A beginner’s guide to awards season

It’s almost here.

Can you smell it? The scent of designer gowns and freshly gilded statuettes awarded to Hollywood’s brightest and most talented stars?

Yes, the best season of the year is almost upon us: Awards season.

Every season of 2012 has brought me yet another mundane national happening with which I just can’t get on board.

This summer belonged to the London Olympics, which for me was a grueling three-week period in which I endured nearly all my friends’ constant fan-girling about various athletes who they’ll never lay eyes on again.

The only thing dampening this unseasonably warm fall for me is the presidential election.

It’s not the election itself, but the way everybody on my Facebook feed has to attack and degrade one other. I’m counting down the days until Nov. 6.

Now, it’s finally time for my favorite season of the year.

Now everybody can be annoyed with me as I constantly discuss and socially network the ins and outs of the 2013 awards season.

For a film buff like me, the real awards season begins all the way back in January with the Sundance Film Festival.

Many films that went on to receive serious awards and praise debuted at Sundance, like eventual Academy Award nominees “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Precious,” “An Education,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone.”

Then we move to the Cannes Film Festival in May in which in 2011 eventual Best Picture nominee “The Tree of Life” received the festival’s Palm d’Or, its top prize.

September brings the Toronto Film Festival, which has gained traction in recent years for awarding the Blackberry People’s Choice Award to eventual Best Picture winners “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The King’s Speech.”

It will be interesting to see if this year’s winner, David O. Russell’s  “Silver Linings Playbook,” will ride the same wave to Oscar gold.

The Golden Globes have always been the Academy Awards’ less attractive, backwoods cousin.

Yes, they mean something. But they don’t mean a whole lot.

At least this year they have the luck to be hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, certainly trumping the Oscar producers’ bizarre choice of Seth MacFarlane.

Early drinking game suggestion: drink every time he complains “Ted” didn’t get nominated.

It all leads up to one extravagant night. She’s the undeniable queen of awards season. She’s the Academy Awards, and she’s a beauty.

We can only speculate what the big winners will be this year, but I’ll be there live tweeting every perfect gown and dramatic upset.

Buckle up, kids. It’s going to be a doozy.

­— wdmcdona@indiana.edu