James Gandolfini and Diane Lane/ courtesy of HBO

HBO always brings two things to the TV Critics press tour in LA: finger sandwiches and big stars. I could go on and on about the egg salad, but let's focus on the celebs:

Kate Winslet may be adding an Emmy to her Oscar, thanks to the mini-series, "Mildred Pierce," which debuts March 27. Winslet, speaking via satellite, said doing TV was much harder than doing film because of the scope of the project and time constraints. She also said she's never seen the most famous interpretation of the story starring Joan Crawford. Well, that's not entirely true. She did watch the first five minutes before turning it off, realizing that she could easily be influenced by Crawford's take and didn't want to do that.

Paul Reubens, who filmed his Broadway show for HBO just last night, did his press conference in character - always a deadly mistake. If journalists wanted to talk to fictional characters, they would stay in their rooms with their blow-up dolls. Reubens did break character long enough to confirm that Judd Apatow is producing the next Pee Wee movie and that he turned in part of a script just before Christmas. He said it will a light adventure movie, not unlike "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," the film that took Pee Wee and director Tim Burton to the next level.

"Cinema Verite," an upcoming film about the first reality family, The Louds, has one of the most impressive casts in 2011: Tim Robbins. Diane Lane. James Gandolfini. All three didn't have anything nice to say about current reality shows, although Gandolfini admitted that he once watched "Real Housewives of Atlanta." "Extraordinary," he said.

Fantasy writer George R.R. Martin would like to be more involved in HBO's adaptation of his "Game of Thrones," but he said he has to focus on getting out the next novel. "I've got a mob outside my house with pitchforks demanding a finish my next book," he said. "My problems are very nice ones to have."

"Too Big to Fail," about 2008 financial crisis, won't air until May, but we got a chance to see some clips that were extremely promising with an unbelievable cast: William Hurt, Paul Giamatti, Ed Asner, Bily Crudup, Matthew Modine, Topher Grace, Tony Shalhoub, BIll Pullman, James Woods, Cynthia Nixon and, well, you get the picture. "We had the good fortune to put together an extraordinary group of actors," said director Curtis Hanson who was on hand with Hurt who plays Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson ended the session, talking about their two-handed, one-room drama, "The Sunset Limited," based on a work from Cormac McCarthy. Jones said it was fun to do "car-crash free dialogue."