Will a comic-book movie finally be nominated for Best Picture? (Probably!) Will a Grammy-winning pop star be nominated for Best Actress? (Almost certainly!) Will the ceremony ever find a host? (At this point, I couldn't care less!)

Regardless, it's prediction time, Oscar hounds! Nominations for the 91st Annual Academy Awards are scheduled to be announced at 7:22 a.m. CST on Tuesday, January 22, with me no doubt burying my face in prognostic embarrassment at roughly 7:40. The boldface names and titles below are my predicted nominees, non-boldface denotes runners-up, and predictions are in order of probability.

Missed sound cues, incorrect light cues, and a play within a play – so goes the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s schizophrenic comedy (a work in progress), whose opening-night performance was quirky and full of mayhem. Anyone who has ever been involved in the art of theatre knows the process can become a crazy one, and this presentation gives audiences a firsthand view of what happens behind the scenes with a close look at rehearsals, a diversity of actor personalities, and an infamous, erratically temperamental director.

At first, it all seems too romantic – or maybe the word is “corny” – to be believed. As we listen to the melancholy, strings-heavy refrains of composer Nicholas Britell's score, a pair of beautiful young lovers stroll through their Harlem neighborhood on a warm, mid-autumn evening, and we can't help but notice that the blazing gold of the leaves matches the gold of the woman's jacket, which, in turn, matches the gold of the man's shirt. Is If Beale Street Could Talk's writer/director Barry Jenkins paying some kind of tribute to the boldly hued, fantasy-land charms of La La Land, the movie that almost made off with the Best Picture Oscar that (ya know, eventually) went to Jenkins' Moonlight?

Described by Variety magazine as “Disney's happiest outing since The Lion King” and by USA Today as a production of “easy infectuousness” and “youthful exuberance,” the Tony Award-winning Newsies: The Musical makes its area debut at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse January 16 through February, treating family audiences to an energetic work that the Hollywood Reporter said “adheres to a time-honored Disney tradition of inspirational storytelling in the best possible sense.”

Sinuous plants, youthful maidens, venomous dragons, and other arresting sights will be on display from January 19 through June 16 at the Figge Art Museum in the Davenport venue's new exhibition Art Nouveau Amphora, a collection of magnificent works of artistic pottery from the late-19th and early-20th Centuries.

Singer/songwriter Lillie West helms the Chicago-based grunge-rock/dream-pop project Lala Lala (playing Rozz-Tox on January 21) from the persona of the disaffected slacker youth who is quite capable – perhaps secretly, and to her own chagrin – of putting in some serious work to untangle her life’s problems.

Armed with iconic hits such as “Hold On Loosely,” “Rockin' into the Night,” and “Caught Up in You,” the touring musicians of 38 Special bring their singular brand of exhilarating Southern rock to Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on January 19, continuing the legacy of the band's four-decades-plus history in the company of 38 Special vocalist/guitarist Don Barnes, who began with the group in 1975.

Minneapolis-based label Northern Parallels aligns a crew of DJs and producers for a January 18 showcase at Rozz-Tox. Based on recent mixes posted by featured DJ Colin Cook, one spearhead of the IowaTechno collective out of Cedar Rapids, and the melting atmospheric tracks of featured producer Mike Derer, the night looks to be a certified banger.