Oscar `Knight'? Batman rises to serious contender

"It's an important movie sociologically. I feel like in this day and age, with terrorism and with the cancers of the city and people trying to find a voice within their own city, this is an important film. - Aaron Eckhart

NVDL: I watched this flick for the 4th time recently. It is such an intelligent film. It should win Best Director...

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com LOS ANGELES -- As the box-office bankroll climbed for "The Dark Knight" last summer, the Hollywood consensus was that a posthumous nomination for Heath Ledger was the Batman blockbuster's best Academy Awards hope. Now that critics have gotten a peek at all the last-minute Oscar contenders, "The Dark Knight" has emerged as a solid contender for best picture and best director for Christopher Nolan. It's unusual for an action flick to climb into the company of Hollywood's year-end prestige pictures, with Oscar voters tending toward highbrow literary works rather than comic-book adaptations. Among the action films that made the best-picture cut at the Oscars were the three "Lord of the Rings" movies and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." "I'd like to think he would be very quietly proud of the fact that people really responded to it in the way he'd intended, were moved by the performance," Nolan said.