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Nine awards seasons ago, two op-eds — both involving the Miramax film Gangs of New York (2002) — motivated the Academy to begin cracking down on “distasteful” Oscar campaigning, an effort that continues to this day.

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I’m very pleased to bring you the ninth episode of “Feinberg & Friends,” THR’s weekly podcast about the awards race.

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I was sick with food poisoning yesterday, so I am only now getting around to writing up the exciting events of Monday night, when the Santa Barbara International Film Festival honored Geoffrey Rush with its Montecito Award for his outstanding body of work (previous honorees have included Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Javier Bardem, Kate Winslet, and Julianne Moore) and Rush and his co-stars from “The King’s Speech” with its inaugural Best Ensemble Award.

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• Gold Derby: Tariq Khan provides five reasons why he thinks “The King’s Speech” can still beat “The Social Network” to win the best picture Oscar. He suggests: (1) It will lead the field in nominations, as have 75% of the films that went on to win best picture over the past 40 years have; (2) It will do especially well with actors, who comprise the largest branch of the Academy; (3) It will win the SAG Award for best ensemble, as did fellow long-shot best picture hopefuls “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) and “Crash” (2005) en route to their wins; (4) It will be helped by the preferential ballot because it will register highly — even if not first — on most ballots; and (5) It will get a boost because it is now regarded as the underdog. (How he can assert any of these things with such confidence is beyond me. I know that the bookies in Las Vegas sure aren’t buying into his argument at the moment.)

• Entertainment Weekly: Owen Gleiberman, one of the magazine’s film critics, begs to differ with his fellow EW staff member Dave Karger, with Khan, and with all others who are still betting against “The Social Network,” penning a piece entitled, “Here’s Why ‘The King’s Speech’ (As Good As It Is) Won’t Win Best Picture” in which he suggests — as others have long suggested — that the zeitgeist will be the decisive factor. (“The movie that ends up winning the Academy Award for best picture often taps into and gives voice to something that’s happening in the culture at large.”) He writes, “‘The King’s Speech’ is a movie that very much tries to speak to our time… [and] by the time it gets to ‘the king’s speech’ has become an allegory for the age of Barack Obama… [it] seems to have been timed for how a lot of people felt about Obama during the days when he was running for president… a story in America that no longer links up to where a great many people stand (even those of us who still support Obama avidly).”

• Yahoo! Movies: Will Leitch wonders why the team behind “The Social Network” is suddenly going out of its way to be nice to the subject of their film, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After winning the best screenplay Golden Globe, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin said, “I wanted to say to Mark Zuckerberg, if you’re watching tonight, Rooney Mara’s character makes a prediction at the beginning of the movie, and she was wrong. You turned out to be a great entrepreneur, a visionary and an altruist.” After winning the best picture (drama) Golden Globe, producer Scott Rudin said, “I want to thank everybody at Facebook; Mark Zuckerberg for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other.” And another producer of the film, Dana Brunetti, Tweeted a photo of himself arm-in-arm on the red carpet with none other than Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s older sister and Facebook’s marketing director. So… what brought about all of this “friending”?

• The Film Experience: Nathaniel Rogers, the leading authority on foreign language films in the Oscar blogosphere, breaks the down the Academy’s recently announced short-list of nine films from which five nominees will ultimately be selected. The finalists are Algeria (“Outside the Law”), Canada (“Incendies”), Denmark (Golden Globe winner “In a Better World”), Greece (“Dogtooth”), Japan (“Confessions”), Mexico (“Biutiful”), South Africa (“Life Above All”), Spain (“Even the Rain”), and Sweden (“Simple Simon”). Rogers notes the surprise inclusions of the Greek and Japanese films, the noteworthy snubs the entries from France (“Of Gods and Men”) and   Thailand (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”), the unusual presence of star power among the nominees (including Javier Bardem in “Biutiful” and Gael Garcia Bernal in “Even the Rain”), and his predictions for the final five (Algeria, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and South Africa).

• UPI: An unattributed report, citing statistics compiled by the Rentrak tracking service, indicates that “The Social Network,” which was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 11, was the top-selling and top-rented title of the week ending on January 16.

• The Hollywood Reporter: Pamela McClintock reports that Fox Searchlight has planned “a big return” for its awards hopeful “127 Hours,” which has grossed only $11.1 million to date and is now playing in only 76 theaters. The studio is apparently hoping to “take advantage of expected attention from the Oscars” by re-releasing it in over 600 locations the week after nominations are announced. (They mounted a similar theatrical comeback for “The Last King of Scotland” in 2006, which resulted in $14 million more in ticket sales.)

