Director David O. Russell is plotting a third film with actress Jennifer Lawrence.  The two are currently making the awards rounds for Silver Linings Playbook, which netted Lawrence a Best Actress Oscar nomination and Russell a Best Director nomination.  We recently learned that Lawrence has joined the cast of Russell’s next film, an untitled drama about an undercover sting operation in the 1980s, and now THR reports that Russell is set to direct the Weinstein Company drama The Ends of the Earth with Jennifer Lawrence poised to star.

The pic is based on the lives of Ernest and Lydie Marland and centers on the controversial love affair between the oil baron/eventual Governor of Oklahoma and his adopted daughter and how their relationship lost Ernest everything he had.  Argo scribe Chris Terrio wrote the script, and Russell could very well tackle the pic after he wraps his next project.  That untitled drama starts shooting next month with a lead cast that includes Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, and Amy Adams—all of whom Russell has worked with in the past.

Jennifer Lawrence has a solid shot at winning the Best Actress Oscar later this month for her work in Silver Linings Playbook, and it looks like she’ll be reteaming with a couple of SLP vets sooner rather than later.  Deadline reports that Lawrence is set to join the already impressive cast for director David O. Russell’s next film, formerly titled American Bullshit.  The pic is based on a real-life undercover sting operation called Abscam, which was set up in the 1980s by a con artist working for the FBI who rooted out corruption in Congress.  Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale are set in the lead roles, and now Lawrence is poised to star as Bale’s wife.

Lawrence and Cooper actually already have another film together in the can, as the period thriller Serena will be released later this year.  Production on Russell’s Abscam film is set to begin this month with Jeremy Renner, Amy Adams, and Louis C.K. rounding out the cast.  Lawrence will then move on to filming the sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will open in 2014.

It’s been about ten months since the last episode of Funny or Die series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, but I guess to make up for the delay, they’re breaking out all the stars.  In the first of a two-part “Oscar Edition”, the show’s guests include Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Naomi Watts (The Impossible), Christ of Waltz (Django Unchained), Anne Halfway (French Movie), and Amys Adams (The Master).  Watching these brief interviews, I wish they were expanded out into full segments, but I’ll take as much of Between Two Ferns as I can get.

Hit the jump to check out the latest episode of Between Two Ferns.

Current Best Actress Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence was recognized as Outstanding Performer of the Year at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF).  Whether it was her memorable debut in The Poker House, her first Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone, indies like The Beaver and Like Crazy, or her star-making turns in last year’s The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook (for which she has received her second Oscar nomination), the 22-year-old from Kentucky is proving herself to be one of Hollywood’s most talented young actors.  Collider was there to cover and attend the event, and we’ve compiled the highlights of what she had to say, both on the press line and during the Q&A.

While there, Jennifer Lawrence talked about what this past year has been like for her, how she got her start in acting, why she’s never taken any acting lessons, what the experience of making her first feature film The Poker House was like, what spoke to her about the character of Tiffany when she read the script for Silver Linings Playbook, why she doesn’t like to read her scenes ahead of time, working with Bradley Cooper again on the Depression-era drama Serena (due out in theaters in September), what made her hesitate about taking on the role of Katniss Everdeen for The Hunger Games franchise, what it was like to revisit the character for Catching Fire, what she learned from working with Jodie Foster on The Beaver, why she fought for the role of Ree in Winter’s Bone, her desire to direct, and the fact that she’s a bit less terrified of this award season.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

The Oscars picture is starting to emerge.  Last night, Argo won the Producers Guild Award for Best Picture, and tonight Ben Affleck‘s drama has won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.  With tonight’s win, Argo is slowly moving towards being the first film since Driving Miss Daisy to win Best Picture at the Oscars even though the director didn’t pick up a nomination.  Like Driving Miss Daisy, Argo will have managed the incredible task of directing itself.  The night’s other film actor winners included Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence, Tommy Lee Jones, and Anne Hathaway.  It will be interesting to see how these will match up with the Oscar winners.  Over on the TV side, Downton Abbey broke Homeland‘s awards-streak by picking up Best Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

Lionsgate has released a new teaser poster and some high-resolution images for the highly anticipated upcoming sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.  We previously saw a motion poster for the Francis Lawrence-directed adaptation, and this still poster is not entirely dissimilar from that piece of marketing.  The first images from the film were recently released, giving us a look at Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, and Liam Hemsworth, as well as new cast additions Sam Claflin and Philip Seymour Hoffman.  With this barrage of material coming our way over the past couple weeks, I imagine a teaser trailer will be popping up soon.

Hit the jump to check out the poster along with high-resolution versions of the previously released images and a new image featuring director Francis Lawrence on set.  The film also stars Elizabeth Banks,  Donald Sutherland, Jena Malone,  Jeffrey Wright, and Amanda Plummer.  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens on November 22nd.

