It was announced this afternoon that producer Brian Grazer will step in for Brett Ratner and produce the Oscars. The Academy had to find someone right away and I’m sure there was a vibe of desperation on the other end when Grazer took the call and considered the offer. I’m presuming he said yes because he know they were in a jam and he wanted to help in their hour of need. Good fellow.

You know who would be good as a host if his weight is in check? Vince Vaughn. It would be great if Vaughn could come out on stage and be could be the jabber-mouth from The Wedding Crashers and The Break-Up and The Dilemma. But he can’t be too fat.

Grantland‘s Mark Harris has joined the Gold Derby prediction gang, and he’s saying that the most likely Best Picture winner is The Help, followed by The Artist, War Horse and The Tree of Life. I’m sorry but apart from Harris’s choices being incredibly bland and hugely depressing, he’s way off.

The Help has awards heat because (a) it’s enormously popular with women and (2) because Viola Davis is the presumptive Best Actress front-runner. But it has never had genuine Best Picture heat and never will have genuine Best Picture heat because no one of any perception or integrity thinks it’s any kind of four-star achievement. It’ll probably be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar but solely because it made a lot of money. Even if the Oscar goes to the most popular film without regard to quality, Harris seems to be forgetting that a majority of Academy members are male. There are no beer-sipping, Cosby-sweater-wearing, baseball-bat-swinging guys out there who think The Help is any kind of great film…none.

Secondly, The Artist is going to start fading the more people talk about it, and especially if anyone sees it a second time, as I did at the Savannah Film Festival. “I felt under-nourished and bored…despite feeling mostly pleased and charmed when I saw it in Cannes five and a half months ago,” I wrote. “It’s too cloying and simplistic — too much of a peanut- gallery pleaser — to stand up to a second viewing.” And keep in mind what Brett Easton Ellis said anout eight days ago: (a) “Just walked out on L.A. screening of The Artist and wondered: am I a Grinch or is it just an unbearably cute flyspeck?” and (b) “Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist makes Mel Brooks‘ Silent Movie (1976) look like a masterpiece, and in their way The Weinstein’s are very smart.”

War Horse will probably be nominated for Best Picture. And it may indeed win. But Disney’s “show it to hinterland audiences first” strategy is probably indicative of issues that may amount to a problem down the road. And Harris surely understands this potential.

Finally, I will be surprised if The Tree of Life is even nominated. Nobody is questioning its merits, at least as far as the first hour goes. But older critics and viewers have had issues, as we all know. And if a Best Picture contender doesn’t have boomer-aged critics like Kenneth Turan and Marshall Fine singing its praises, it’s got trouble.

The general feeling among those who attended last night’s special Westwood screening of Wim Wenders‘ Pina, a beautiful ballet doc shot in 3D, is that dance comes wonderfully alive when viewed with stereoscopic depth. Germany’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar is not just sublime in its own right, but proof that 3D is most transporting when it captures life in natural proportion, and not when the camera is going for large brawny spectacle.

Wim Wenders during last night’s Pina after-party in Westwood.

There are two reasons why Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M For Murder is one of my favorite 3D films. One, the scale couldn’t be smaller or more intimate, the entire thing taking place within a modest one-bedroom London apartment. And two, there are only two 3D pop-through shots — the scissors and the latch key. I’d love to see David Jones‘ Betrayal remastered in 3D with the same high-quality precision that James Cameron has reportedly put into the 3D remastering of Titanic.

I asked Wenders at the Pina after-party when The American Friend (’78), my favorite of all his films, will be out on Bluray. Next year, he said, via the Criterion Collection. It will be part of a series or a box set, apparently. I couldn’t hear as well as I wanted to but I think he said the package will include four of his films.

From Joe Morgenstern‘s mini-review of Pina in the Wall Street Journal: “Pina is a wondrously surreal evocation of the work of choreographer Pina Bausch. (She died two years ago, before she could see the finished film.) It’s also a fascinating–and successful–marriage of dance and technology. The 3-D process, deployed with restraint, gives weight and presence to the dancers’ bodies, yet keeps the camera at sufficient remove to preserve the impression of a performance on a theater stage.

“Images of joy, loss and pain succeed one another: a dreamscape of rock and water in a driving rain, a wordless drama aboard an urban monorail car, perilous exertions on the edge of a huge mining pit. Dancers throw themselves at each other with seeming indifference to the danger. Pina brings new meaning to the notion of a leap of faith, and new immediacy to filmed dance.”

Movieline‘s Julie Miller has described George Clooney‘s harmless little anecdote about his first sensation of strong sexual arousal when he was six or seven years old as “skin crawling.” It happened, says Clooney, when he was “climbing a rope.” Well, the exact same thing happened to me, Julie, when I was eight or nine. And it’s probably happened to tens of millions of other boys over the centuries…big deal.

If Miller is reading this, she’s invited to explain how and/or why this minor Tom Sawyer-ish recollection triggered such profound disgust.

Eddie Murphy‘s decision to bail on his Oscar-hosting gig is unwise, to put it mildly. He got a bounce out of Tower Heist, delivering his funniest performance since Bowfinger, and he obviously could have built on that with some extra-funny Oscar-show material…but no. He just has to be the asshole. Smug indifference to anything except his own mercurial whims is his basic default position.

Eddie Murphy

The decision smacks of the old arrogant Murphy of yore. Ladies and gentlemen, the guy who bolted out of the Oscar ceremony when he lost for his nominated Dreamgirls performance is back! The guy who had that eat-my-ass look in his eyes that said “I’m Eddie Murphy and I’m rich and famous and all that other good shit, and ain’t jumpin’ through no hoops for you or anyone else.”

His decision doesn’t exactly say to the community, “You know what? Maybe rehearsing is for fags.” But he’s kinda vaguely implying that. And he’s certainly not endearing himself to the gay community.

Murphy’s decision also says “you do it to Brett, you do it to me.” In windier terms, Murphy is basically saying, “To hell with that ‘an Oscar producer needs to show a little class and dignity’ stuff. If you like to eat the pussy and want to talk about that with Howard Stern, I don’t see the problem. You want to cut Brett lose because of that, fine. That’s your call. But I don’t hold with that so I’m walking. Yeah, you heard me, Academy. Kiss my ass.”

From Pete Hammond‘s 11.9 Deadline piece about the Ratner departure: “There is some media speculation that, with Ratner gone, Eddie will follow him out the door. I see that as highly unlikely — and I also don’t think Ratner himself would let that happen. Granted, Ratner’s exit caused a big ripple inside Hollywood. But Murphy’s exit would be a high-profile PR nightmare inside and outside Hollywood, creating the impression to the general public that the Oscars is in complete chaos.”

Here‘s the formal apology and mea culpa that former Oscar telecast producer Brett Ratner released yesterday. And here’s my notion of what Ratner probably had in his head as he was writing his statement:

“To my LGBT friends, colleagues, acquaintances and comrades: I’m sorry, guys. And I’m not just sorry I lost the Oscar-producing gig, which happened because of the stuff I said to Howard Stern two days ago and not because I said ‘rehearsing is for fags.’ But I am sorry I pissed you guys off. Really. You know I’m not some homophobic shithead. You know I’m just an amiable, marginally talented, commercially-inclined fratboy director who likes to make popular movies, and that I want everyone to love or like me for having made them. And you know I just stepped in it. I’m not an asshole. I’m just a little thoughtless and lazy from time to time.

“I used a phrase that indicated I equate homosexuality with dainty, sissy-fied, less-than-manly behavior. I guess that’s what straight men of my father’s generation used to think privately or say to each other in the local tavern or whatever, but attitudes have obviously progressed since Stonewall and I was a douche for showing that I’ve been too caught up in my Brett Ratner lifestyle to show respect for that evolution by evicting all homophobic terms from my vocabulary and moving on and…you know, whatever, getting with the Anderson Cooper program. Whoa. Wait…I guess that’s okay to say, right? We’re just being straight with each other. I don’t mean ‘straight,’ of course. From my perspective I do but…well, you know.

“I’m trying to say that yes, okay, I’m obviously a lazy homophobe on a certain level but not in any kind of ardent or seriously committed way. Last Friday’s remark came out in a blurty way, like a fart. I meant that rehearsal is for candy-asses. I meant that tough guys just get out there and hit their marks and do it. But I didn’t mean anything by it…not really. It’s just that like 70% or 80% of the straight guys out there I have these little remnants of old-style homophobia circulating through my head and memory and my system, but it’s a residual thing. It’s a trace, a leftover. And although we’re all living our lives by the social and political realities of 2011, sometimes these traces come out in my speech. Stupidly and insensitively, okay, but not, you know, maliciously. Last Friday’s blunder was due to a lack of maturity, but you know I’ve never been about shitting on anyone. I’m just a guy who loves his life. I’m somewhat talented, and I just want to make movies that people pay to see, and I want to be well paid for that so i can live the kind of life I want to live. It isn’t any deeper than that.

“But those traces are everywhere. I was just watching Robert Altman‘s M.A.S.H. on Bluray the other night and there’s a character, Painless, who’s distraught and suicidal because he suspects he’s a ‘fairy’, and when Donald Sutherland hears this he almost goes white in the face and asks the guy if he’s done anything fairy-ish and the guy goes ‘no, but it’s just a matter of time.’ There’s also a story that Elliot Gould tells the doctors and nurses about a horse who was discovered to be a ‘raging queen.’ Now, if Altman was still with us you could haul him in and grill him and demand that he officially reject that portion of M.A.S.H. and maybe even re-edit it, but you know what Altman would say? He’s say fuck you, that’s the way the film was back in 1969 and ’70, those were the times and I’m not changing a damn thing.

“I’m just saying those little traces are everywhere, and they’re going to pop up among the less sensitive and aware types like myself. I may be less disciplined than I should be, but there are lots of guys like me in this town. Come over to my house for one of my parties and you’ll meet some wealthy kings of this attitude and this lifestyle…serious talents but guys who like to be guys, y’know? Gerard Butler, Gavin O’Connor. We get it, we’re not trying to be assholes. But guys like me are about trying to live our lives with a little straight-guy swagger, a kind of randy, loving-the-ladies lifestyle in the mode of Doug Liman‘s Swingers and paying tribute to the old Frank Sinatra ratpack aesthetic, and you know that Frank…well, he was a man of his time, but he really liked and got along well with Montgomery Clift when they worked together on From Here To Eternity because Monty helped him with his performance. I’m just saying that we live the kind of lifestyle and with that kind of old-time mentality that sometimes allows for little faux pas slippages among the less socially astute. Which would be me.

“So I’m sorry. Really. There’s no place for bigotry in this town, and before last weekend I would have said ‘what, me bigoted?’ but I guess I kind of am in a douchey way because I used that term and I guess that kind of sanctions the use of it with others because I’m famous and rich and all. So I’m trying to say the right things now and also think the right things and get past this nightmare. I’m ready to admit I was a jerk and that I’ll try to be less of a jerk in the future, and you can be damn sure I won’t put my foot in it like that again. But I’m also ‘Brett Ratner’, and I’m entitled to be that guy and live that kind of life.”