Staff writer Lesley Goldberg’s lede in The Hollywood Reporter sums it up perfectly:

A year and a half after a gay slur effectively cost him a gig producing the Oscars, Brett Ratner has come full circle.

Indeed; and just as loudly as we suspect Eddie Murphy would have been applauded as host of the 84th Annual Academy Awards, this path to redemption by Ratner deserves all the plaudits it will receive. On March 16 in New York at the GLAAD Media Awards, Ratner will accept the organization’s first-ever Ally Award and also take the opportunity to debut some “Coming Out for Equality” PSAs he made for the organization.

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A year ago at this time, Scott Feinberg (pictured) had just signed a contract with The Hollywood Reporter to join the publication as lead awards blogger and tumbled into his first-ever trip to Telluride. This weekend, he’s back in the picturesque Colorado mountains, ready to handicap 2012 Oscar hopefuls alongside a small group of LA journo regulars that includes Anne Thompson (Indiewire), Gregory Ellwood (Hit Fix), Steve Pond (TheWrap) and Pete Hammond (Deadline).

“It’s funny, the one place where we all end up is the Santa Barbara Film Festival,” Feinberg told FishbowlLA via telephone yesterday shortly after arriving in the rain. “It’s weird. Some of us can’t make it to Telluride, some of us can’t make it to Toronto. But the one that it just seems, year after year, all the usual LA Oscar beat writers end up at is Santa Barbara.”

Everything is walking distance in Telluride. It’s also a place where, with a very few exceptions, outlets pay the same hefty price for journalist passes as attendees. And because locals are used to living next to the likes of Ralph Lauren, Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise, the already secluded event has a welcome, casual feel for A-list attendees. Starting with today’s traditional kick-off picnic.

“At the end of last year’s awards season, George Clooney told me Telluride had been one of the highlights of the circuit, which he was on for a whole six months,” Feinberg recalled. “He felt that he could walk around here with no bodyguards, no entourage… Of course, one or two people might still ask him for photos. But it’s nothing like LA or Toronto.”

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It’s still tantalizing to think how much more electric and entertaining the 84th Annual Academy Awards telecast could have been with Eddie Murphy as host instead of Billy Crystal. As part of an extensive THR interview marking today’s official changing of the AMPAS presidential guard, Tom Sherak (pictured) says dealing with the fallout from Brett Ratner’s ArcLight Q&A remarks was not nearly as hard as people made it seem.

However, he tells Alex Ben Block those events did lead him to divert from his usual M.O.:

“I remember it was the first time in my career that I didn’t return a press call. The first time in all the years I’ve been out here, since ’83, the first time. … If a press person calls me, I give them the respect of calling them back. I do. They’ve got a job to do.”

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For its final-days Oscars countdown coverage, the Hollywood Reporter scored the first official interview given by new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Dawn Hudson. Reporter Stephen Galloway spoke with her on Sunday February 19 together with the organization’s COO Ric Robertson.

When asked what has surprised her most about the job, Hudson offered this answer:

“The scrutiny. I had what I thought was a casual meeting [during] my first couple of days, and 20 minutes after they left the LA Times called me. Then I thought, “OK, no meeting is off the record.” The Academy matters to people around the world. It’s such a global mark. And so the flap of the butterfly wing really does create [a worldwide effect].

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With cynics predicting an Academy Awards snooze fest this year thanks to The Artist‘s inexorable march towards Best Picture, Best Actor and more, hints of a different kind of entertainment have been dropped in the New York Times.

According to reporter Michael Cieply‘s sources, more change was afoot last year following the disastrous James Franco-Anne Hathaway program. And that perhaps, if the production process had not been thrown into a tizzy by the departure of Brett Ratner and Eddie Murphy, there might have been a more radical flavor embraced than the one currently being rehearsed behind closed doors:

One line of thinking, according to people who were briefed on the discussions but insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the Academy, proposed throwing the Oscar process wide open to a public that has been trained by American Idol, TMZ and an endless feed of Internet moments to expect some grit with their glamor. Among the suggestions: nominees using smartphones to photograph themselves in the run-up to the show.

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Far from the madding, furiously handicapping Oscar blogger crowd, the view of the AMPAS membership’s elderly tendencies is a little different. This morning, New York Post film critic Kyle Smith rips the ratings prospects for the upcoming ABC telecast, and really, it’s hard to argue with him.

For the first time since 1929, a silent film is not just in the Best Picture Oscar mix but also the presumed winner. For Smith, this translates into the sound of crickets:

The Oscar nominations spoke yesterday, and they said, “Shh!” ABC’s response? “Sh – - !” The list made it clear that the February 26 ceremony will be among the least-watched editions of the collapsing telecast.

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You know the “internal politics” have to be bad when they cause a male photographer to give up lucrative gigs shooting “scantily clad and naked women” for the likes of Maxim, Playboy and FHM. That’s the lede crowning Chris Lee‘s very fun Daily Beast article about British born LA-based photographer Steve Shaw.

Actually, Shaw is still in the beautiful women business, but now operates without the troublesome constraints of “bum crack” edicts or allowable breast exposure decrees. In 2011, he launched his own quarterly magazine Treats! (NSFW), to immediate buzz and acclaim:

The new title has grabbed the attention of influential tastemakers and industry icons around the world for its tasteful displays of female full-frontal nudity, luxe-y aesthetic, and underpinning of fashion-world credibility. And now subscriptions are flooding in as far away as the Netherlands, Russia, Brazil, and Malaysia, as well as such entrenched style hubs as London and Tokyo.

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Actor Billy Crystal tweeted Thursday that he would host the 84th Academy Awards, replacing Eddie Murphy who dropped out Wednesday after producer Brett Ratner resigned.

The Academy hasn’t formally issued a statement yet, but they did retweet Crystal’s tweet. Brian Grazer was tapped as Ratner’s replacement on Wednesday.

The Academy tried to go the edgy route with the duo of Ratner and Murphy, but they are clearly playing it safe from here on out by selecting Crystal as host for a ninth time.

Is there anything Alan Alda can’t do? Not only does he tower above his co-stars this week’s non-Oscar related Brett Ratner caper, but in connection with last night’s Geffen Playhouse debut of his play Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie, the 75-year-old is also breaking a social media leg.

Alda and the venerable westside institution have partnered with one-year-old New York start-up Skanz. Per a company press release, the idea is to engage audience members in ways heretofore unthinkable:

All audience members were outfitted with Skanz QR-coded bracelets, allowing them to instantly access–and to literally “wear”–Geffen Playhouse’s digital media content on their wrists, including cast photos, bios, social media and video content.

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The Academy Awards has tapped Brian Grazer to co-produce their 2012 telecast with Don Mischer after Brett Ratner resigned Tuesday.

Grazer is best known for producing A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 and funny enough, a trio of Eddie Murphy films in Tower Heist, The Nutty Professor and Boomerang.

That means Grazer and Murphy will be reunited once again … oh wait … Murphy decided to pull out as host when his BFF decided to quit due to his poor judgement and homophobic comments.

“Brian Grazer is a renowned filmmaker who over the past 25 years has produced a diverse and extraordinary body of work,” said Academy president Tom Sherak in a statement. “He will certainly bring his tremendous talent, creativity and relationships to the Oscars.”

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