By Steven Zeitchik

The Carey Mulligan express rolled on at the New York premiere of "An Education" on Monday night at a pleasantly low-key event at the city's Brasserie 8 1/2 restaurant in midtown. At this stage of the race, Mulligan — who brought a few friends along from the Gotham set of "Wall Street 2," helmer Oliver Stone and star Shia LaBeouf (both sat quietly at a table chatting with each other alongside Stone's nonagenarian mother) — is considered not only a front-runner for a best actress nom, but a pretty strong candidate to win the big prize.

Many of the people associated with the pic turned out, including producer Jim Stern and screenwriter Nick Hornby, who this time around was adapting a book he didn't write instead of having a book he did write adapted by someone else. "It made me a lot more aware of keeping in touch with the author (the memoirist Lynn Barber) because I know what it's like to have a screenwriter take a book and disappear for a few years," said Hornby, the author of the books that became "High Fidelity," "About a Boy" and "Fever Pitch," in a comment we suspect may contain as much truth as comedy.

How much "Education," a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in 1960's London who falls for a man twice her age (Peter Sarsgaard, looking bearded and hirsute at the premiere), can compete in categories beyond best actress remains an open question.