'The Social Network': Could the Facebook Movie Win an Oscar?

The past few weeks—with the Cannes, Venice, and Toronto film festivals all taking place—brought the first screenings of this year's major Oscar contenders. Natalie Portman's ballet thriller Black Swan danced out of Venice with rave reviews, especially for the actress's performance; James Franco's 127 Hours was a hit with critics; and The King's Speech emerged as a likely Best Picture and Best Actor frontrunner (for star Colin Firth).

But no buzzed about film has garnered reviews more glowing than Aaron Sorkin's "Facebook movie" The Social Network (which we predicted—possibly wrongly?—would be boring). In addition to being considered a lock for numerous awards races...

I saw it at the first opportunity on Monday and would have to say fairly objectively that The Social Network is Sony's best shot at Best Picture in years, a lock for  Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards. And most importantly,  Oscar nominations in every major category including Director for David Fincher, Writing for Aaron Sorkin, lead actor for Jesse Eisenberg (playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg), Supporting Actor for  both Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross'  score, editing and so on.

...some critics are already declaring it a lock to win Best Picture:

'The Social Network' is Zodiac's younger, geekier, greedier brother. That means it's good, as in really good. ... Can I just blurt it out? It's the strongest Best Picture contender I've seen so far this year, and in saying this I'm obviously alluding to 'Inception.'"

Read the full story at Deadline and The Envelope.

As a primer for the film's release Oct. 1, here is the trailer again: