Culture

The King's Gritty Network (Or: Oscars Ahoy!)

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This year's Oscar nominees were announced today; if you want to talk about them, this is your thread. The Social Network, a.k.a. the Facebook movie, is widely seen as the frontrunner to take Best Picture. I won't be surprised if it wins: It's a movie about the alleged evils of a rival form of entertainment, a well-trod path to praise in Hollywood. The other leading contenders are True Grit, which has the advantage of being a genuinely good movie, and The King's Speech, which may well be a good movie—I haven't seen it—but its more substantial advantage is that it's about English people with titles. The Academy eats that up.