The NYT details Icahn’s continuing assault on Time Warner here.

One of the downsides of the blogosphere: People write too short. Where’s the rest of this provocative thesis? No Professor Gutkind, we want the long version.

Google has added a movie exec to its board, says the NY Post.

Budd Schulberg arrested Leni Riefenstahl? Who knew?

Newspapers are thriving if you measure online traffic, according to Editor & Publisher.

And media magnate Rupert Murdoch continues to do the PR rounds as he talks to The Independent.

Let the Award Season begin. Yes, it is a horse race, and much as the indie folks would like to believe that it isn’t true, the Indie Spirit contenders that are also Oscar contenders are usually the ones that win. All five best feature nominees, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, The Squid and the Whale, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, will be given a boost toward entering the Oscar race as well. But it doesn’t help Tommy Lee Jones not to land a Best Actor or Director slot, nor does it help Capote’s Bennett Miller not to land a directing slot. Among the actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger and David Straithairn are already front runners in the Oscar race;the indie nominations give Jeff Daniels and Terrence Howard a much-needed push. Others who could benefit from this indie shot in the arm are supporting players Amy Adams for Junebug and Matt Dillon for Crash. Felicity Huffman gets extra juice from the Transamerica nod. And director Alex Gibney is looking good in the documentary race for “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.”

Here’s an Oscar post. When Diane Keaton came to my UCLA Extension class, she was funny, and charming, and admitted, to her chagrin, that after she ably carried Nancy Meyers’ mature relationship comedy “Something’s Gotta Give,” which grossed $267 million worldwide, she figured that her phone would start ringing. (Needless to say, aging Lotharios like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Robert Redford get more offers than Keaton does.) But it didn’t happen, so that when Tom Bezucha’s “Family Stone” script finally came her way, she jumped at it. “Family Stone” could yield Keaton (who will be profiled in Time), her fifth Oscar nomination (she won for “Annie Hall”) and her first as a supporting actress. Keaton has been delivering the goods her entire career. It’s a crime Hollywood doesn’t come up with more stuff for her to do.

Patrick Goldstein called to ask about my take on early Oscar predictions and the impact of the rising number of Oscar blogs. He seems to want to return to some kind of pure cinema utopia, where movies have the time to unspool and build good word at their leisure without having to worry about being fussed over by the petty fast-breaking media. I’m glad he liked The New World, which I saw this weekend. He was at an even earlier screening. Which is something he’s accustomed to. He and his LA Times colleagues like to cherry pick the best screenings annd stories before the rabble get their access. I suspect that Patrick is uncomfortable with the nagging sense that the declining Old Order has been superseded by something quicker and dirtier. Yes, I want Patrick to take the time to write a thoughtful well-reported elegantly written column like this one. But he may feel the LA Times position at the top of the LA journalism food chain slipping slightly. When solo bloggers like NY’s Dave Kehr are getting more than 5000 hits a day and are quoted in print ads like The Ice Harvest without a staff affiliation, it means that the Internet is messing with the establishment.

Of course, the studios have long ago figured out how to coopt giant fanboy sites like aint-it-cool-news to their own ends, showering Harry Knowles and his minions with ads, early access and information. They throw the material up, some of it refreshingly first-hand, but it’s willy-nilly, not reported and checked. Would I rather read the “responsible” media? Of course, strong reporting in Time, Newsweek and and the big city dailies is more likely to be well-written and organized by experienced experts. But these publications all have tricky relationships with the Power Elites that they cover, be it Hollywood or Washington. The delightful thing about the blogosphere is finding the independent voices who haven’t been coopted at all.

As for Oscar blogging, I do find myself restraining from weighing in too much too early on the Oscar race—which after all, is going to be going on for a while. Partly, I’m saving stuff for the column. Here, the LA Times’ own The Envelope strikes back. As does, predictably, David Poland.

At Peter Jackson’s behest, Devin Gordon delivers the first reviews of his three-hour remake of King Kong. It’s a rave, natch.

I doubt that the Vogue editor had that kind of power. If the glossy mag V Life was making money, it would be going forward. Celebrity mags are a competitive, costly business.