The sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger, the one that will pick up with a contemporary setting following this summer's The Avengers, has a release date now.  So it would probably be pertinent for Marvel Studios to find a director (or directors) to actually take charge of the tentatively-titled Captain America 2.  It appears that the directorial field has gotten a bit smaller, as F. Gary Gray has dropped out as a candidate.

We've known full-well that Chris Evans would hurl a red, white, and blue shield for a third time in a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger, we just didn't know exactly when.  Today that changed, as Disney and Marvel Studios announced a release date and a basic logline for the Captain America sequel, and also dropped a new still of Cap in The Avengers.  The tentatively-titled Captain America 2 will be the third post-The Avengers Marvel adventure.

After all their superheroes get together for a sleepover, truth or dare, and makeout sessions in this summer's The Avengers, Marvel Studios is going right back to the individual franchises, all of which are taking on new directors.  Iron Man 3 is being helmed by Shane Black, while Thor 2 falls to Alan Taylor.  Now, we have some idea of just who might oversee the Captain America sequel, as a shortlist of of the final three candidates for the job has emerged online.

Comedian, celebrant, and "Classic American Gasbag" Patton Oswalt has hosted not one, but two awards ceremonies in the last week.  First he made his presence felt at the Annie Awards celebrating the year in animation, and now he has also presided over the Visual Effects Awards put on by the Visual Effects Society, an industry organization of VFX professionals.  Both ceremonies involving Oswalt saw Rango clean up pretty well, as the animation debut from Industrial Light and Magic won four VES Awards, including Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture.

Any blockbuster of suitable size is accompanied by an often noxious cloud of tie-in merchandising and promotion that slaps your favorite character's face on fast food wrappers, condom boxes, and underoos.  The Avengers is most certainly a blockbuster by design, which means that come this May, the titular superteam will be an inescapable presence both in and out of your local cinema.  A new promotional image can attest to that, since it has the whole team striking their coolest "walking towards the camera" The Right Stuff pose, strutting in the name of Harley Davidson.

While we've all got our collective undies in a twist over The Avengers, Marvel is, of course, looking to the future.  The studio has already set Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 as the first two features following the big ensemble team-up.  Both of those are hitting in 2013, and they'll be followed by two mysterious Marvel features set for April 4th and May 16th of 2014.  It's long been assumed that one of those two as-yet unknown features will be a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger.  Today, Neal McDonough, who played Dum Dum Dugan in that film, has supported that assumption, and also added to the notion that we might see Dum Dum team up with Nick Fury in an eventual SHIELD movie.

One of the big observations regarding the first and thus far only trailer for The Avengers was that it leaned pretty heavily on Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, enough so that it gave the impression that the film might be more Iron Man featuring The Avengers than a proper ensemble.  It makes sense that Marvel and Disney would sell the movie this way preliminarily, as Downey's hero has more traction with audiences than his counterparts.  According to writer-director Joss Whedon, a dude who knows a thing or two about juggling eclectic ensembles, the indispensable man in a narrative sense is actually Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, once again played by Chris Evans.

Back in May, when the summer movie season was about to get feverish, Eric Roth, the executive director of the Visual Effects Society, made waves with an open letter decrying increasingly burdensome post-production schedules that put the burden on visual effects artists.  It's awards season now, though, so now it's time to put politics aside in favor of straight-up accolades.  The Visual Effects Society, also known conveniently as VES, has announced the nominees for the 10th annual VES Awards.

Since we're all about stills from hyped 2012 blockbusters today, we'd be remiss if we didn't include a morsel or two from The Avengers, the first superhero movie to combine disparate franchises into one mega-crossover.  First up we have yet another image of Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans as Thor and Captain America, respectively.  This is the third official The Avengers image to feature these two particular heroes striking poses on the battle-ravaged streets of Manhattan (shot on location in Cleveland, Ohio, doubling for New York).  Since that's sort of familiar, there's also another bit of eye-Brawndo to visually get your eye-electrolytes going: concept art for the Quinjet, the all-purpose flying SHIELD people mover.

From here to the end of February, nary a day will go by that won't have that dark cloud of the Oscars hanging over it, threatening to rain awards season accolades all over your day when you didn't think to bring an umbrella.  While a handful of critical organizations already went ahead and just started throwing honors around ally willy nilly, most of the awards news consists of nomination announcements.  Yesterday, the Producers Guild of America officially declared their line-up of would-be award winners, and today, the Art Directors Guild announced the movies, television series, and commercials up for the 16th annual art direction honors.