• The Rest Is Noise: Alex Ross, the esteemed music critic for the New Yorker, hails “two recent movie scores that I particularly liked,” the one by Hans Zimmer for “Inception” (“with its colossal augmentation of Edith Piaf’s ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’”) and the one by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for “The Social Network” (“which does a stealthy job of dictating the mood of the film”), both of which are serious contenders for best original score Oscar nominations.

• The Awl: Richard Rushfield, who was the editor of the entertainment section at the Los Angeles Times when I wrote a blog for their Web site, pens a rather contrarian op-ed about “The Social Network” in which he describes the film as “a pack of lies that conveys nothing about our time.” He acknowledges that it is “a finely crafted work” and that “the acting is impeccable, the dialogue is zippy and zings along,” but alleges, “The jilted love affair that drives Mark Zuckerberg to create Facebook is invented. The resentment against the Harvard elite clubs that drives him to create an alternate society is invented. The claims of others involved in the creation of Facebook are given vastly too much credence in the film. [And] Zuckerberg is portrayed as an angry, vengeful sociopath, which by most accounts and all appearances, he is not.” (There are numerous people, however, who would dispute each of his allegations. For starters, Google the name Jessica Alona.)

Photo: Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.” Credit: Columbia.

• iTunes Movie Trailers: Focus Features finally releases a clip of Julianne Moore’s show-stopping soliloquoy about marriage in “The Kids Are All Right” — and, as a fan of Moore’s, I’m furious. This should have been done months ago when it really could have made a difference, not five days before Oscar nomination ballots are due. At this point, virtually all of the heat for the film has been guided towards Moore’s co-star Annette Bening, and it seems doubtful that Moore’s prospects can be salvaged by anything.

• The Facebook Effect: Today, several awards bloggers, including yours truly, received a copy of “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World,” David Kirkpatrick’s authorized history of Facebook, from a prominent PR firm that is promoting its paperback release on February 1. The timing of this delivery struck some of us as a little strange, as did a marking on the book (“The Real Story Behind ‘The Social Network’”) and several passages in a letter that accompanied it (“So you think you know the real story of how Facebook was created? There is that nice film out there with a great script by Aaron Sorkin, but unfortunately that is just it, a script”). Representatives of films that are competing with “The Social Network” this awards season quickly and emphatically denied any advance knowledge of the mailing.

• Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells writes a tongue-in-cheek post comparing the growing number of awards pundists who have changed their best picture pick from “The King’s Speech” to “The Social Network” — including Pete Hammond, Steve Pond, and Kris Tapley — to the characters in the classic film “12 Angry Men” (1957), in which one lone juror (Henry Fonda) is slowly but surely joined on his side of an issue by all of the others. According to Jeff’s parallel, the three people who declared “The Social Network” to be the frontrunner months ago and have stuck with it (he, Sasha Stone, and me) are the Fonda character, whereas the few remaining holdouts for “The King’s Speech” (Dave Karger, Tom O’Neil, David Poland, and Anne Thompson) are other character actors from the film. (Not surprisingly, he reserves “big mouth” Lee J. Cobb for his longtime nemesis Poland).

• The Race: Pamela McClintock observes that “there has been a disturbing dissonance between Oscar voters and movie-goers when it comes to top nominations” in recent years — “many of the best picture nominees just never caught on at the box office” — but this year “it’s the opposite as moviegoers are wholeheartedly embracing a number of awards darlings.” Among the major films on which moviegoers and critics have agreed, and on which the Academy is likely to agree: “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “Inception,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network,” “True Grit,” and “Winter’s Bone.”

• Los Angeles Times: Rebecca Keegan comments on “the evolution of dumbed-down female characters into ones that save the day with smarts and courage,” as well as “the growing influence of women in the film industry,” as demonstrated by the parts played by the teenage actresses Jennifer Lawrence in “Winter’s Bone,” Chloe Moretz in “Kick-Ass,” and Hailee Steinfeld in “True Grit,” among others.

• Variety: Steve Chagollan passes along the five films that were nominated on Monday by the American Society of Cinematographers for the ASC Award for best cinematography of a feature film: “Black Swan” (Matthew Libatique), “Inception” (Wally Pfister), “The King’s Speech” (Danny Cohen), “The Social Network” (Jeff Cronenweth), and “True Grit” (Roger Deakins). This is the first career ASC nod for Libatique, Cohen, and Cronenweth; the third for Pfister; and the ninth for Deakins (who has won this category twice). Chagollan notes that “over the last 10 years, the winners of the ASC and the Oscar d.p. kudos have overlapped four times.”

