Los Angeles: Few things in Hollywood are more fun than revealing the surprises planned for the 79th Academy Awards. So here are some secrets of what will happen on the Oscar night:
> The first secret is big. Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas together will be presenting the Best Director award, says www.Hollywood.tv. It'll be interesting for Hollywood to watch the interplay between them.
> Another secret that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is keeping is that Tom Cruise will be presenting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to ex-Paramount mogul Sherry Lansing.
> This year, the Academy took the unusual step of not announcing which awards the celebrity presenters will give out. This was done supposedly to heighten the suspense. Having Tom and Sherry do this together is an inside joke for Hollywood because both were shown the door at Paramount by parent company boss - Viacom's Sumner Redstone.
> Oscar telecast producer Laura Ziskin and Dreamgirls director Bill Condon have planned that each of the Dreamgirls - Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose - will sing each others' songs from the movie.
Beyonce wants a crack at singing Jennifer's songs. Diana Ross, on whose life the musical is loosely based, was asked to sing one of the Dreamgirls songs at the Oscars. But she refused, telling the producers, "I'm not interested in promoting that movie." She still claims she hasn't seen it.
> There's reportedly a big change in the order that the awards will be presented. The Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards will not be presented in the up-front portion of the show, as in previous years.
Instead, none of the acting awards will be given out until the last third of the telecast. The Academy is doing this apparently because Oscar viewership starts out strong and then wanes. Ziskin is hoping that this will keep the audience glued to the entire broadcast.
> After a few years absence, three members of the longstanding Oscars' comedic writing team - Bruce Vilanch, Carrie Fisher and Carol Leifer - are back together on the job.
This is great news because their quick wits make the show much livelier and topical. They had been individually helping for Chris Rock or Jon Stewart - but not as a trio.
> Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is writing the opening monologue on her own and with her own team. I hear she has decreed that it won't be political or mean-spirited. (But expect Vilanch, Fisher and Leifer to insert plenty of references to politics and pop culture into the rest of the show because Hollywood expects them!)
> Speaking of Ellen, here's another titbit: the Oscar telecast kicks off with an expensive and "inspired piece of CGI (computer graphics) trickery". Along with several movie scenes in which she inserts herself, Ellen will be dancing with the Happy Feet penguins.
> And finally, the Oscars will feature some clip packages directed by top names in Hollywood. Among them, Michael Mann of Miami Vice fame looks at how US is portrayed in the movies, and Nancy Meyers, director of What Women Want, examines how writers have been depicted in films.
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