Some folks get excited about football season, others about baseball season, and still others get their jollies altogether more improbably from awards season.  While the former are actual competitions intentionally meant to culminate in an ultimate victor, the awards season, which ends with all the pomp, circumstance, and orgiastic "Who are you wearing?" spectacle of the Academy Awards, turns movies into a competition.  After the initial volley of critical awards late last year, we're now in the phase of specific professional organizations announcing their nominations.

Several months from now, when we're totally tired of talking or thinking about movie awards while cancer researchers go unheralded, we'll look back on the days before awards season began.  Those days were pretty much yesterday, as today seemed to mark a shift into full-on awards craziness.  There were last night's Gotham Awards (The Tree of Life and Beginners both received Best Picture adulation), then this morning, Film Independent announced its 2012 Independent Spirit Award nominees.  Now, we have the full list of New York Film Critics Circle winners for 2011.

Love letter to silent film The Artist, which is also a Best Picture nominee at the Spirit Awards and seems destined to be an Academy Award favorite, won the top prize, and its writer and director Michel Hazanavicius took home the prize for Best Director.  Brad Pitt nabbed the actor award for his work in both Moneyball and The Tree of Life, while prestige-machine Meryl Streep was similarly recognized for playing Margaret Thatcher in the upcoming The Iron Lady.  The supporting categories were more interesting, with Albert Brooks deservedly winning based on his menacing turn in Drive and Jessica Chastain continuing The Year of Chastain with a win for The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, and The Help.

Rachel Nichols is best known as the beautiful actress who has kicked ass in such popular genre films as G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, Star Trek, and most recently Conan the Barbarian. But soon you will have a chance to see her in a different kind of role, playing a quirky librarian in the new independent comedy A Bird of the Air.

Former actress Margaret Whitton, who is best known for her roles in the classic ‘80s comedies Major League and The Secret of My Success, directs the film, which opens in selected theaters on September 23rd. A Bird of the Air stars Jackson Hurst (Tree of Life) as Lyman, a loner working the graveyard shift for the Courtesy Patrol. When a green parrot flies in to his trailer he becomes obsessed with finding its owner, which eventually leads him to Fiona (Nichols). She has been eyeing Lyman from a distance and decides to help with his parrot search, whether he wants her to or not. The pair set off on a search that doesn’t always lead them where they think they’re going, but gradually leads them to one another.

Over the weekend, all the talk at the Cannes Film Festival apparently shifted from Meryl Streep, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and The Wettest Country in the World to the impending premiere of The Tree of Life, the latest existential opus from reclusive auteur Terrence Malick.  The film was initially set to debut at last year's festival, but Malick, ever the fine-tuner, did not have a cut ready to screen.  So it was with great anticipation that Tree of Life had its first screening with the big-name cast in attendance.  The reaction was almost exactly what you'd expect.  Meanwhile, in the acquisitions department, a lucky distributor now has Wettest Country and Summit Entertainment nabbed the rights to Snitch, starring erstwhile The Rock Dwayne Johnson.

Saturday night was one for partying and living it up in the Cote d'Azur, as the town followed up the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides screening with a night of revelry.  Presumably a lot of people woke up in dumpsters with a kidney missing, because Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival was considerably more low key.  It's the halfway point of the fest, and today most of the talk seems to be focused on the happily brisk business so far, as well as the world's first look at Tree of Life tomorrow.  Today, though, was about acquisitions.  Angelina Jolie's directorial debut snagged a US distributor, as did Rian Johnson's Looper, the science fiction film reteaming the director with his Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Sleeping Beauty, which screened on Thursday, also found itself a home.

It's been six years since The New World, the last film from writer-director Terrence Malick, and it was seven years between that film the one before that, The Thin Red Line.  His latest endeavor, Tree of Life, starring Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, and Jessica Chastain is set to premiere at Cannes next week.  With this most worthy occasion on the way, check out the first official clip from the film, featuring the authoritarian 1950's father played by Pitt teaching his sons to fight.

Synopsis: From Terrence Malick, the acclaimed director of such classic films as "Badlands," "Days of Heaven" and "The Thin Red Line", "The Tree of Life" is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick's signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life. 

Cast: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Joanna Going, Jackson Hurst, Fiona Shaw, Crystal Mantecon

Director: Terrence Malick

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Release Date: May 27, 2011

You may have caught a glimpse of the trailer for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life already, as a bootleg version of the video surfaced not long ago. Hopefully, you held out and waited, as the official release is an aesthetically pleasing piece of footage that should not go ignored.

Malick is known for his incredibly powerful visuals, and strong, detailed storytelling; attributes that look to be on full display for The Tree of Life.

Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Kari Matchett and Jessica Chastain star in this powerful drama.

Check out the films official synopsis, followed by the stellar trailer below.

The highly-anticipated, long-awaited new film from Terrence Malick, Tree of Life, will open in 2011 courtesy of Fox Searchlight, reports Deadline.com. The studio just acquired the film from River Road Entertainment. Starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, The Tree of Life was thought to be set for a release this fall, but its original distributor, Apparition, recently folded after its chief abruptly stepped down. Now River Road will partner with Fox on distributing the film.

Terrence Malick, the reclusive director known for classics like Badlands, The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven, is gearing up a new film in Oklahoma with an all-star cast headlined by new additions Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz, reports The Wrap.