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IT'S ONE WAY TO GUARANTEE A BIG RATING: This year's Oscars are becoming less of a lovefest every day.

Thousands of Hollywood big shots -- real and self-professed -- aren't getting tickets to the ceremony because the Oscars' new home, which hosts its first awards show Sunday, has 2,500 fewer seats than the previous venue.

"We're getting a lot of phone calls these days," Otto Spoerri, who for 25 years has been the arbiter of who gets to attend, tells the New York Times. "It's been tough."

For the past several years, the ceremony has been at the Shrine Auditorium, capacity 5,600. The new Kodak Theatre, built by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to be more intimate and TV-friendly, has 3,100 seats.

About 300 letters telling academy members they would not be getting the tickets the requested began to go out about two weeks ago. The academy started getting angry phone calls a few days later.

"It's been horrible, really horrible," says Janet Hill, a Miramax Films spokeswoman.

THE BREAKDOWN: Here's a general idea of who is getting Oscar tickets:

All nominees get one ticket for themselves and one for a guest.

The same for award presenters.

Studios get blocks of tickets based on the number of nominations their films received. When two studios co-produce a film, they have to split the ticket allotment.

Each of the academy's 40 governors gets two tickets.

Same for the academy's 10 past presidents.

Each sponsor gets two seats for each 30-second TV spot.

Vendors win the right to buy tickets, and this year the new theater's owners, architects and designers have been given seats.

The rest are offered to the approximately 6,400 academy members.

THEY'RE JUST TWO CRAZY KIDS IN . . . SOMETHING: Danielle Spencer, the former and current girlfriend of Russell Crowe, had this state of the union speech for Australia's Herald Sun:

"We're not engaged at the moment. We're just kind of hanging out and taking it as it comes, as anybody does.

"I'm not going to allow the fact that he's really famous dictate whether I go out with him or not. I have to just try and block it out.

"He's just a person, he's just a guy, so I'm trying not to take too much on board and just get on with my work."

Attention academy members: Maybe she's willing to give up her Oscar date ticket as part of effort to stay low-key.

"SURVIVOR" TRIVIA: As we wait for the big laughs host Jeff Probst said would be constant in the latest series, fans can note that the Maraamu tribe made history last week by being the first in the four Survivor sagas to vote out the first three contestants.

Maybe Probst meant this tribe is full of unintentionally funny, clueless people.

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