‘Project Hail Mary’ soars, Harry Styles snoozes and fish sandwiches go head to head

We’re in the time of year when many fast food restaurants now have a fish sandwich on the menu, if they didn’t already the rest of the year. For this edition of Versus, I’m pitting the all-time classic Filet-O-Fish against the highly related Popeyes Classic Flounder Fish Sandwich. One sandwich has been around since 1962. The other since 2021. Which one should be your pick over a burger this Friday?

It’s been a few months since I had a pretty good Taco Bell haul, but we’re back in action today with FIVE new items. Surprisingly, none of these items are part of the roster of twenty new menu items unveiled at Live Más LIVE. The innovation team over at Taco Bell is just overflowing with new ideas! Thursday’s menu drop includes the Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider in two flavors, the Cantina Chicken Rolled Quesadilla, the Steak & Guac Nacho Fries and Dirty Soda versions of Taco Bell’s entire lineup of Pepsi products.

I’ve been waiting for Project Hail Mary for several years now. And the wait was worth it. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller created something special with this one. More specifically, they created something special with Ryan Gosling and the Rocky puppet. PProject Hail Mary has been very high on my list of upcoming movies. I read the book a few years after it was published, but still early enough where I didn’t know that Gosling had been cast as Ryland Grace. I was thrilled to see positive reviews come pouring in over the past week or so while at the same time being incredibly jealous of the folks who got to see Project Hail Mary before its official release date.

After all of awards season, the Oscars came down to exactly what we all expected (and hoped) out of Sunday night: A back-and-forth contest between One Battle After Another and Sinners. In the end, Battle After Another walked away with the night’s biggest haul, scoring six Oscars to Sinners’ four awards. Battle After Another notched huge wins for Best Picture and with Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director, while Sinners captured Best Lead Actor for Michael B. Jordan.

I wanted more from this episode. When it was announced that Harry Styles was returning to host SNL for his second time, I had to go through some YouTube clips to remember what he brought to the table when he last hosted in 2019. There were some great sketches! Styles and Aidy Bryant together in “Doug” is a classic. He was fun as a white dude boldly proclaiming he was going to pick up a bunch of Popeyes chicken sandwiches. (This was 2019, you have to remember.) But that spark was missing this weekend.

SNL launched a new digital series on Wednesday, releasing the first episode of The Rundown. The series will feature “memorable faces from SNL” as each person picks a favorite sketch of theirs to create “an all-star episode.” The Rundown kicked off with Colin Jost choosing his favorite cold open. Folks that will follow the Weekend Update anchor include Dana Carvey, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang and Questlove.