Last month, "Saturday Night Live" fake news host Colin Jost said ads should trumpet, "Who's going to get slapped this year?" But one thing we can feel confident about is that Austin Butler, Michelle Yeoh and their peers will make it through the 95th Academy Awards without having to apply ice packs.
The awards last year emerged with a black eye after Will Smith stormed on stage to smack Chris Rock. So, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences organizers booked a "crisis team" to prevent that from recurring — something you can bet host Jimmy Kimmel will have fun with in his monologue at the show Sunday in Los Angeles.
Kimmel's writing team works independently but the Academy will want him to shift the focus to the movies. Last year was, after all, when Hollywood finally returned to box office normalcy, a shift widely credited to Tom Cruise's insistence on holding the release of "Top Gun: Maverick" for three years, spurning streaming services' attempts to buy it. Although it's a longshot to win best picture, organizers would love to see the top-grossing movie of 2022 triumph ("Avatar: The Way of Water," also nominated, has surpassed it in 2023).
With "Everything Everywhere All at Once" contending for top prizes, Oscar voters can congratulate themselves on moving past the #OscarsSoWhite controversy — although failing to nominate favorites Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler for best actress means another year without a Black best actress, with Halle Berry's win 21 years ago still a unicorn.
Here are a few more things to look for at the 95th annual Academy Awards:
Size matters
Stop me if you've heard this one: The show will run long, especially since Oscar voters rebelled after last year's skip-some-awards experiment. They convinced producers to return to presenting all 23 categories on camera.
Will pop stars pop?