This year's staid and congratulatory awards season is now a distant memory, but there's still one awards show left, one that self-consciously defies the pomp and circumstance of the Oscars and the like.  The MTV Movie Awards don't take themselves too seriously, as demonstrated by categories such as "Best Fight," "Best Kiss," and "Best On-Screen Dirtbag."  Nominations for the summer's awards have been announced, with The Hunger Games and Bridesmaids racking up eight apiece.

Okay, the 84th Annual Academy Awards happened.  They're over.  That means we should all just sit back and enjoy that we have a long stretch of time ahead of us until the next awards season rises from the Pacific Ocean like Godzilla or some Lovecraftian monstrosity.  Before we move on to the serenity of non-awards season, though, there are a few videos that might make your day a bit more enjoyable, starting with Sacha Baron Cohen on the red carpet as his The Dictator character His Excellency Admiral General Aladeen.  Then there's a classily-edited montage of films that were notably snubbed back in the nomination phase, and finally there's a huge trailer for Jimmy Kimmel's fictitious Movie: The Movie.

The 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards took place on Saturday, February 25th in Santa Monica. Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, handed out awards to such films as The Artist, The Descendants, Margin Call, My Week With Marilyn, Beginners, 50/50, Pariah, A Seperation, and The Interrupters. The event aired on IFC and was hosted by Seth Rogen (The Green Hornet), with the evening's announcer John Waters (Pink Flamingos), and musical performances from My Morning Jacket, K'Naan, Kate Micucci, and Garfunkel & Oats.

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick attended the 27th Annual Film Independent Spirit Awards and was on the red carpet (it was actually purple) talking with many of the stars as they entered the ceremony. He had a chance to speak with actor Bryan Cranston about working with director Nicolas Winding Refn on Drive, and asked young actress Amara Miller about her experience working with director Alexander Payne on The Descendants, as well as speaking with Pariah director Dee Rees and producer Nekisa Cooper, Natural Selection director Robbie Pickering and actress Rachel Harris, actress Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy), actor Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher), actor Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects), and former Connecticut Senator turned President of the MPAA Chris Dodd about the importance of independent film and the Independent Spirit Awards.

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.

The day before this Sunday's Oscar ceremony, while seemingly everyone is preparing for the onslaught of pomposity that the Academy Awards bring to the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, there's actually a cooler awards ceremony going down on the other side of town.  On the beach in Santa Monica, in a giant tent literally yards from the Pacific Ocean, Film Independent puts on the Independent Spirit Awards, celebrating the very best in movies made without studio backing.  Following Joel McHale as last year's host, the 2012 Spirit Awards are hosted by Seth Rogen.

Rogen needs no elaborate introduction, but the Canadian hilarity-factory has gone well beyond just acting in the likes of Freaks & Geeks, Knocked Up, Funny People, Observe and Report, and The Forty Year Old Virgin.  With his creative partner Evan Goldberg, Rogen has written and/or produced films including Superbad, Pineapple Express, and The Green Hornet.

Not only is Rogen hosting this Saturday's ceremony, but 50/50, the comedic drama which he produced and co-stars in, is up for three awards, including Best Feature and Best First Screenplay for Will Reiser, who wrote the film based on his own experience with cancer. 

In an interview with a handful of national outlets, Seth Rogen was gracious enough to talk about a wide range of topics.  Those topics included, amongst other things: hosting the Spirit Awards, his directorial debut The Apocalypse, his awards hopes for 50/50; improvisation, taking Kate Beckinsale off guard at the Golden Globes, his friend and collaborator Jonah Hill's Oscar nomination, his love of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol;.and movies he's enjoyed over the last year.

After much nominating and talk of "buzz," we're now in that part of the annual awards season that involves actual awards.  Earlier today, you may have read that Rango cleaned up at the Annie Awards, and now we know who won at the Art Directors Guild Awards.  The nominations were announced more than a month ago, and now the nation can finally stop holding its breath in anticipation. 

There's a strong chance you may not have seen Drive in theaters back in September, and if that's the case, then it's too bad.  Drive is one hell of a movie, one that's very different from what the TV spots made it out to be.  As of today, it's available on Blu-ray and DVD, so you can rectify the mistake of not having seen it, but if you're still on the fence about this movie that looked like it could just be Ryan Gosling in a rehash of The Fast and the Furious, the first seven minutes are now available to view online, free of charge. 

The awards given out by professional guilds certainly add to the undeniable and ongoing hoopla of awards season, but they don't necessarily have that teleprompter-reading, what-are-you-wearing public spectacle of the Oscars or the Golden Globes.  Instead, they often provide an opportunity for the sort of work that doesn't get recognized at the big ceremonies to feel special.

The freshly-announced nominees for excellence in wardrobe as chosen by the Costume Designers Guild are good examples.  The nominations are divided into three categories separating period, fantasy, and contemporary films.  While the nominees include movies that are sure to be on the list for Best Picture, such as The Artist and The Descendants, there's also room for the outstanding work of Sammy Sheldon on X-Men: First Class, Jany Temime on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Erin Benach on Drive. 

As awards season continues to ceaselessly pummel us all with official nominations, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has issued their nominees for the 2012 Orange British Academy Film Awards.  These potential BAFTA Awards winners include plenty of the ringers we've been seeing on pretty much every list of Stateside nominations, especially The Artist with a whopping twelve nods, but the Brits have also shown some love for films largely getting lost in the shuffle over here.

Everyone is stocking up on champagneand ticker tape for 2012.  Earth has completed yet another orbit of the sun, and as wecontinue to cruise through an oblivious and indifferent solar system at about 67,000 miles perhour, it's time to look back on the year that was.  Like every other year, the conclusion of2011 means a veritable avalanche of year-end lists, from chronicles of favorites to bests toworsts to pretty much everything in between.  Here at IAR, we've looked back with Jami Philbrick's picks for the Top Ten Movies of the Year, and we've looked forward with Brett Gursky's Oscar Predictions for the 84th Annual AcademyAwards.

Now, like anydevastatingly handsome individual, IAR is going to look in the mirror and say, "Damn, I looked good this year."  Okay, not quite.  But what we are going to do is showcase some of the content produced this year that showed what the organization is all about and what it does best.  This end-of-the-year compilation is broken down into ten categories: News, Press Conference Coverage, Screenings, Documentary Coverage, On Camera Interviews, Convention Coverage, Oscar Contender Interviews, Comic Book Movie Coverage, Legends, and finally, Scoops and Exclusives.  You'll find all those categories right here, complete with links to all manner of articles.