NY Times parted the Swarovski-crystal-studded veil of secrecy surrounding this Sunday's Oscars: The stage will be a rhapsody in blue, with a thrust as impressive as any we'll see from Hugh Jackman's powerful dancer's loins.

What else can you expect?

· New York architect and Broadway set designer David Rockwell has completely reimagined the Oscar experience as a festive party where literally anything can happen...and will. A curtain made of 92,000-Swarovski-crystals will frame the stage, while the paving of Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome will be "reincarnated as colorful, shifting patterns of light on the Oscar floor."

· Forget everything you think you know about people sitting in seats looking at people talking on a stage. All that's out the window. Audiences will be grouped in interesting formations around the thrust stage.

· Until now, the Academy Awards have used a mostly static set—with the occasional giant, rotating Oscar producing Salma Hayek from an entryway carved out of its rear end. This year things will be far more dynamic, with "scene and prop changes" unfolding on camera. (The mention of props suggests to us a surprise appearance by Best Actor presenter Carrot Top, who'll bring down the house with a bit involving stirring a glass of 2% with a ballpoint Bic.)

· The orchestra will be brought out from the pit and put on stage like a swing band. Producer Larry Mark refers to this as "the communal party experience"—a concept that will better illustrate itself when Ben Affleck reaches into a tuba to pull out his co-presenter, Abigail Breslin.

· LED screens behind the presenters "will allow light to be used as a visual sensation," adding much-needed urgency and drama to Sid Ganis's annual address by placing him before a 40-foot wall of flames.

· More screens! Lots and lots of them will be used, flying all over the place. For presentation of Best Editing, 19 screens, "each with a different film image will fly dimensionally in space...[suggesting] being in the mind of someone editing." Finally! Someone cares enough to recreate the experience of being inside an Avid bay—on a spectacularly grand and glamorous scale. We cannot wait.