This week on The Collision, we’ll be talking about the beginning of the 2012 awards season with Awards Daily founder and editor-in-chief Sasha Stone (@AwardsDaily). We discuss the recent wins from various critics associations, their influence on the Academy, recent Oscar history, the current state of the race, and much more.

Click here to listen to the new episode of The Collision, click here for the previous episode (“Crime Films and Killing Them Softly“), click here to add the podcast to your RSS, and click here to find us on iTunes. To keep up to date with The Collision, you can follow us on Twitter at @MattGoldberg, @AdamChitwood, and @DrClawMD (Dave Trumbore). Hit the jump to check out the trailers for this week’s recommendations.

While you may not recognize the name Graham King, I’m pretty sure you’ve seen some of the movies he’s produced like The Departed, The Aviator, Traffic, and Blood Diamond.  Also, with over a dozen projects listed in development on IMDb, he’s clearly positioning himself as a producer to follow.

Anyway, since he produced Edge of Darkness (which opens tomorrow), I recently got to sit down with this busy producer and we discussed not only his latest project, but all the other thinsg he has in development like Dark Shadows, The Tourist, Rum Diaries, Rango, LondonBoulevard , The Town, and Mel Gibson’s Viking movie.  Also, since he has such a great relationship with William Monahan, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, I asked how he manages to keep working with them.  It’s a great interview so hit the jump to check it out: