BEVERLY HILLS -- It is a great thing Batman clothes in black. He is usually a in style man on Hollywood's black-tie circuit come Academy Awards season.

"The Darkish Knight Rises" most definitely has the most productive likelihood ever for a superhero movie to upward push into the best-picture combine at February's Oscars. The movie is the remaining in a celebrated trilogy that increased comic-book motion pictures to operatic proportion, and Hollywood likes sending finales out with a stupendous door-prize (Peter Jackson's first "Lord of the Earrings" motion pictures had been Oscar also-rans ahead of the trilogy's end gained absolute best image.)

It has the load and scope -- after which a few -- of 2008's "The Darkish Knight," the "Batman Starts" sequel whose snub within the best-picture box helped prod the

Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences to amplify the class to greater than 5 nominees.

And within the snub department, academy electorate aren't more likely to disregard that Batman boss Christopher Nolan, one in every of brand new Hollywood's precise innovators, has but to be nominated for very best director. So there may well be an "oops, sorry approximately that" sheepishness amongst Oscar varieties operating in each Nolan's and the film's prefer.

Nolan does not really feel snubbed that "The Darkish Knight" was overpassed for highest image or that he ignored out on a directing nomination for that one and his 2010 mystery "Inception," a best-picture nominee. He in reality sees a exclusive honor within the approach his motion pictures have performed out over Oscar season.

"Look, the idea, the reality

that other folks have mentioned 'The Darkish Knight' as being a key this is why the academy modified their laws and elevated the sphere is solely an enormous honor for the film, in a unusual way," Nolan mentioned.

The laws now permit for as many as 10 best-picture contenders. Starting subsequent week, "The Darkish Knight Rises" may talk for itself as a piece of prime dress drama -- albeit superhero costumes -- that is worth of display business' best honors, regardless of what number of nominees there are.

The movie is gorgeous, sharply written, in a timely fashion paced regardless of an epic working time coming near three hours. The characters have intensity and pathos, and the drama feels a ways richer than the standard hero-saving-the-world saga. The motion displays our personal exhausting instances as a masked terrorist lays siege to the loads in a kind of perverse Occupy Gotham Town motion that pits the comic-book world's NINETY NINE percenters towards the wealthy and rapacious.

"I'm now not pronouncing this as a solid member. I AM announcing this as a member of the academy. So far, it is the very best movie I HAVE observed all year," mentioned Anne Hathaway, who performs grasp thief Catwoman at midnight" Knight Rises." "HE IS transcended the style now. I BELIEVE he is proven that a comic-book film can in truth be epic, ordinary

cinema."

So that is one Oscar vote already from previous best-actress nominee Hathaway. Spherical up the remainder of Nolan's key solid and the film's were given much more academy backers: 4 Oscar winners -- Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard and Batman himself, Christian Bale -- and every other longtime awards season oversight, Gary Oldman, who after all were given his first nomination ultimate season.

That's part a dozen massive names pulling for "The Darkish Knight Rises." Sure, it is a tiny fraction of the academy's just about 6,000 contributors. But while that many nice actors join a superhero flick, it have to be one thing unique.

They and co-stars Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of Nolan's "Inception" colleagues, ship excellent performances

in a style whose characters continuously act greater than somewhat campy.

That was the variation in Nolan's Batman movies. Characters put on foolish disguises, however it all feels actual -- so actual that Heath Ledger posthumously gained the supporting-actor Oscar because the Joker in the dead of night" Knight," taking part in a madman hidden at the back of make-up that appeared like a melted ice cream cake.

Nolan "takes it severely and he treats the characters like human beings, now not as caricatures, and he treats the arena as an actual place," Gordon-Levitt stated. "He walks that line of turning in you a spectacle however no longer speaking all the way down to you."

It's no longer as though the academy has disrespected Nolan's motion pictures. He is been nominated himself three times, for the screenplays of "Inception" and his 2001 breakout hit "Memento," in addition to best-picture as a manufacturer on "Inception."

Nolan's motion pictures have won 21 nominations -- together with eight every for "Inception" and "The Darkish Knight" -- and gained six Oscars.

"Regardless of whether or not 'The Darkish Knight' was nominated or not, we had not anything to bitch about," Bale stated. "I DO NOT BELIEVE Chris can be complaining in any respect. I BELIEVE he is doing rather well".

The Administrators Guild of America, whose awards contenders are likely to be a detailed fit for the Oscar directing field, has nominated Nolan three times, for "Memento," "The Darkish Knight" and "Inception."

Hathaway thinks it is a large oversight that Oscar citizens haven't begun to apply swimsuit however that "it is more than likely only a topic of time" ahead of Nolan wins his Oscar. "I AM HOPING it occurs with this one," she mentioned.

Nolan's now not fretting over his Oscar prospects, regardless that. He is aware of it is a other more or less movie -- smaller, extra intimate drama -- that typically dominates on the awards. He is if truth be told reasonably happy at how his motion pictures have fared right through Oscar season.

"The academy's been extremely excellent to me and my films, and it'd be churlish of me to complain," Nolan stated. "Really, we have been venerated by the academy in additional varieties of other ways, and really importantly to me, Heath Ledger successful the most productive supporting-actor Oscar. Those are issues that imply so much to me."

Still, would it imply extra to win that directing Oscar himself?

"That can be terrific, however on the finish of the day, they owe Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock much more than me, you understand what I imply"? Nolan said, bringing up Hollywood greats who by no means gained the directing prize. "IT IS A BIT like, get in line."