If you're a fan of the Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts created by the Lonely Island boys, then you're doubtless a fan of "Laser Cats."  The perennially but joyously terrible ongoing saga of two warriors played by Andy Samberg and Bill Hader in an apocalyptic future of cats as laser weapons came back this last weekend with the seventh installment, and this one has a very consistent theme: the blockbusters of Steven Spielberg.

"If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us," said fictitious chaotician Ian Malcolm just about two decades years ago, "It's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, ah, well, there it is."  So it is with Jurassic Park, the film in which Malcolm was played by Jeff Goldblum.  Twenty years after it became a massive blockbuster in the summer of 1993, Jurassic Park is set for 3D theatrical re-release in July 2013.

So the Oscars are over and with them, awards season has finally come to a close.  The Artist dominated those high-falutin' Academy Awards, but with months of stuffiness and pomp out of the way, a different academy, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films is looking to acknowledge excellence in genre films with the 38th Annual Saturn Awards.  The official list of nominations in film and television were announced today, so take a look.

As Superman is to superheroes, Steven Spielberg is to directors.  He's the biggest, the most immediately identifiable by the vast majority of moviegoers, and he's the first guy people think of when they hear the word "director."  It makes a certain kind of sense, then, that the biggest director around would be attracted to one of the biggest stories ever told.  According to Deadline, The Bearded One is nearing a deal with Warner Bros to direct Gods and Kings, a new take on the tale of Moses that frames the Old Testament figure principally as a warrior.

As is customary, this year's Oscar nominees were announced at 5:30 in the morning here on the West Coast, meaning many a bedraggled awards season enthusiast is starting off their day puzzling over just who and what is now officially up for an Academy Award at the 84th Annual ceremonies. 

2011 is in the bag and the bag is in the river, folks.  It was a year that saw ticket prices continuing to increase and attendance continuing to decline at multiplexes all over this nation of ours.  Overall, the year that was saw a decline of roughly 3% from the cumulative box office of 2010, the year in which Avatar rolled around in a money pile.  The last weekend of 2011 saw no new major releases, leaving the heavy hitters from last week's holiday onslaught to stay strong over New Year's weekend.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol once again stood atop box office mountain, with fellow sequels Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked rounding out the top three.  Additionally, War Horse built momentum and New Year's Eve got a bump for obvious reasons.

Steven Spielberg, almost inarguably the most famous director on the face of the planet, hasn't released a feature film since 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but this holiday season has brought with it an embarrassment of Spielbergian riches.  Right now in Stateside theaters, there are not one, but two movies directed by Spielberg.  There's the sweeping World War I drama War Horse and the swashbuckling, globe-trotting adventure The Adventures of Tintin, the director's first foray into motion-capture and 3D filmmaking.

The Adventures of Tintin is the first big-budget film centered on the intrepid boy-reporter Tintin, a comic character created by Belgian artist Herge.  The hero and his cohorts have been popular internationally since he first appeared in print more than half a century ago, in 1929.  In order to create imagery appropriate for Herge's creations, Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson employed Weta Digital, the visual effects masters behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar, who deliver a textured, lifelike adventure with all the charm of the cartoonist's designs.

By now, Jamie Beard is a veteran at Weta, having first worked for the company as an animator on The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and followed that up with I, Robot.  He served as a visual effects artist on X-Men: The Last Stand and, more importantly, an animation lead on King Kong and The Lovely Bones, both directed by Jackson.  For The Adventures of Tintin, Beard is the pre-visualization supervisor.  While promoting one of the most technologically advanced movies ever made, Beard engaged in an exclusive interview with IAR Managing Editor Jami Philbrick, wherein he discussed his familiarity with Tintin, the role of pre-vis, working with blockbuster directors, and the hazards of putting a motion-capture suit on a dog.

With some notable exceptions, 2011 was not the most robust year at the American box office, and studio soothsayers are no doubt hunched over chicken livers, divining better fortunes for the impending year of 2012, packed as it is with much-anticipated blockbusters.  For the penultimate weekend of this odd-numbered year, though, multiplexes across the nation were packed with new releases, all dropped willy-nilly throughout the week, creating a strange brew of eclectic releases.  For the holiday weekend, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol emerged as the big winner, with fellow sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in second place, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo getting all Swedish in third place, along with two Steven Spielberg joints down the line.

In a relatively short amount of time, British actor Jeremy Irvine’s career is already off to a very impressive beginning. He is currently filming director Mike Newell’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic Great Expectations starring Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter, and he also just finished work on the drama Now Is Good co-starring Dakota Fanning. But first, audiences will get to know him for his lead role in director Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the award winning stage play and novel War Horse, which opens in theaters on Christmas Day and is already earning dozens of accolades and early Oscar buzz.

The film, which is set in Devon right before World War I, tells the story of Albert (Irvine) and his beloved horse, Joey. When Joey is sold to cavalry and shipped to France, Albert swears to one day reunite with his trusted friend. The horse takes part in an extraordinary journey, fighting for both the British and the German armies, while Albert ends up joining the British Army in order to find Joey. In addition to Irvine, the movie stars Emily Watson (Red Dragon), Peter Mullan (Children of Men), Tom Hiddleston (Thor), David Thewlis (Anonymous), and Benedict Cumberbatch (Tinker Tailor Solder Spy).

I recently had a chance to meet Jeremy Irvine at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, and briefly spoke with him about his work on War Horse. He discussed the new film, shooting a “war scene” directed by Steven Spielberg, acting with a horse, the movie’s father/son theme, and the FINAL SCENE OF THE FILM!

Film producer Kathleen Kennedy may have co-founded Amblin Entertainment with her husband, Frank Marshall, and director Steven Spielberg, but she is also responsible for producing some of the most beloved films of the 20^th Century. Together, Kennedy and Spielberg are the most successful producing team of all time and collectively their films have grossed over $5 billion in domestic box office receipts. In addition to working with Spielberg, she has also collaborated with legendary directors such as Clint Eastwood (The Bridges of Madison County), Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future), David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Martin Scorsese (Cape Fear).

Kennedy’s resume reads like a grocery like list of the greatest films of our generation including Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Gremlins, The Goonies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, The Color Purple, Munich, and the Oscar-winning Schindler’s List. She is currently in the process of promoting two new films that she made with Spielberg, which open only days apart from each other. War Horse, based on the popular book and stage play of the same name, and The Adventures of Tintin, which is based on the fan-favorite series of comics by Belgian writer and artist Herge and opens in U.S. theaters everywhere on December 21^st.