If you thought changing partners every week on 'So You Think You Can Dance' counts as a big shake-up, brace yourself for the latest rule changes: No Top 20 and the return of several "All Stars" from past seasons.

Over the weekend, producer Nigel Lythgoe tweeted some radical new rules for season 7, which premieres May 27: "No top 20! No choosing genres! Only one goes home each week CHANGE - Less than 4 compete in the Finale!" Previous seasons featured six finalists competing for the title of "America's Favorite Dancer."

Today, he added more shake-ups via his Twitter account: "We are forming a 'dance-pool' of your favorite dancers from previous Seasons to act as partners for this year's top 10." Lythgoe went on to explain, "the dancers will change partners each week picked from an 'All-Star Pool.' Each 'All-star' will be a specialist in specific genres of dance." Lythgoe announced he'll be hand picking the dancers for the All-Star Pool, who'll be chosen from all six seasons.

Adam Shankman is busy judging auditions for season 7 of 'So You Think You Can Dance,' but that doesn't mean he's up on the latest changes to the show. At the Hollywood premiere of 'The Last Song' last night, he was surprised to hear the news producer Nigel Lythgoe tweeted about yesterday.

"He's not filling me in!" he said. After learning two of the major new changes -- partners change every week and only one person will be eliminated each week -- he laughed, "Oh great, I love this, that I'm finding out from you!"

Shankman gave his thoughts on the new rules and his own ideas for the show, which, unfortunately, "keep getting shut down," the best city so far in the audition process and why this season will be even more competitive.

Producer Nigel Lythgoe tweeted today about the "shocking but GREAT" changes to season 7 of 'So You Think You Can Dance.' First major shake-up: Partners will change every week.

That's bad news for viewers who fell in love with pairings such as last season's Jakob Karr and Ashleigh Di Lello, but good news for younger dancers like Mollee Gray and Nathan Trasoras, who both matured considerably when split up and partnered with more experienced partners.

This week they started revealing some of the stars who'll be presenting at Sunday night's Oscar broadcast on ABC, and at the top of the list were three former Oscar winning actresses, Barbra Streisand, Charlize Theron and Kathy Bates. Also on the roster will be Queen Latifah, Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta.

Nikki Finke's Deadline.com column has a major spoiler about the opening of the show. If you don't want to know, avoid the last paragraph below.

There's an interesting angle on Barbra Streisand's appearance on the show. Speculation is that Streisand will be presenting Best Director, which insiders say is a lock for Kathryn Bigelow.

The Oscar shows have long had a problem attracting the younger crowd, or at least the part that doesn't spend every waking moment organizing the AV club's equipment cabinet. So this year they have tried to "hip it up."

The Academy has hired DJ Joel Madden to serve as the ceremony's "house DJ" for the broadcast.

Producer Adam Shankman said he wanted the show to have more of a party atmosphere. Does that mean there will be a birthday clown and a "Pin the Tail on the Fellini" game too?

[via TV Tattle]

The history of the Academy Awards telecast has been generally a pretty traditional show. You've had historic moments of bad taste like Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White, bizarre musical opening numbers from the likes of Lucie Arnaz and Liza Minnelli -- not together -- and, of course, great highs like most of the Billy Crystal musical medleys of the Best Oscar nominees.

This year if Billy were there, his medley would be about 20 minutes long to include all ten nominated movies! They'd have needed an oxygen tank in the wings to revive him after that.

But here's a wickedly wild idea that might have set the Oscars into to fierce wilderness of 'oh-my-God' TV. The Oscar producers were toying with the idea of having Sacha Baron Cohen host the show. Yep, believe it. Producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic were on NPR's 'Fresh Air' with Teri Gross, and they said when they contemplated shaking up the broadcast, they thought of 'Borat.'

In recent years, the songs nominated at the Oscars have not been particularly memorable or worth the time during the broadcast to waste on music that nobody remembers after walking out of the multiplex. This year, ironically, there is at least one very good song that was going to be an Oscar highlight, assuming the producers convinced Jeff Bridges to sing 'The Weary Kind' from 'Crazy Heart' during the March 7th broadcast. That's not going to happen now.

New Oscar producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic have decided to drop the Best Song performances, according Entertainment Weekly. Instead of singers -- either from the movie or good enough to sing the songs from the movies -- we're going to see a montage of images from the picture with the soundtrack recording.

