On Monday night in a basement screening room in Midtown Manhattan, using little more than the allure of a free cocktail and a passing hors d'oeuvre, the Oscar-season force that is Harvey Weinstein gathered together a few potentially influential people for a screening of 'The King's Speech.' Kathleen Turner, Joel Grey and Bill Irwin turned up, as did the filmmaker Derek Cianfrance. Not two weeks before, Weinstein, who runs the Weinstein Co. with his brother, Bob, had successfully petitioned the Motion Picture Association of America to change the rating for Cianfrance's labor-of-love relationship film, 'Blue Valentine,' from NC-17 to R. So there Cianfrance was, indebted, gamely chatting with all comers in the service of someone else's moody drama. Cast members from 'The King's Speech' numbered just two: Jennifer Ehle, who stars as Myrtle Logue, wife of Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), the speech therapist who tends to Colin Firth's stuttering George VI; and Eve Best, who plays Wallis Simpson. Between them their screen time amounts to mere minutes. Best, a celebrated theater actress in New York and London, said that she worked on the film for less than a week. Ehle, also best known in New York for her stage work ('Coast of Utopia,' 'Macbeth'), said she got the call about attending the party a week and a half ago, just as she'd managed to see the movie herself, and didn't mind being summoned to schmooze. 'The film deserves it,' she said. Meanwhile, around Los Angeles this week, David Fincher, director of 'The Social Network,' was spending what was meant to be his vacation doing Q. and A.'s with industry groups. For the awards front-runners the holiday season has not put a damper on Oscar campaigning; it's skip the eggnog and pass the screener please. Though 'The Social Network,' the dramatization of the founding of Facebook, and 'The King's Speech,' about the relationship between the British monarch and his therapist, are both vying for top spots, the Oscar race has not quite become the two-picture showdown of the last awards season. That's when 'The Hurt Locker' dominated the critics' awards, and 'Avatar' crushed the box office -- and inspired heated debate over whether it was a tech-epic paean for our times or a simple-minded (and derivative) fable. ('Dances With Wolves in Space'? 'Pocahontas With Blue People'?) 'The Social Network' has found favor with nearly all the critical groups, but there is still wiggle room for films like 'The Fighter,' which earned a slew of Golden Globe nominations, and 'True Grit,' one of the last additions to the year-end quality cinema pileup. 'True Grit,' the Coen brothers' remake of the 1969 John Wayne revenge western, will be the dad flick of the holidays, but the movie that may cause the most chatter over the Christmas ham is 'Black Swan.' That ballet thriller from Darren Aronofsky has been increasing its take steadily at theaters while stirring up artistic controversy: Is it authentic or just high-gloss camp? An auteur's vision of the true perils of creativity or a glammy B-movie with better production values? ('Dances With Overwrought Cinematic Tropes'?) Natalie Portman, who underwent rigorous training to star as a perfectionist ballerina, is still a lead contender for the best actress Oscar, even if the movie ultimately divides audiences. Of course the tastes of mainstream audiences are not necessarily considered by Academy voters; otherwise a blockbuster like 'Toy Story 3' might run away with the top prize. But that Pixar coming-of-age animation will probably make the big list, as insiders call the 10 best picture nominees. The speculated favorites for that list have scarcely budged in the last few weeks. 'Inception,' '127 Hours,' 'The Kids Are All Right,' 'True Grit' and 'Black Swan,' as well as 'The King's Speech,' 'The Fighter' and 'The Social Network' all turn up, along with a true low-budget wild card, like 'Winter's Bone.' What's missing is a populist movie with an unexpected strong performance, like 'The Blind Side,' which surprised many this year by earning a best picture nomination and won Sandra Bullock an Oscar to boot. It also, not incidentally, helped increase the ratings for the Academy Awards telecast, a metric that is parsed more closely than cinephiles may want to believe. 'Look at the numbers of the viewers for the South and the Southwest -- they skyrocketed, and that wasn't 'Avatar,' that was 'The Blind Side,'' said one high-ranking Academy member, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the group. What movie will win the South this year? 'I don't think we have one,' he said, glumly. Christopher Nolan's 'Inception,' summer hit though it was, is too complicated and not nearly feel-good enough to count. Depending on how it fares over the holidays, 'The Fighter,' David O. Russell's boxing family drama, may hit a sweet spot of box-office and Academy appeal. It has had good ticket sales in limited release and the virtue of buzzed-about performances from Christian Bale, as a drug-addicted ex-boxer, and Melissa Leo and Amy Adams, as big-haired loudmouthed women. Plus it's a colorful true story made through much duress by Mark Wahlberg, a star with a lot of good will. Russell has called it an underdog, a position that makes for a good awards-race narrative, and Oscar watchers consider it a sneaking threat. In the meantime do not count out Weinstein, who will continue to corral everyone (and we mean everyone) he can to advance 'The King's Speech.' 'Everybody did us a big solid making this film -- four-day, five-day parts, they wanted to make this film right,' he said at the end of the party Monday. He has already enlisted Michael Gambon and Guy Pearce, who play royals with minimal screen time, to do their promotional part. 'They're coming in January,' he said. As if on cue, the next day an e-mail landed, offering up Pearce for an interview. We'll take it, of course, and see you in the new year. 