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• The Playlist: Kevin Jagernauth reports that the organizers of the Academy Awards are exploring the possibility of moving up the 2012 ceremony to January as part of “a continuing effort to boost flagging viewership.” It would, however, face “considerable competition from the last weeks of the NFL season” and “the window to get out screeners” would become very condensed (which has prompted discussion about a secure Web site through which members could instantly access films online).
• CNN: Larry King announces that he will devote the full hour of tonight’s “Larry King Live” to the new film “Conviction,” another huge coup for the folks at Fox Searchlight. Guests will include the film’s director Tony Goldwyn; stars Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, and Minnie Driver; and real-life inspirations Betty Anne Waters, Abra Rice, and Barry Scheck. Also appearing will be 12 individuals from across the country who were convicted of crimes they did not commit, and who were eventually exonerated thanks to the efforts of The Innocence Project.
• IFC News: Allison Willmore offers a great rebuttal to Rebecca Davis O’Brien’s complaints about the portrayal of women in “The Social Network,” asserting that the film doesn’t have a problem with women, but rather its characters do. “It’s a story about guys,” she writes. “Desperate, socially inept guys. It’s a cinematic sausage fest!”
• In Contention: Kris Tapley, who has championed Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” since seeing it at Telluride, is pleased to report that the newly-formed shingle Wrekin Hill Entertainment, in partnership with Newmarket Films, will provide the film with a one-week Oscar qualifying run in December prior to releasing in in select theaters on January 21, 2011.
• Los Angeles Times: Patrick Goldstein describes “The Social Network” as “an old-fashioned writer’s picture, a quintessential Aaron Sorkin story crammed full of dazzling dialogue, audacious characters and a rich smorgasbord of moral issues worthy of prolonged debate,” and argues that the reason there are so few other films like it is because television is now a much more welcoming medium for writers. Sorkin concurs, telling Goldstein, “If Herman Mankiewicz, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, and Budd Schulberg were alive today, they’d be writing on TV.”
• Los Angeles Times: Steven Zeitchik recounts “The Social Network” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s controversial remarks on the debut episode of CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” — “Sarah Palin is an idiot… a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent, mean woman… the Democrats have moved to the center, but the Republicans have moved into a mental institution”  — and wonders if it will impact the film’s performance  at the box-office.
• TV Hunter: Hunter Walker learns that the cable network FX has purchased the broadcast rights to two recently released films, “The Social Network” and “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” adding them to a stable of recent acquisitions that also includes “The A-Team,” “Date Night,” “The Karate Kid,” and “Salt.”
• The New Republic: Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor, calls “The Social Network” a “deeply, deeply flawed film,” but his gripe actually seems to be more with the shortcomings of the American legal system and the things that the film does not address than with the film itself.

Photo: Minnie Driver and Hilary Swank in “Conviction.” Credit: Fox Searchlight.