Oh look at that, awards season is here.

Unlike last year, though, no movie swept the awards.

D.C. film critics are all about the birds and the boys this year, it seems.

The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association praise 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, and other films in their annual year-end awards.

If you haven’t yet watched The Artist, maybe you should — the region’s local film critics chose it as their 2011 pick of the year.

It’s December, and the annual avalanche of year-end lists, best-ofs, and awards for music, movies, books, and anything else that anyone on the internet can think of to rate is getting underway. As is its habit, the National Board of Review kicked off the season for film, releasing its picks of the best of the year at the end of last week. The Washington Area Film Critics Association, a collection of TV, radio, print, and internet film critics in the area with 39 voting members (full disclosure: I’m one of those members), is usually second to the plate — and this morning WAFCA released its nominees and award-winners.

Smiling, with good reason: Clooney and the film he stars in get top honors from D.C. critics. The Washington Area Film Critics Association likes to be one of the earliest critics’ groups to get out their year-end picks. In fact, of the major critics’ associations, only the National Board of Review, which revealed its selections last week, gets theirs out earlier. Of course, this does mean that the picks are made before some of…

If it’s the second week in December, it’s time for the Washington Area Film Critics’ Association to announce its picks for the best films of the year. WAFCA traditionally likes to race to get its list out before all the other critics associations, and often ends up giving top honors to movies that are less likely to take home Oscar gold (although that wasn’t the case last year). This year WAFCA named Fox Searchlight’s Slumdog…