Variety editor Peter Bart turned this month's issue of Vlife (not online) over to guest editor Brett Ratner, director of After the Sunset. Ratner took full advantage, getting stories on his Hillhaven Lodge home in Benedict Canyon, his imagined $1 billion dream studio and his writer friend Jeff Nathanson. He personally photographed idols Al Pacino and Kirk Douglas and wrote a piece blasting the Hotel du Cap near Cannes. In the editor's note, Ratner says "Vlife is my favorite magazine" and offers executive editor Tom Tapp a slot as "guest director"; Tapp thanks Ratner for "most of all, his friendship." That Vlife sounds like a cozy place.

And in Variety (free via Yahoo): Ousted PR exec Leslee Dart opens her own Manhattan agency. The Dart Group's first clients are expected to include Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, Scott Rudin, Conan O'Brien, Jonathan Demme, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Sydney Pollack and Martin Scorsese. Also: Her old firm PMK/HBH has moved into the green building at the Pacific Design Center, along with corporate sister PR agencies Rogers & Cowan and Bragman Nyman Cafarelli. Vlife suggests it could now be called the Pacific Deception Center.