• The Hollywood Reporter: Gregg Kilday notes that “The Social Network” completed its utter dominance of the awards circuit this season by winning best picture honors at Saturday’s National Society of Film Critics gathering in New York. The film, which was similarly recognized by the National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association, also received recognition in several other categories: David Fincher won best director, Jesse Eisenberg won best actor, and Aaron Sorkin won best screenplay. Other major honors went to Giovanna Mezzogiorno (“Vincere”), who was named best actress; Geoffrey Rush (“The King’s Speech”), who was named best supporting actor; and Olivia Williams (“The Ghost Writer”), who was named best supporting actress.

• The Envelope: Rebecca Keegan offers a recap of Saturday night’s Palm Springs International Film Festival’s 22nd annual awards gala, which she describes as Hollywood’s “first dress rehearsal of the awards season. The honorees included several top Oscar contenders: Ben Affleck (“The Town”), Javier Bardem (“Biutiful”), Robert Duvall (“Get Low”), Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech”), James Franco (“127 Hours”), Andrew Garfield (“The Social Network”), Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”), and Mark Wahlberg (“The Fighter”).

• New York Daily News: Soraya Roberts writes up and passes along a clip of a sketch from Saturday night’s “Saturday Night Live” in which the host, “I Love You Phillip Morris” best actor hopeful Jim Carrey, played the Mila Kunis character (to Bill Hader’s Vincent Cassell and Nasim Pedrad’s Natalie Portman) in a skit parodying “Black Swan.” Though only sporadically funny, the sketch really hammers home the degree to which Darren Aronofsky’s little indie has managed to crack into the mainstream conversation.

Photo: Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in “The Kids Are All Right.” Credit: Focus Features.

• Entertainment Weekly: Dave Karger speaks with Julia Roberts after a special screening of “Biutiful” at CAA that she hosted for industry insiders to help call attention to the performance of her “Eat Pray Love” co-star Javier Bardem. (Robert Forster, Kyle MacLachlan, and Bardem’s pregnant wife Penelope Cruz were among the attendees.) Roberts explains, “I think the movie hasn’t gotten the exposure. You don’t know where it is. It’s like this hidden little jewel… I just have a great appreciation for what he went through to show us all this.”

• Deadline Hollywood: Mike Fleming interviews producer-extraordinaire Scott Rudin, who this week became the first producer to receive PGA Award nominations for two features in the same year (for “The Social Network” and “True Grit”), and who will also be receiving the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the PGA Awards ceremony. Rudin credits his “great [producing] partners on both” and emphasizes that while “the Oscar stuff is fantastic, rewarding and in some ways exciting… it’s not why you do it. You do it because you want to hold your own work to a standard of excellence.” He also notes that while he was heavily involved with the pre-production of both films (he worked closely with the screenwriters, for instance, while they formulated their scripts), he stayed out of the way of the directors during the filmmaking process itself.

• Awards Tracker: Tom O’Neil advises those who believe that “True Grit” is now the best picture favorite just because it has done well at the box-office ($91.5 million and counting) to “hold your horses.” He submits that “financial success isn’t as important as it used to be to Oscar victory,” citing the fact the best picture Oscar winner went to films that earned at least $100 million domestically 75% of the time between 1986 and 2005, but that 60% of those since have gone to films that did not, including “Crash” ($54 million), “No Country for Old Men” ($74 million), and “The Hurt Locker” ($14 million, or $746 million less than it’s fellow nominee “Avatar”).

• Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells passes along an andorsement of the work of the cinematographer Hoyt Van Hoytema on “The Fighter” from legendary cinematographer Michael Chapman, who lensed perhaps the greatest boxing movie of all-time, “Raging Bull” (1980), among other classics. Chapman writes, “The movie struck me as doing the basic thing that cinematography does when it’s done well, which is to present a three-dimensional stage in which the actors can move.”

• The Carpetbagger: Larry Rother mourns the fact that the French film “Carlos,” one of the most critically-beloved movies of 2010, is ineligible for Oscar consideration in any category this year “because of a quirk in the rules set by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.” The film “was initially broadcast on French television before it was packaged and sold abroad for distribution, in two different versions, one long and one short, as a feature film,” which constitutes a violation of an Academy rule that states, “Films that, in any version, receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release will not be eligible for Academy Awards in any category.”

• Vulture: Jordana Horn asks Quentin Tarantino why he omitted Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” — the film to which the Venice Film Festival jury, over which he presided, awarded the Golden Lion back in September — from his year-end top 20 film list. “I’m a little embarrassed by it, actually,” Tarantino says, explaining, “It was never meant to be a dig against ‘Somewhere,’ or Sofia. I simply didn’t consider any of the films I’d seen in Venice for the list.” I put them in a separate box — I was on official duty at that time, not seeing the films theatrically, independently… Now I wish I’d put it on there — I didn’t think anyone would pay attention.” He adds, “I’d have put it in my top 10.”

