Oscar Surprises in the Telecast?

Nikki Finke's blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily, has some interesting notes about changes to this year's Oscar broadcast.  I guess some might consider these spoilers, but seriously, if someone told you what the opening act was going to be, would that upset you?  It's not like we'll be revealing who's going to win Best Picture, or who will be most inappropriately dressed (fingers crossed for Abigail Breslin...).

Well, if that kind of news would upset you, stop reading now.

For the rest of you, head over to her Eight Spoilers on Oscar Telecast post, but I do have some thoughts on a few of them below.

• She says that the biggest news will be who is presenting the Best Director Oscar this year (Spielberg, Coppola, and Lucas), but my guess is that four hours into the broadcast, and given the collective age of those three men, most of the world is simply going to yawn.  These days Borat would get a bigger response.  Since this is the year when Martin Scorsese is finally going to get his Oscar, I guess they want to do something special.  To me though, if you really want to do something interesting, when they announce his name, he should be presented his Oscar from Clint Eastwood, Roman Polanski, Kevin Costner, Barry Levinson, and Robert Redford, the 5 directors who beat him for each of his previous nominations.  And then Marty gets to go all Mark "Dignam" Wahlberg on them onstage.
• Her favorite update is that each of the three songs nominated from Dreamgirls, will be sung by a Dreamgirl other than the one that sang it in the film.  Wow - another change that three people will notice...
• She also reports that unlike previous years, where the awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress come almost immediately, they are going to save them until the final 1/3 of the show.  Well, that should save some stress for people on the West Coast who struggle with the 5pm broadcast, since now there is absolutely no reason for to watch the first 3 hours of the show.  I mean, while I couldn't be more interested in Best Original Score or Best Art Direction and Best Sound Editing or Best Live Action Short (not!), I'm not sure the rest of the world feels the same way.