The folks behind the annual Oscars telecast did the best damage control possible when they hired Billy Crystal to replace Eddie Murphy as this year’s emcee.

The move returned Crystal, arguably the best Oscar host of the modern era, back where he belongs. And the imbroglio following former show producer Brett Ratner’s vile anti-gay comments seemed forgotten, if but for a moment.

Turns out the public may not be eager to forget that the dust up ever happened.

A new poll commissioned by The Hollywood Reporter reveals viewers wish Murphy were still hosting the event.

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Sorry this is so late. Been traveling since 7am — which means I’m tired, grumpy, and probably constipated.

Brian Grazer to Produce, Billy Crystal to Host Academy Awards

Oh, how I love me some Eddie Murphy for sticking it to the Academy.

But you have to hand it to them; they rallied and fast. Brian Grazer is a very respected and accomplished producer, and the only possible guest host that could’ve bailed these nitwits out of this mess is the universally beloved Billy Crystal. So in just one day the Oscar telecast went from the rock-n-roll promised in the team of Ratner and Murphy to the old-school class promised by Grazer and Crystal.

Quite stupidly, for years now, the Academy has been trying to skew “young” in order to prop up their cratering ratings. But this is the very reason why the telecast has been so dismal. Anne Hathaway and James Franco? Let’s hope that the return of Crystal proves through the ratings that class is the real key to a successful telecast.

After all, we all love Billy Crystal; he’s very much the Bob Hope of our time. On the other hand, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg and Alec Baldwin are divisive partisans over 50% of the country can’t stand.

We win.

Opening Tomorrow With Predictions

Weekend Forecast (Nov. 11-13)
1. Jack and Jill – $25.5 million
2. Puss in Boots – $22.1 million (-33%)
3. Immortals – $20.5 million
4. Tower Heist – $14 million (-42%)
5. J. Edgar – $11.5 million

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Eddie Murphy is a complicated man and it’s impossible to know his precise motivations for jettisoning his Oscar hosting gig just a day after the Hollywood P.C. Thought Police took out his friend and creative partner Brett Ratner, but it certainly looks like a rebuke of the repressive “tolerance” mandate that has eroded Hollywood and the art it attempts to create.

Related: Murphy upset over Ratner departure (The Wrap).

(AFP) Veteran star Eddie Murphy has quit as host of next year’s Oscars show, following his long-time producer Brett Ratner who resigned after making an anti-gay slur, organizers said Wednesday.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak announced Murphy’s departure a day after Ratner — director of current box office hit “Tower Heist,” in which Murphy stars — quit as producer of the February show.

“I appreciate how Eddie feels about losing his creative partner, Brett Ratner, and we all wish him well,” said Sherak in a statement. (more…)

Box Office Analysis:

1. Puss In Boots $33M – With a total of take $75.5 after two weeks on a $130M budget, DreamWorks is probably feeling better after what looked like a weak opening. Still, this will have to make somewhere close to $300M to break even, and that’s a long ways off.

2. Tower Heist: $25.1M — If that cast (Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick, Dave Chappelle, Tea Leoni, and Casey Affleck) can’t open a high-concept comedy/thriller this close to the holidays, no wonder Hollywood is worrying about… everything. This was supposed to be a no-brainer.

3. Harold and Kumar 3D: $13M — Opened below its predecessor, which means that this is likely the last big screen entry into what was never a hugely popular but still profitable franchise.

4. Paranormal Activity 3: $8.5M — A five million dollar budgeted creeper has already made $95 million without a single “bankable” star.

7. Real Steel: $3.4M – Only $79M after 5 weeks.

8. The Rum Diary $3M — Did Hollywood really think all the stoners who get high to their ”Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas” DVDs would turn this $45M film into a hit?

10. Moneyball: $1.9M — Everyone who saw this loves it, the reviews are through the roof, and it’s going to top out at right around $70M. Maybe there really is a disturbance in the box office force.

11. The Three Musketeers: $1.7M — $75M budget plus $18M take in two weeks equals disaster.

In other box office news: Foreign Box Office: ‘Tintin’ Takes No. 1 Spot for Second Straight Weekend to Jump $100 Mil

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Sensei did very well on predictions last week, easily beating the other prediction sites again. Sensei also revealed a new film essay (involving Batman and Tom Cruise, no less). This week, we have another battle for the top spot. Ben Stiller teams with Eddie Murphy in “Tower Heist” in hopes of slowing down “Puss In Boots.” Also opening is the latest “Harold and Kumar,” which just hopes to save face.

This weekend’s predictions and revenue results go as follows:

1. Tower Heist ($28 million) – No film has its future connected to positive word of mouth more than this one. Film will need to receive high ratings from weekend audiences, otherwise, “Puss In Boots” will win. Currently critical reviews are favorable but overall buzz on “Tower” feels right around where “Tropic Thunder” opened.

2. Puss In Boots ($25 million) - The film will benefit greatly from family audiences who didn’t see it Halloween weekend. Those audiences are now free of holiday obligations and will bring very healthy numbers to “Boots.” Look for a small drop and even another weekend win if “Tower Heist” falters. (more…)

You can call back the search parties; the funny Eddie Murphy has been found and is alive, well and part of the crack ensemble comedy “Tower Heist.”

No fat suits, kiddie co-stars or superfluous sequels. Just Murphy being Murphy – fast talking, lightning fast and utterly captivating.

But Murphy’s renaissance isn’t all that’s right with “Tower Heist.” Much maligned director Brett Ratner (the “Rush Hour” trilogy) squeezes everything out of his cast to make this a rare treat – a mainstream action comedy that doesn’t insult the audience.

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Ben Stiller stars as Josh Kovacs, a dedicated hotel manager who knows precisely how to make every guest happy. He’s especially clued into the building’s resident millionaire, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda). The two play chess via their computers, and Josh makes it his business to see that all of Arthur’s material needs are met.

Arthur insists he’s still just a kid from Astoria, even if he swims in a rooftop pool every evening. It’s a nice pose, one that has the hotel workers fooled … for a while.

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Eddie Murphy To Host Oscars

Late today. Catching up after being away for a few days, and part of that is always the good, long cry that occurs after a glimpse of my email inbox.

Choosing Eddie Murphy is why I was excited about bringing Brett Ratner on board to produce the Oscars. Murphy is a brilliant choice; funny, unpredictable and filled with a healthy dislike of the industry that made him so wealthy.  Best of all, he’s not going to sit there and allow bad jokes and writing to stand. Because he doesn’t care about anything but how well he’ll do, he’ll fight for what he wants against the lazies entrenched in the Oscar writing room and likely with Ratner having his back.

This is one of those inspired choices that’s so simple you can’t believe YOU didn’t think of it.

On a scale of 1 to 10, my interest in watching the telecast just went from DREAD to a good, solid 4.5.

More on how the deal came together here.

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QUICK HITS

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO THE MOVIES

INSIDE LEIGH BRACKETT’S ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK…

…AND WHY IT WORKED SO WELL

A NEW WESTERN FROM JOHN CARPENTER?

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Eddie Murphy is hosting the Oscars. Academy Awards producers Brett Ratner and Don Mischer say the actor and comedian will host the 84th annual Oscar ceremony.

Ratner called the 50-year-old entertainer “a comedic genius; one of the greatest and most influential live performers ever.” Mischer called Murphy “a truly groundbreaking performer” whose “quick wit and charisma will serve him very well as Oscar host.”

This will be Murphy’s first time hosting the Academy Awards. He was nominated for an Oscar in 2006 for his supporting role in “Dreamgirls.”

Murphy said in a statement Tuesday that he is “enormously honored” to join the ranks of past Academy Awards hosts such as Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg.

NY Post’s Lou Lumenick:

A petition is circulating to stop an outdoor screening of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” next month at a Brooklyn Park. The beloved romantic dramedy starring Audrey Hepburn, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in October, has long been considered problematic by many because of the bucktoothed, splenetic and bumbling Japanese character played by Mickey Rooney — an ethnic stereotype that was outdated even in 1961, and seems much more offensive than funny today.

A planned outdoor screening in Sacramento in 2008 was replaced by “Ratatouille” after a public outcry.

You do know this is just the beginning with these neo-fascists, right? After “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” they’ll go after “Gone With the Wind” and all the rest. And they and their ilk won’t stop until every film that offends everyone except white, Christian male conservatives disappears entirely — just like “Song of the South” has.

It may take years, decades or even generations, but the Left never stops. Never ever stops.

