Way back on Independence Day I settled on what I anticipated the narrative of the 2011 Oscar season to be: The Year of the Beard. Steven Spielberg is as prolific as ever, and across media, working feverishly both as director (“War Horse” and “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn”) and producer (“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “Super 8” among others) on the big screen, while helping to usher things to the small screen, too, like “Falling Skies” and “Terra Nova.” And he’s hard at work in Virginia right now on next year’s “Lincoln.” Michael Cieply at the New York Times has caught up with this line of reasoning, it seems, and comes at it from the angle of Spielberg coveting recognition as an artist above a commercial player. [New York Times]

Jeff Wells, meanwhile, wants The Beard to take more commercial risks if he’s to be taken seriously in the artistic realm. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Speaking of “Tintin,” Jamie Bell talks about his experience working with Spielberg on the film. [Huffington Post]

Steve Pond gets the goods on how the song and score for “Albert Nobbs” came to be. [The Odds]

The economies of style: How Ryan Gosling, George Clooney and Philip Seymour Hoffman mastered the art of the understated suit in “The Ides of March.” [The Guardian]

Speaking of Clooney, here’s yet another piece about his double-dipping 2011. [Hollywood Reporter]

Greg Ellwood reports on that James Cameron/”Titanic 3D” event Friday. [Awards Campaign]

Josh Horowitz talks to “Anonymous” star Rhys Ifans. [MTV Movies Blog]

It’s Halloween, so a good time for Mayukh Sen to defend Linda Blair’s performance in “The Exorcist,” often reduced to “lying there caked in makeup” by some. [The Film Experience]

“Iron Man 3” heads to my back yard, North Carolina, and will pump $80 million into the local economy. [WWAY]