There are just over twenty-four hours until the Academy Awards ceremony begins, and naturally, awards fever has descended on Los Angeles. Symptoms of Awards Fever include, but are not limited to: hives, fancy dressing, red carpet-walking, seizures, limo-riding, hemorrhagic bleeding, speechifying, and general hyperbole. On the eve of the Oscars, those most susceptible to Awards Fever are quarantined in a series of tents on the beach in Santa Monica, mere yards from the Pacific Ocean. 

This quarantine is, in fact, the Independent Spirit Awards, celebrating the very best in independent cinema from the past year. The 27th Annual Spirit Awards are hosted by Seth Rogen. This year, the nominees for Best Picture are 50/50, The Descendants, Drive, The Artist, Beginners,  and Take Shelter, while recognizable faces like Jessica Chastain, Ryan Gosling, Elizabeth Olsen, Corey Stoll, Michelle Williams, John Hawkes, Lauren Ambrose, and Jean Dujardin are nominees in other categories.

IAR is on the ground at the event itself, ready to share the winners at an awards show that is inarguably cooler and younger than those staid old Oscars. Check back for up to the minute news as we update with each and every new winner.

With Oscar ballots due earlier this week, and only a few days to go until the Oscars on Sunday, February 26th, here is how things stand in the race for the gold... 

We're in the home stretch of awards season here, and as we coast ever closer to the Oscar ceremony at the end of this month, it looks like the official issuing of statues of accolades has settled into an almost entirely predictable pattern.  That pattern sees the silent film homage The Artist picking up the major awards, just as did at tonight at the 64th British Academy of Film and Television Arts, where Michel Hazanavicius's film picked up no fewer than seven awards, including Best Film, Director, Leading Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Music, and Costume Design.

In a month, awards season will be no more than a memory.  A memory of ecstatic accolades, tuxedo-sporting actors, and actresses clad in dresses so beautiful they'll melt your face off while inspiring impoverished people the world over to weep diamond tears.  Right now, though, we are very much in the middle of awards season.  The latest news comes from the Screen Actors Guild, which has just handed out its annual awards.

Tonight, the Beverly Hilton was the location for the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards, with British comedian and The Office co-creator Ricky Gervais hosting for the third consecutive year.  Before last year's ceremony, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the 300-member body throwing the shindig, was the subject a lawsuit from their former publicist, the latest in a long string of allegations regarding Globes-based corruption.  This year, though, it's all red carpet pomp and what have you, as well as Gervais doing his job by making fun of people.

Though the Globes are largely accepted as irrelevant (what with corruption and all that),  they're nonetheless the most publicly popular awards, and they also get people all hyphy for the Oscars the following month.  And in that spirit, let's check out the winners at this year's Golden Globes, including Christopher Plummer's continued domination of the awards season for his supporting performance in Beginners, Martin Scorsese's win for Hugo, Octavia Spencer getting love for The Help, and Alexander Payne's The Descendants taking the big prize for a dramatic film.

With just days to go before the Oscar nominations are announced on January 24th, it is now time to narrow down the predictions to 5 in each category. Rather than list each name alphabetically, the contenders have been listed in the order of their likelihood of receiving the nomination. In each category, the 5th slot could possibly go to a “dark horse” instead…

Synopsis: A discredited journalist (Daniel Craig) and a mysterious computer hacker discover that even the wealthiest families have skeletons in their closets while working to solve the mystery of a 40-year-old murder in this David Fincher-directed remake of the 2009 Swedish thriller of the same name. Inspired by late author Stieg Larsson's successful trilogy of books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo gets under way as the two leads (Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara) are briefed in the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, whose uncle suspects she may have been killed by a member of their own family. The deeper they dig for the truth, however, the greater the risk of being buried alive by members of the family, who will go to great lengths to keep their secrets tightly sealed.

Because one seemingly interminable night of bloviating and self-congratulatory pomp just isn't enough, the awards season must span the three months leading up to the Oscar Ceremony in late February.  During those three months, many a critical organization drops their own list of honorees from cinema of the last year, and all of these awards contribute to the narrative of "buzz" for a film or performance film leading up to the Academy Awards.  One such set of honors are the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and today, the nominees for the 18th annual awards were announced, with the winners set to revealed on Sunday, January 29, 2012.

With the 84th Academy Awards only three months away, it’s time to go on record with some Oscar predictions. The race is officially on, with front-runners beginning to take the lead and dark horses waiting in the wings to shake things up. Several movies have still not yet been released, but every film that hopes to qualify for the Oscars will be in theaters by the last day of December. Let's take a look at how the six major categories are taking shape, with the top ten contenders fighting for five coveted slots…

You might assume that there are only so many organized bodies looking to award excellence in cinema every year, but you'd be wrong.  The Oscars, undoubtedly the apex of movie-based self adulation, are three months away, but the seemingly interminable awards season properly kicked off this week with the Gotham Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and the announcement of the Independent Spirit Award nominations.  Now, the National Board of Review has chimed in with its awards for the best films of 2011.  In what is sure to be an exception in a season that seems likely to heavily favor The Artist, the 3D family film Hugo was named Best Film, while its legendary director Martin Scorsese received richly deserved honors for his love letter to early cinema.

"HUGO is such a personal film by Martin Scorsese,”  Annie Schulhof, the National Board of Review President explained. “It is a tribute to the early years of cinema that uses today’s cutting edge technology to bring the audience into a completely unique and magical world.  It is visually stunning and emotionally engaging.”

As long as we're talking surprises, we should also mention that Will Reiser won the Best Original Screenplay award for 50/50, which is based on his own experience with cancer as a young man.  Christopher Plummer won a supporting category for his impeccable, moving work in Beginners (expect him to get a lot of attention over the coming months), and Shailene Woodley also racked up an award for her supporting work in The Descendants.  Alexander Payne's film received awards for George Clooney and Adapted Screenplay, as well.