The 2013 Golden Globes have just wrapped up.  I only watched the last hour of the ceremony because the Globes no longer have their awards season power due to voting schedule changes.  Reading tweets and Facebook posts, it seems like it was a fairly entertaining show (keep an eye out for Jodie Foster‘s acceptance speech for her Lifetime Achievement Award).  As for the winners, they were very “Globes” in that they were more populist choices that are unlikely to have much bearing on the Oscars.  Argo may have had a good night at the Globes by winning Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, but I still think Lincoln is the picture to beat when it comes to the Academy Awards, especially since Ben Affleck was snubbed for the Best Director Oscar nomination.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association announced the winners of the 18th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards tonight.  While Ben Affleck was noted as the lesser of the Best Director snubs when Oscar nominations were announced this morning, the BFCA named Affleck Best Director and his Argo Best Picture.  They feature genre awards—action, comedy, and sci-fi/horror all have their own Best Picture category—so there’s a bit of an “everybody gets a trophy” philosophy.  But that allowed Jennifer Lawrence to pick up two trophies: Best Actress in an Action Movie (The Hunger Games) and Best Actress in a Comedy (Silver Linings Playbook).  Silver Linings Playbook earned four total; the Best Comedy winner brought Lawrence’s co-star Bradley Cooper Best Actor in a Comedy and the rest of the cast Best Acting Ensemble.

The four primary acting awards went to major Oscar contenders Daniel Day-Lewis, Jessica Chastain, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Anne Hathaway.  But the BFCA also found room for Collider favorites Skyfall, Looper, and Cloud Atlas.  See the full list after the break.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

At last, Oscar is upon us.  Back in November I shared a look at the early awards season race by way of our 2013 Oscar Preview articles, and now nearly two months later there’s still quite a bit up in the air.  This truly is one of the more exciting awards races in recent years, as 2012 is so stacked with quality that there are a surprising number of uncertainties this close to the Academy Awards ceremony.  Nevertheless, I am once again foolishly going to attempt to predict how the Oscar nominations will shake out when they’re announced tomorrow morning, January 10th.  Hit the jump to check out my predictions.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is still 11 months away, but there’s not a moment to lose when it comes to the marketing.  The cover of the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly features Jennifer Lawrence and Sam Claflin as Katniss and Finnick.  We’ve seen the new bodysuit uniforms in leaked set photos, and they look good in this official image.  As for Claflin, I can definitely see him as Finnick now that they’ve dyed the actor’s hair blonde.  As for his performance, we’ll have to wait and see.

Hit the jump to check out the full cover and the first image from the film.  The film also stars Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Liam Hemsworth, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jena Malone, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Wright, and Amanda Plummer.  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens November 22nd. [Update: EW has released a couple of new images, including a new look at Hemsworth's Gale. They're included after the jump.]

NBC’s Saturday Night Live has announced its lineup of hosts and musical guests for this month.  As was previously revealed last month, Jennifer Lawrence will be making her SNL debut as host on January 19th with musical guest The Lumineers.  The actress will likely be just coming off a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her work in Silver Linings Playbook, and though we haven’t seen her in a straight comedy just yet, I imagine the actress’ charisma and candidness will make for some memorable sketches.

Also making an SNL hosting debut is Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, who will tackle hosting duties on January 26th alongside musical guest Kendrick Lamar.  Levine has been making a transition from music to on-camera work as of late, as he’s one of the hosts of NBC’s The Voice and appears on the FX series American Horror Story: Asylum.  Hit the jump to read the full press release.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s drama Zero Dark Thirty continues its dominant critics awards path, as it has picked up two more Best Picture wins from the New York Film Critics Online and Boston Society of Film Critics groups, adding to its previous wins from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review.  Bigelow also won Best Director from both organizations, while Daniel Day-Lewis took home Best Actor for Lincoln.  Emmanuelle Riva won Best Actress from New York and Boston, while she shared the award in a tie with Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Los Angeles broke from the mold a bit by naming director Michael Haneke‘s devastating French-language film Amour the Best Film of the year.  They also awarded Paul Thomas Anderson Best Director for The Master and Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Dwight Henry the Best Supporting Actor honor in a couple of pleasant surprises.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners from all three critics groups.

Well here’s an interesting twist.  Bryan Singer has tweeted that Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have joined X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is supposedly a sequel not to X-Men: The Last Stand, but X-Men: First Class.  So how will they be used?  There are a couple of possibilities I can think of off the top of my head.  First, they’ll just be a couple of cameos used as a framing device, so that Professor X and Magneto are looking back at the events of the new movie.  When these remembrances would occur in terms of the original trilogy is a bit fuzzy since Last Stand ends on the borderline of the status quo [spoilers] (Magneto loses his powers, but not really; Professor X dies, but not really).

Hit the jump for more speculation.  Singer also tweeted that James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult will all return.  No mention on First Class‘ other cast members.  Filming on the upcoming sequel is set to begin early next year.

The nominations for the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards have been announced, and Oscar hopefuls Silver Linings Playbook and Moonrise Kingdom lead the pack.  Both films picked up nominations for Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper landing acting noms for SLP and Bruce Willis garnering a swell Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Moonrise Kingdom.  Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, and Keep the Lights On round out the Best Feature nominees, while The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Safety Not Guaranteed were singled out for the Best First Feature award.  Also, Matthew McConaughey pulled double nominations for his stellar work in this year’s Magic Mike and Killer Joe, landing a Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor nod, respectively.  Notably shut out of the race entirely was Leos Carax‘s critically-lauded Holy Motors.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominations.  The winners of the 2013 Spirit Awards will be announced on Saturday, February 23, 2013.