Awards Daily have posted this very cool little table of domestic grosses for the movies expected to be in with a shout at Oscar nominations today…

As The Joker says, “it’s not about the money. It’s about sending a message”.

THE DARK KNIGHT sent a message to the rest of the world in 2008 that a comic book movie could be as good as every other genre. That artistically it could match up to the best drama’s, the best thriller’s, that it could be as smart with as deeply intriguing themes and characters as any other film made today. Not since THE LORD OF THE RINGS have we seen a massive blockbuster do anything of the same.

It’s an important film that history demands to remember with Oscar glory. It’s not that it’s the second biggest movie of all time and broke every single opening weekend record going. It’s already in history books for that. Heath Ledger too has cemented his Hannibal Lector type status into the echelons of infinite time.

But the Oscars are important. They are remembered.

TITANIC was a majorly popular release in the late 90’s, of course the biggest movie of all time and it still is despite Batman and The Joker’s efforts. That went home with every Oscar under the sun… THE DARK KNIGHT, I think you will all agree is working on an entirely different level.

I look a this year’s nominations and I admit that I probably find MILK slightly more deserving because I do think THE DARK KNIGHT does lose some of it’s way towards the end. I look at WALL*E and find my heart telling me that movie should win, finally bringing some recognition to the top working artists in the industry today. I look at THE WRESTLER and I see a movie that is so personal to me, made to a level I never thought I would see.

I see great movies from two of my favourite directors Sam Mendes (REVOLUTIONARY ROAD) and David Fincher (THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON), one which moved me to tears and the other which moved me on a higher emotional level. And then I see Clint Eastwood, a bit of a hero of a mine but whose last few movies I’ve always thought did better at the Oscars than they deserved and I feel exactly the same way about GRAN TORINO and THE CHANGELING.

I see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, FROST/NIXON and THE READER which I liked just fine but none would have come close to being nominated last year. Well maybe SLUMDOG but I just didn’t connect with it as much as most.

But I’ve said my bit. At this moment, I don’t really care who wins the Oscars. I just wanna see the right things nominated and THE DARK KNIGHT is surely one of the top five movies of the year, directed to a standard that is equally so and featuring a performance from Heath Ledger that craps on everything else we have seen in that category this year.

We await to see the next chapter in Oscar history.