The Daunting task of the dark campaign

So I just stumbled across this website the other day by chance. www.thedarkcampaign.com is the official website of the unofficial grassroots campaign dedicated to getting The Dark Knight a win for best picture at the 2009 academy awards. If you're like me you might be asking yourself how could the "votes" of tons of online campaigners hold any weight with the same committee who in 2007 handed out acting awards to people whose names most Americans couldn't even pronounce, let alone had ever heard of?

The academy awards in case you didn't know have very little to do with audiences as they do with the votes of elite members who have earned their spot in the snobbery.. I mean..sophistication of deciding who is the best of the best. The Dark Knight has the deck stacked against it already in that it is a comic book movie, and the city in which the awards take place, already named WALL.E the best movie of the year. I'm still not convinced it should be in the category of best 5 of the year, but I can at least appreciate the efforts of a few idealistic cinephiles out there who want to see oscar history. I would think that if the Academy wants to continue to have the annual celebration televised, they would do well to listen to the pleas of such fans. The last few years, the show has boasted some of the lowest viewer ratings in history. Last year was an all time low when the majority of the films nominated made very little impact on box office sales. Something tells me that if even if the show sunk as low as to have ABC drop the historic program, the Academy would still find a way to pat themselves on the back in private and still do the show.

Picture with me if you will, an oscar show with at least 3 of the best picture nominess being DK, WALL.E, and Benjamin Button. Right there you have a show that promises potential big star nominations and the celebration of movies that millions of people paid money to see. The Dark Knight may or may not be deserving of the nomination, but I have to admit that the mere watchability of a show like that definitely peaks my interest more than watching people glorify something like Soderbergh's 4 1/2 hour biopic Che.

Whether or not you loved the film, you should defintely check out thedarkcampaign.com Note some of the critics' quotes on the trailer and how ridiculous some of them sound. This alone might make you believe that the creators of the site may be shooting for the moon.