• Hitfix: Greg Ellwood lists the five films that have been nominated for this year’s USC Scripter Award, which was established in 1988 to celebrate each year’s finest big screen adaptation, and honors “the screenwriter as well as the author of the work in which the screenplay is based.” This year’s finalists: “127 Hours” (Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy’s adaptation of Aron Ralston’s autobiography of the same name), “The Ghost Writer” (Robert Harris and Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Harris’s novel “The Ghost“), “The Social Network” (Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires“), “True Grit” (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s adaptation of Charles Portis’s novel of the same name), and “Winter’s Bone” (Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini’s adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name).

• The Odds: Steve Pond recaps the nominations announced this week by the PGA (where “The Town” was included as one of the final 10, but “Another Year,” “Blue Valentine,” “Rabbit Hole,” “Shutter Island,” and “Winter’s Bone” were not) and the WGA (where “I Love You Phillip Morris,” “Please Give,” and “The Town” scored nominations, but many of the more likely Oscar nominees were ineligible due to WGA rules). The PGA Awards will be announced on January 22, and the WGA Awards will be announced on February 5.

• Variety: Peter Caranicas passes along the Art Directors Guild’s nominees for the three categories that will be recognized at this year’s ADG Awards, which will be announced on February 5. In the period category: “Get Low,” “The King’s Speech,” “Robin Hood,” “Shutter Island,” and “True Grit.” In the fantasy category: “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” “Inception,” and “Tron: Legacy.” And in the contemporary category: “127 Hours,” “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “The Social Network,” and “The Town.”

• Gold Derby: Paul Sheehan learns that the Cinema Audio Society’s nominees for the CAS Award for best sound mixing are “Black Swan,” “Inception,” “Shutter Island,” “The Social Network” and “True Grit.” Last year, he notes, four of the five CAS nominees for sound mixing went on to score Oscar nods (“District 9” was replaced by “Inglourious Basterds”), and the CAS winner “The Hurt Locker” went on to win the Oscar.

• The Hollywood Reporter: Sofia M. Fernandez shares the names of the seven films that have made the short-list from which the Academy’s visual effects branch will ultimately select five nominees. The finalists are “Alice in Wonderland,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” “Hereafter,” “Inception,” “Iron Man 2,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and “Tron: Legacy.” Fernandez notes that members of the branch will screen 15-minute excerpts from the films on January 20, while the final five nominees will be announced January 25.

Photo: Javier Bardem and Julia Roberts. Credit: Entertainment Weekly.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association, of which I am a voting member, released its 2010 nominations for its 16th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards this morning. “Black Swan” earned a record 12 nods (picture, director, actress, supporting actress, original screenplay, art direction, costume design, cinematography, editing, makeup, sound, and score), while 11 were bestowed upon “The King’s Speech” and “True Grit,” 10 upon “Inception,” and 9 upon “The Social Network.” Nicole Kidman, meanwhile, became the most nominated actor in the organization’s history when she received her seventh career nod (for best actress in “Rabbit Hole”).

Noteworthy inclusions: Noomi Rapace (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) for best actress; Jeremy Renner (“The Town”) for best supporting actor; Mila Kunis (“Black Swan”) for best supporting actress; “The Town” for best adapted screenplay; “The Fighter” for best ensemble; 13-year-old Chloe Moretz was nominated twice in the best young actor category (“Kick-Ass” and “Let Me In”); “I Love You Phillip Morris” for best comedy; “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” for best documentary; and “127 Hours” for best editing

Noteworthy snubs: “Blue Valentine” and “The Kids Are All Right” for best picture; Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Biutiful”) for best director; Javier Bardem (“Biutiful”) and Mark Wahlberg (“The Fighter”) for best actor; Julianne Moore (“The Kids Are All Right”) and Tilda Swinton (“I Am Love”) for best actress; Justin Timberlake (“The Social Network”) for best supporting actor; “Black Swan” for best ensemble; “Hot Tub Time Machine” for best comedy; “Shutter Island” for best art direction; “The Social Network” for best cinematography; “Shutter Island” for best costume design; “The King’s Speech” for best editing; and “Iron Man 2” for best visual effects

The BFCA’s picks — which have correlated with the Academy’s picks as often as any awards group’s in recent years — will be announced at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards ceremony at the Hollywood Palladium on Friday, January 14, 2011 at 9pm EST/PST. VH1 will broadcast the gala live around the world.

