There's not much time before this Sunday's Academy Awards show, but if you still haven't caught up on all the best picture nominees we've got you covered.

The first thing you need to know is that they are long: "Django Unchained" has a whopping 2-hour and 45-minute run time while "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Les Miserables" both clock in at exactly 2 hours and 37 minutes.

And not only might you need to settle in and get comfy to watch this year's nominees ( "Everybody's got a numb bum," joked "Les Miz" co-star Eddie Redmayne about one of the possible side effects for viewers of her film) there is more than meets the eye when it comes to these movies.

To prep you for Sunday's big event, we've compiled some fun facts, conversation starters and, yes, even some break tips for this year's Best Picture nominees.

'Argo'

Run time: 2 hours, 20 minutes. Best time to go to the bathroom? The houseguests' dinner party.

Roommates: To create the sense of claustrophobia that the houseguests have while hiding at the Canadian ambassador's house, director Ben Affleck had the six "Argo" actors actually live together, with no Internet and no air conditioning.

"I totally did not want to do it," Tate Donovan said. "I was like, 'Who wants to spend six days with a bunch of young idiots? Method actors?' And we ended up falling in love with each other. Don't tell anyone, but we had the best time."

One other live-in situation preceded this one, however: Donovan used to be post-college roommates with his best friend, "Argo" producer Grant Heslov.

"He basically forced Ben Affleck to cast me (as Bob Anders)," Donovan said. "He did. Swear to God. Totally true."

The way Heslov tells it, he told Affleck, "My buddy Tate is perfect for this role. Ben was like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,' and I wore him down."

Afterwards, Affleck was happy Heslov did. "He said, 'Thank God I did (cast you),'" Donovan laughed.

Science Fiction Land: The fake movie they pretend to make in "Argo" is actually based on a real science fiction novel: 1967's "Lord of Light," by Roger Zelazny. A struggling screenwriter named Barry Geller wrote a draft, imagining that if the film were made, it could lead to a theme park called Science Fiction Land (to include voice-operated cars and robots, as if Tomorrowland in Disneyland were the main attraction). He even consulted with Ray Bradbury for the project and got concept art from Jack Kirby (co-creator of "The X-Men").

Far from being a script from a slush pile, "Lord of Light" was a film with some development behind it, even if it had fallen apart, and Geller was much dismayed when the CIA took it over.

Could this scrapped film have actually been a hit, with its sci-fi mysticism and life on a colonized planet?

"Now, it could be," "Argo" producer George Clooney told CNN. "Now I think it would make a hit film, don't you?"

'Silver Linings Playbook'

Run time: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Best time to go to the bathroom? When Shea Whigham comes home to watch a football game.

The Horror, The Horror!: After a quasi-date, Pat (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) have an argument near a movie theater on Halloween night. On the partially obscured marquee? "Midnight M--- Train." That's a reference to "Midnight Meat Train," the 2008 horror movie based on a Clive Barker story, starring none other than ... Bradley Cooper. "Silver Linings" director David O. Russell thought it would be a cute Easter egg to toss in the nod, and when he first suggested it, Cooper thought Russell was joking. But then he showed up on set, and there it was, along with posters in the entrance way to the theater.

"It was fantastic," Cooper laughed. "You can just almost see it."

'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.