Photo by Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were a scream as hosts of the Golden Globes last night. They were wicked, witty, and spontaneous, and added some lovely tones of mirthful mockery to the proceedings, which could otherwise bog down in self congratulation.

If Seth MacFarlane can do even half as well at the Oscars, it will be a success.

When the Family Guy creator and Emma Stone (who always looked like a vavoomy version of Stewie to me) made the announcement of the nominations last week, I'll admit I was initially unnerved.

Seth's hairline looked a tad artificial--sort of like Ted's--and he seemed a little nervous and self-conscious.

But once he and Stone got into the swing of joke-tossing, I thought it was very funny, even if I liked it better when the announcers pretended they were learning who the nominees were along with the rest of the world, rather than do shtick that was obviously worked out in advance.

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Yesterday, I told you about individual performers and directors who were touted as serious Oscar contenders, but who got bupkiss. But here are three films that were in a lot of people's prognostications, but got completely shut out.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL has gotten SAG and Golden Globe nominations, but Oscar gave it zero! Not even "Best Old Folks Ensemble." Maybe they thought it was a little too "Slumdog Millionaire meets Cocoon" for comfort. More likely, it seemed like a nice little movie that did surprisingly well at the box office, but didn't have a whole lotta gravitas.

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Minutes after the nominations were announced this morning, I whooshed to CNN to give my thoughts to host Carol Costello on who was chosen and what was omitted.

I also talked about how the Best Actress race contains the youngest and oldest nominees ever in that category.

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From Gale Sondergaard to Octavia Spencer.

And he does them brilliantly, starting at about 39 seconds in.

He does Fay Bainter, Shelley Winters, Shirley Jones, Rita Moreno, Patty Duke, Ruth Gordon, Estelle Parsons, Jennifer Hudson, Melissa Leo, Mo'Nique ...

He does them all.

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The show started with great dignity. Morgan Freeman came out and a friend of mine said, "Is that the one who fucks the granddaughter?"

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Check out my new column, in which I detail my exclusive, highly knowledgeable takes on who will win the major categories at the Oscars this Sunday, causing them to exude a kindly glow at least through Tuesday.

Not among the victorious for the kazillionth time in a row is my gal Meryl Streep.

She won two Oscars back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, only to get continually kicked to the curb for someone newer (though to be fair, she did once lose once to the older Helen Mirren -- Meryl loses to everybody!).

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It's a grand enough achievement to land in one of Oscar's Best Picture nominees, but I can think of four actors (some male, some female) who are in two of the nominated films.

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Here are some of the amazingly tuneful and memorable winners from the glorious history of Oscar's Best Songs:

"Lullaby of Broadway"

"The Way You Look Tonight"

"Thanks for the Memory"

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A nice bunch of people and product were accorded nominations.

Snubbed: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Albert Brooks, Shailene Woodley, and The Adventures of Tintin (for Best Animated; the Academy doesn't care for stop-motion).

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Just like it's already Christmas in certain department stores, the Oscar predix business happens to be in full swing, with GoldDerby.com asking us pundits for our premature (I mean extremely mature) guesses as to who will get nominated.

Here are mine as of this very moment.

Bear in mind that I haven't seen most of these flicks, and for all I know, some of them haven't even been finished yet.

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