The full list of nominees follows…

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Just for the heck of it, I’m going to spitball the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and New York Film Critics Circle votes, both which are impossible to predict with any degree of confidence, and both of which will be announced over the next 24 hours (the former on Twitter @LAFilmCritics)…

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“Deep Vote,” an Oscar winning screenwriter and a member of the Academy, will write this column — exclusively for ScottFeinberg.com — every week until the Academy Awards. He will help to peel back the curtain on the Oscar voting process by sharing his thoughts about the films he sees and, ultimately, his nomination and final ballots, as well. His identity must be protected in order to spare him from repercussions for disclosing the aforementioned information.

Thus far, he has shared his thoughts in column one about his general preferences; column two about “Winter’s Bone” (Roadside Attractions, 6/11, R, trailer) and “Solitary Man” (Anchor Bay Films, 5/21, R, trailer); column three about “Alice in Wonderland” (Disney, 3/5, PG, trailer), “Toy Story 3” (Disney, 6/18, G, trailer), and “Mother and Child” (Sony Pictures Classics, 5/7, R, trailer); and column four about “Get Low” (Sony Pictures Classics, 7/30, PG-13, trailer), “The Kids Are All Right” (Focus Features, 7/9, R, trailer), and “The Social Network” (Columbia, 10/1, PG-13, trailer).

This week, he assesses three more awards hopefuls: “127 Hours” (Fox Searchlight, 11/5, R, trailer), “Biutiful” (Roadside Attractions, 12/17, R, trailer), and “Shutter Island” (Paramount, 2/19, R, trailer)…

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• The Envelope: Reed Johnson nabs a rare interview with best actress hopeful Annette Bening, one of the two female leads in “The Kids Are All Right,” as well as Lisa Cholodenko, the film’s co-screenwriter/director. Cholodenko says that when it came to casting the part of Nic — “who in many ways is the film’s dramatic fulcrum, just as she is her family’s emotional anchor — mostly for the better, though not without the usual quotient of occasional slammed doors and raised voices” — she thought of only Bening. Fortunately, it turned out that a mutual-admiration existed between the two — Cholodenko thought of Bening because of one particularly special scene of hers from “American Beauty” (1999), and Bening always remembered enjoying Cholodenko’s earlier film “Laurel Canyon” (2002).

• 24 Frames: Steven Zeitchik scans the newly-released slate of films that will play at January’s Sundance Film Festival, and points out some potential “critical darlings” for which we should probably keep an eye out. Among them are “Higher Ground,” the Oscar nominated actress Vera Farmiga’s directorial debut, and “Pariah,” a Bronx-set film that many are likening to last year’s Sundance breakout-hit “Precious.”

• The Odds: Steve Pond noted a little less than a month ago that director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and his new film “Biutiful,” which stars Javier Bardem, has a lot of friends in high places — and the list has only grown since Pond posted his piece. Werner Herzog moderated a DGA Q&A with Inarritu in Los Angeles; Robert Benton moderated a DGA Q&A with Inarritu in New York; Sean Penn, who was overheard telling Josh Brolin that the film is a “fucking masterpiece,” will be moderating a Q&A with Inarritu and Bardem this coming Sunday in Los Angeles; Michael Mann will be hosting a private screening of the film at CAA on December 10; and Alfonso Cuaron will be hosting a csreening in London on December 13. Others who have publicly stated their support of the film include Ben Affleck, Guillermo Del Toro, and Julian Schnabel.

• The Film Stage: Jordan Raup passes along a letter from “Adaptation” (2002) director Spike Jonze to online film critic Peter Sciretta in which he emphasizes how much he loves David O. Russell’s “The Fighter.” Jonze wrote, “Hey Peter — Spike here. I’m writing on behalf of my friend David Russell, regarding his new movie The Fighter. Did you get a chance to see it yet? How insanely great is Christian Bale? Can you do me a favor and post this 2 minute trailer called ‘Pressure’ on your site? The trailer that they put out originally makes the film feel a little generic and I just want to help David get the word out. I got to see it a few weeks ago, and I loved it, and if all you saw is the trailer that’s out, you might not know that it’s as interesting and strong as it is. Thanks for your help! Spike”

• The Contenders: Brad Brevet has, through a variety of means, gathered the scripts of 23 of this year’s top awards contenders and posted them on his site for anyone who would like to read them. His most recent acquisitions? “I Love You Phillip Morris” and “Winter’s Bone.”

Photo: Mia Waskinowska, Lisa Cholodenko, and Julianne Moore on the set of “The Kids Are All Right.” Credit: Columbia University.