This isn’t funny. It’s well-shot, spunky, disciplined…but not funny. At all. I…uhhm…I was…uhm, going to say…aaah, it’s just not funny.

In this Press Play video, Matt Zoller Seitz is suggesting a new Oscar for Outstanding Achievement in Collaborative Performance — an Oscar that would “honor memorable characters created by mixing performance with CGI, immersive makeup, puppetry, or other behind-the-scenes craft.” In this, the first of four essays, the focus is Andy Serkis, who should, of course, have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Rise of the Planet of the Apes…alas.

If anyone has a copy of Cormac McCarthy‘s The Counselor, which Ridley Scott will begin filming on May 1st with Michael Fassbender in the lead, please forward. Deadline‘s Michael Fleming reports that “insiders” are describing The Counselor as “No Country For Old Men on steroids.” What does that mean? That some regarded No Country for Old Men as…what, languid, laid-back, lacking a serious pulse?

Every time I see Michael Fassbender he’s wearing that cock-of-the-walk smirk. He had it when I spoke to him at the 2009 New York Film Critics Circle dinner. I saw him again at last month’s Fox Searchlight Golden Globes party, and he was with a hot lady and smoking a big cigar. I hear stories about him. He likes the ladies. I’m not judging at all but on some level I’m not sensing indications of profound meditative depth. He loves being a movie star. Just saying.

Whenever I’m hit with a fever it always lasts for 36 to 48 hours. Yesterday was the worst of it. I had no energy at all. Standing up and walking was a challenge. Picking up the remote and changing a channel was a challenge. I slept the whole day except it wasn’t sleep. You can’t really sink to the bottom of the pond because there’s an alien virus in your system and your muscles are aching so badly. You’re floating on the surface, bobbing in and out.

I’m coming out of it now. You know you’re home free when the damp sweaty stage kicks in. Right now I’d say I have about 1/2 of my normal energy and strength, but that’s a big improvement over yesterday when I had about 1/16th.

Yes, another 1.85 vs. 1.33 aspect ratio piece on Criterion’s Anatomy of a Murder Bluray. But no, not another “1.85 fascism” rant. I’m…well, I guess I am talking about fascism. Otto Preminger‘s 1959 film looks sublime at 1.33. Needle sharp and comfortable with acres and acres of head space. Plus it’s the version that was shown on TV for decades. It looks stodgy and kind of grandfatherly, and that’s fine because it’s your grandfather’s movie in a sense. Boxy is beautiful.

It is perverse to deliver the Bluray — obviously the best that Anatomy of a Murder has ever looked on home screens — with one third of the originally captured image chopped off. Flip the situation over and put yourself in the shoes of a Criterion bigwig and ask yourself, “Where is the harm in going with the airier, boxier version?” Answer: “No harm at all.” Unless you’re persuaded by the 1.85 fascist view that a 1.33 aspect ratio reduces the appeal of a Bluray because the 16 x 9 plasma/LED/LCD screen won’t be fully occupied.

The above comparison shows that cropping the image down to 1.85 from 1.33 doesn’t kill the visual intention. In the 1.85 version James Stewart simply has less breathing room above and below his head. But the comparison below makes my case. A scene in a small jail cell. The boxier version is clearly the preferred way to go. It feels natural and plain. The 1.85 version delivers a feeling of confinement, obviously, but Otto Preminger wasn’t an impressionist. He was a very matter-of-fact, point-focus-and-shoot type of guy.

Best Musto-ism: “Any picture that wins Best Picture is about Hollywood…Titanic is about Hollywood.”

Second best: “Extremely Loud and Glenn Close…or whatever it’s called.”

Two days ago I told LexG that the pathetic, infantile, self-pitying sexual melancholia had to stop. He held himself in check yesterday but sometime this morning, while I was moaning and rolling around with fever, he went right back into it. So that’s it — LexG is gone and will never return. He’s an alcoholic, a hooligan and an infant. I feel sorry for him but he’s become a pestilence. He will not pollute this site again.

Fever tweet #1: The gay guy upstairs woke up at 6:45 am this morning and put on Alicia Keys‘ Empire State of Mind, and loud enough to share it. Not a straight-guy tune. Fever Tweet #2: “Straight guys, in fact, don’t play loudish music at 6:45 am period. Something in their genes. Go figure. ‘New YAWK…New YAW-HAW-HAWWWK!'” A guy wrote in and said that Empire State of Mind is “not a gay song.” Fever tweet #3: “But it’s from Sex and the City 2. In any case I choose to regard it as such.”

I woke up at 2:30 am with a funny polluted feeling. Then I couldn’t get up when the alarm rang at 6:45 am. Then I went out to the living toom and tried to write a couple things, and couln’t. I collapsed on the couch around 8 am, and I just woke up from a three-hour nap. It’s a real struggle to sit at the glass desk and tap this out, lemme tell ya. Another nap awaits. Liquids, liquids, liquids. Whenever this happens my muscles ache and ache, and then I start sweating it out after 36 hours or so, and then I’m fine.

The Descendants has won the WGA award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Midnight in Paris has won for Best Original Screenplay. Some are saying this is how it’ll go down at the Oscars seven days hence. But The Artist wasn’t eligible for a WGA award so, as Sasha Stone forecasts, “if it sweeps major categories, it also wins Best Original Screenplay.” Best Original Screenplay for copying and pasting A Star Is Born and Singin’ in the Rain? REALLY?

As I’ve said time and again and again and again, the great thing about the Oscars is not (a) the Oscar award telecast or (b) Oscar nominees or (c) the winners or any other specific aspect, but the overall sweep and impact of awards season itself, and the fact that the Oscars long ago instigated the idea and practice of there being an awards season, and by setting themselves up as the climax of that, by default if not design.

The Oscars are the last big event, but what counts and what matters if that there’s a season (September to mid-February) devoted to exceptional, sometimes edgy or trying-to-be-edgy, above-average, quality-level movies. A cure and an antidote to the winter slumpy doldrums and the summer tentpole crap…glorious! For this alone I’ll be an Oscar devotee for the remainder of my days on this planet.

When did the concept of an awards season (beginning at Telluride/Venice/Toronto and lasting until February) actually kick in? When did the idea of Phase One and Phase Two award-season ads take hold? I called a couple of big-wheel advertising execs who didn’t call back, but my sense is that the acceptance of a five-and-a-half-month-long awards season has been with us since…some time in the late ’80s? The early ’90s? Obviously I need to kick this around but I don’t believe the idea goes back too far. Something to call around about tomorrow. Yes, I know — Monday is a holiday.