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 long shot 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).
