Hey, have you guys heard about this movie called Iron Man? We’re hearing it might be the greatest thing ever. Really, ever. It didn’t lose ground to the other media property that was supposed to clear our economic stimulus checks (GTA IV), hell, it even got women into the theater for a summer action flick and boosted Marvel’s stock.

Is there nothing Iron Man can’t do?

Can it…gulp…jump-start award season?

That and some praise from Jon Favreau inside.

Here’s the absurdity, blogged about by EW’s Ken Tucker (who is good, but we want his job):

Hey, remember the whining about the last Oscar telecast, with its low-wattage star vehicles and lower ratings, and all the hand-wringing the media, including EW, did over how to improve the Oscars? Here’s a thought. Hey, Hollywood and the Motion Picture Academy: Take a closer squint at the big summer movies. Take them, ahem, seriously. As far as I’m concerned, Downey’s performance should go on any short list that anyone draws up of potential Oscar nominees.

Even for EW, who out-jumps everyone when it comes to jumping the gun on awards season, this is a big leap forward. Who in their right mind starts compiling a list for a March 2009 awards show right now? Honestly.

Here’s why summer movie actors don’t get nominations: because if you can’t remember that they were awesome in the Summer when it hits November – news flash! – they weren’t really that awesome. We don’t need to keep a running list of performances we enjoy to reference because the good will stick with you.

If, come November, Jon Favreau is still singing Downey’s praises like this, we’ll count him in:

[W]hen you go into the Cinerama Dome … I went up there and intro’d the movie, and as a surprise brought Robert Downey Jr. up, and then everybody jumped to their feet. It just hit him. … It’s exciting for everybody, because he’s a guy that I think a lot of people wrote off. It’s inspiring when somebody who sort of has his work cut out for him actually accomplishes that and comes back bigger and better than he was before. I mean, that’s the American dream — and it oddly somehow relates to Tony Stark. And when art imitates life, you’re onto something. I learned that off Swingers.

Yeah, RDJr. is pretty awesome. But let’s try to keep our geek erections out of awards season until more than one performance catches our eye.