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.

I bought a new Mac-friendly Canon scanner last night. I got out some old prints of Italy from 12 years ago, set the dpi resolution as high as it would go and gave them another run-through.

Outside Vatican Musem — May 2000.

San Donato, south of Firenze, May 2000

Off coast of Elba — late May 2000.

Sienna — ditto.

Friend: The WGA Awards are happening now. Maybe we should wait for that to be over before we do the other thing.

Hollywood Elsewhere: Okay whatever…but at this stage of the game with everyone really tired of the award season and The Artist having it all locked anyway, who gives that much of a shit, really?

Friend: Well, The Descendants has been picking up steam, which you should probably write about. It won the Eddie award last night, beating Hugo, and it won the USC Scripter award the other night, beating Moneyball. If it wins the WGA this afternoon that’ll be a three-for-three for The Descendants, and that shows some real heft…a bit. If there were two more weeks it could gain on The Artist, based on the momentum here.

Hollywood Elsewhere: Yeah, but it doesn’t have two more weeks. I wish it did and I wish an upset was in the cards. I wish Demian Bichir would win. I wish rain was beer. I wish we all had wings. But we don’t.

Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg sent along this reponse: “Forget The Descendants. The one that’s really gaining on The Artist is The Help. The latter has what the former lacks: gravitas, social relevance, an ‘important’ message. A surprisingly high number of Academy members have told me that it’s their pick. If it wins, though, it would mean that we need to throw out all the history/stat books, because the last time a film won without a directing nom was 22 years ago (Driving Miss Daisy), without a screenwriting nom was 14 years ago (Titanic), and without a film editing nom was 31 years ago (Ordinary People). The last time one won without all three, as would be the case with The Help, was 79 years ago (Grand Hotel). In other words…at the end of the day it will still be The Artist.”

“When’s the last time you saw a public service announcement by a singer or an actor… to say to the American public, ‘You know? You don’t want to be like Whitney Houston,'” Bill O’Reilly asked Matt Lauer. “‘Don’t be like Elvis. Don’t be like Janis Joplin.’ When’s the last time you saw that? [The people who might say this] don’t exist. You know what we in the media do, Lauer? We wink-wink it. We Snoop Dog it. We Willie Nelson it.

“Name one commentator besides myself saying, ‘Hey, Whitney? If you don’t knock it off you’re going to be in the ground.’ It’s never been that.

“I don’t believe that anyone is a slave to addiction. I do believe it’s a disease [but] you have free will and you can get through the disease, as millions of people have. You don’t have free will when you get lung cancer. My view is that they are self-destructive people, and that society doesn’t grapple with them.”