Orwell called this memory-holing.

Mickey Rooney’s Japanese character in “Breakfast” is way too over-the-top to ever be considered funny (I also think the movie is overrated in general), but if we’re going to start banning and making lists of “offensive” characterizations, I’d like to start with every portrayal of a Caucasian Eddie Murphy has ever done. And what about Archie Bunker? Talk about ethnic stereotyping.

See how that works?

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“The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules. If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them. And never forget that ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. Comedy is our friend. Throw the kitchen sink at them!” – from Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radical Comedians.”

Alinsky

I never really had any insight into the pure comic genius of Saul Alinsky until I saw his new age Method followers display their considerable chops on the national stage. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, the Master’s ostentatious and envelope-pushing Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner-like proteges, whose hilarious ACORN skits also showed brilliant flashes of the late great Allen Funt. The Mysterious Mister X, the L.A. street comic who “Alinskyed” Faris Alkhateeb’s boredom-fueled Obama Joker art into an urban poster as devilishly humorous as Hannibal Lecter, also made as big a national splash as a 300-pound chub doing a cannonball into a crowded public kiddie pool. (more…)

Tina Fey recently won an Emmy for her uncanny resemblance and venomous impersonation of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.  In accepting her award, Fey was her typical, obloquious self saying, “Mrs. Palin is an inspiration to working mothers everywhere because she bailed on her job right before Fourth of July weekend. You are living my dream. Thank you, Mrs. Palin!”

2008 marked a departure from the memorable, more cordial years of Chevy Chase as a clumsy Gerald Ford or Dana Carvey’s hilarious H.W. Bush: “wouldn’t be prudent.”  Fey was downright mean.

For her part, Palin was an easy target — a conservative woman and mother. And seemingly abhorrent to Fey and friends, Palin had small town values, a small town family and — as Fey chafed on Palin’s world view — “I can see Alaska from my house.”  The impersonations were sometimes funny, but more often foul.  ”I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers…,” Fey roasted during one of the skits… an innuendo on Palin’s pregnant, unwed daughter.  Her satire strayed from the issues into catty, sexist territory — intellect, pregnancy, family attacks and even sexual riffs. (more…)

One day … ONE day after gushing over how exciting the recession is now that those forced to work jobs they hate or who have lost them entirely can focus on their passions, Natalie Portman bought herself a $3 million castle-like estate.

Natalie, whoever’s advising you … fire them. If no one’s advising you, find someone who doesn’t carry a small dog in their purse or dates someone who does. Look to the real world for help. Look to someone who’s spent a few years in a land where the zip codes don’t start with “9-0.” Someone who cares enough about you and your career to say (without any “Honey, babys”):

“Nat, past the gates of your community and away from the hills of Hollywood losing your job doesn’t fuel passion, it fuels despair, and working a job you hate is almost as bad because of the big black  permanent ball of dread it plants in your gut. I know you dig Barack, I did too before he targeted my children and health care, but you can’t flak for his recession. That’s what the mainstream media is for. You have to empathize with your audience, build goodwill. Besides, you’re closing on that castle tomorrow, so today wouldn’t be a good time to get all gushy over how exciting Barack’s recession is. And if you do, I quit.” (more…)

Exclusive Steve Mason Early 3-Day Estimates

1. The Hangover (Warner Bros) – $32M 3-day – $103.97M cume
2. Pixar’s UP (Disney) – $28.5M 3-day -$185.16M cume
3. The Taking of Pelham 123 (Sony) – $26M 3-day – $26M cume
4. Night at the Museum 2 (Fox) – $9.2M 3-day – $143M cume
5. Land of the Lost (Universal) – $8.8M 3-day – $34.62M cume
*Imagine That (Paramount) – $6M 3-day – $6M cume
*Star Trek (Paramount) – $5.1M 3-day – $231.52M cume

Knowing most people would not have seen the original before buying a ticket for the ”retelling,” I deliberately chose not to screen the 1974 “Pelham” before writing my review. This proved wise. Had I, as my screening of the original last night proved, the review would’ve been much harsher. My love for Denzel aside, they’re not even in the same ballpark. There’s more texture, personality and narrative scope in the first ten minutes of Joseph Sargent’s urban classic than in all 106 minutes of this weekend’s offering. (more…)