'A Separation' went on to win the Oscar in that category and was also nommed for original screenplay.

• A half-dozen college students won the Oscar Experience College Search contest and will appear live onstage Sunday to deliver Oscar statuettes to ceremony presenters. 

• Sherri Shepherd, Cameron Mathison, Rico Rodriquez, Jess Cagle and Peter Castro will, um, do some stuff backstage during the Oscars.

• "Silver Linings Playbook" props, get your "Silver Linings Playbook" props ...

Sunday's Writers Guild Awards, as you probably know by now, were undermined by the announcement of several winners on the East Coast – including both feature screenplay honors – an hour or so before they were revealed on the West Coast. At best, this was just as uncoordinated as Sheldon Cooper playing basketball – at worst, it was the WGA East thumbing its nose at the WGA West.

Dave McNary of Variety reports on the dust-up today, getting public assurances that there was "no disrespect intended" and that the parties intend to "work something out." 

People at the ceremony in Los Angeles generally took the spoiled results in stride, but it was not to see it as disappointing and embarrassing. 

Yep, that's right – the gloss isn't dry on this year's Oscars, and I'm already looking beyond.  A new president, a new ceremony date and potential rules changes in the branches are among the topics on the agenda for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, as my latest print column for Variety illustrates.