(S06E23) For the first time in the history of So You Think You Can Dance, we have six dancers in the final performance show, which makes it even more unpredictable. It was a great night of dancing, but I'm not even going to venture a guess as to who might win, as a strong case could be made for at least five of them.

I would have liked to see tonight's episode be a two-hour showcase rather than tomorrow's finale. We could then have seen each of the dancers perform in solos, or perhaps some of the more diverse couplings and group numbers we've gotten on other finales.

Instead, we got nine dances, pairing each guy with each girl through the night. It was wall-to-wall dancing to pack it into an hour, which was a refreshing change, and we did get to see married couple Ryan and Ashleigh perform together ... and not in a ballroom routine.

(S06E20) I go into these elimination shows expecting a lot of pad and filler. But when it's a dance show, I want to see dancing; which is why I'm always a little perplexed when musical guests who don't dance show up. This week's musical guest was Snoop Dogg, and I really enjoyed it. And yes, I know that Snoop does little more than bounce and swagger.

It was that either he or the producers were smart about how to put together his stage show. Hip-hop videos are known for dancing, so why not bring that dancing to the live show? Joining Snoop on stage was Quest, a former winner of America's Best Dance Crew, as well as the dance home for three former SYTYCD contestants: Ryan, Dominic and Hok.

What about the results, though? I was surprised that even though we've switched to voting for individual dancers, it was still two couples from last night's performance show that wound up in the bottom.

(S06E19) What an amazing and jam-packed night of dance. With ten couple dances and ten solos, it was wall-to-wall performances. Amazingly, almost every single one of the performances was excellent.

Honestly, I am so impressed with this entire Top 10, I can't say enough good things about them. Sonya Tayeh finally blew me away as a choreographer. Working with Ellenore is a match made in heaven for both of them, really.

We've got a lot to cover, so why are you still here? Jump into the article and get to reading about all of it already!

(S06E17) This week determines the top ten of So You Think You Can Dance. We welcome the top twelve dancers and judging by the audience, Legacy and Jakob are the most loved. With Dancing with the Stars ending this week, I'm happy that I can devote more time to this show because the dancing is a higher caliber and it isn't just a celebrity popularity contest.

Tonight we got to see the first Can Can and the return of the Lindy Hop. I am happy that the show continues to break the boundaries of dance and shine a light on new choreographers.

(S06E16) If things keep going the way they've been going, I'm going to start thinking America's really learning something about dance after all these shows they've been watching the past several years. I understood and agreed with every single one of America's choices, which is more than I can say for Nigel and the judges.

We did get to see Nakul Dev Majahan, joined on stage by MDN Bollywood Productions, in a Bollywood routine he choreographed. While I loved the earlier Bollywood piece we got this season, this one didn't grab me quite as strongly. A lot of that probably has to do with how foreign it still is to our Western senses; we don't really understand what we're seeing or why we're seeing it all the time.

Still, I guess I'm glad it's part of the show, as it continues to showcase the diversity in dance around the world. I even applaud their ill-fated attempt to try Russian folk. I say keep trying SYTYCD, just be very wary of what you put on these dancers.

(S06E15) After last week's lackluster performances, I was starting to wonder about the vaunted strength of this season's Top 20. But the 14 remaining dancers came back very strong this week, with improvements across the board. There was only one dance that completely disappointed me, but throughout the night, I cannot easily see the Top Ten dancers we're working toward.

One thing that's a little frustrating when we get down to a smaller number of dancers like this, and they're only performing once ... we get a ton of filler. The judges went on and on about each contestant. Maybe FOX should consider shortening the episodes to an hour-and-a-half during these weeks and give us more episodes of some of their great sitcoms like 'Til Death or Brothers.

Hmmm -- maybe I can handle the rambling judges after all.

(S06E13) So You Think You Can Dance finally lets America vote. Sadly, I only liked four of the eight dances this week and I wouldn't mind if any of them were eliminated. One thing I did like was the introductory sequence, they finally figured out a way to make the stage a little less huge. The choreographers are doing better to let the dances fill the huge stage.

With only eight performances, the show felt like the critiques were longer than the actual dancing. If they inserted one large group dance, the show could have cut off some of Mary's more annoying comments.