Emmanuelle Riva, at 85 the oldest actress to pick up a best actress Oscar nomination, on Friday won best actress at France's Cesars for her turn as a dying woman in Michael Haneke's "Love" ("Amour") for which he also won best director.

Riva stars with French acting legend Jean-Louis Trintignant in the film which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year and a Golden Globe for best foreign language film in January. It has been nominated in five categories including best actress in Sunday's Oscars.

"Amour" and "Argo" are taking home prestigious prizes — and Kevin Costner may be taking home a horse — after a French film award ceremony.

The Cesar awards on Friday night reflected excitement and emotion ahead of the Oscars on Sunday. But they had a decidedly French touch, replete with references to high taxes.

Michael Haneke's latest project, a staging of Mozart opera "Cosi Fan Tutte", premieres at Madrid's Teatro Real on Saturday, a day before the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles where his most recent film "Amour" is up for five awards.

The Madrid show is his second opera project after his highly-praised operatic debut with "Don Giovanni" in Paris in 2007 -- and the 69-year-old said it would be his last.

Italian fashion icon Donatella Versace brought her own spin to punk on Friday, unveiling a collection dominated by fierce outfits in shiny black, white, or lipstick red vinyls and deadly accessories.

"I started thinking, what would we call the new punk today? This collection is my answer. It is sexy, strong, brave and full of energy," she said.

Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z are hitting the road together.

The performers announced Friday that they'll embark on a 12-city stadium tour that will kick off July 17 in Toronto. "Legends of the Summer" will wrap up Aug. 16 in Miami.

French actor Gerard Depardieu on Friday toured Moscow's Bolshoi Theater as he visited his newly-adopted homeland of Russia before heading to the provinces to take up residence at his new address on "Democracy Street".

Depardieu, who was granted a Russian passport by President Vladimir Putin after complaining at high tax rates in France, was set to spend Friday in Moscow before traveling 650 kilometers (400 miles) to the provincial city of Saransk to register as a resident of No. 1 Democracy Street (Demokraticheskaya Ulitsa).

Italian iconic fashion house Prada transformed 1950s American housewives into would-be Bond girls on Thursday, with a lethally seductive look which gave a powerful twist to the classic hourglass dress.

Checkered dresses in red and white or baby blue were the collection's mainstay, pulled in at the waist by wide or slim gold or silver belts, but slit open at the bodice's neckline, as if ripped by an amorous James Bond.

Ben Affleck's Iran hostage drama "Argo" goes into Oscars weekend a whisker ahead of Steven Spielberg's presidential "Lincoln," but the race is one of the most unpredictable in recent memory.

Veteran director Spielberg, bidding for his first best picture Oscar since "Schindler's List" in 1994, tops the nominations with 12 nods -- but "Argo" has cleaned up in Hollywood's awards season so far, despite having only seven.

He stands only 13.5 inches (34 centimeters) tall and weighs just 8.5 pounds (3.85 kilos) -- but Oscar, in all his bald gold-plated glory, is the holy grail of Hollywood.

The iconic statuette was created in 1929, two years after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, by the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios, Louis Mayer.

In Los Angeles -- the land of paparazzi, dazzling dental work and endless glitz -- it turns out that you, too, can be hot enough to draw a crowd. For a price, of course.

Crowds on Demand is the brainchild of a young entrepreneur who came up with a novel idea for giving everyday people a taste of fame, even if it is brief and bogus.