Another Nikki Finke Oscar-show spoiler: Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, 60ish graybeards all, will jointly present the Best Director Oscar to Martin Scorsese.

Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke is reporting Seven Oscar-Night Spoilers, the biggest one being that the Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards won’t be presented in the early portion of the show, as they always have. Instead, no acting awards will be given out until the last third of the telecast. The Academy is doing this, Finke understands, because Oscar viewership starts out strong and then wanes, and the only real cliffhanger is Eddie Murphy vs. Alan Arkin.

Please, Movie Gods…please don’t let Murphy win. You’re not pro-active and you don’t interfere as a rule, but you know what’s best and “right” and sometimes you step in and push the button anyway. You gave the Best Director Oscar to Roman Polanski for The Pianist despite a whisper campaign by the Polanski haters… bless you for that. Last year you knew Brokeback Mountain should have won and yet you inexplicably stood by and allowed the homophobic geezer contingent to overrun and conquer. You have to make it up to all of us because of that. Please don’t let a Bad Person win this year….please.

The best thing in N.Y. Times guy David Carr‘s Oscar prediction chart [click on “Juicy Subplots & Other Picks”] is the roundabout suggestion that if and when Little Miss Sunshine wins Best Picture, that the officially nominated producers — David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub — plus the film’s actual hands-on, Michael Arndt-hiring, Jonathan Dayton-and-Valerie Faris-hiring producers who weren’t nominated because of the Academy’s clumsy and insensitive rule-of-three — Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, of course — “perform a rear-guard action” and appear on-stage together as a quintet, arm-in-arm, all for one and one for all.