Last week, when the Academy upped the number of Best Picture nominations to ten, we noted that the move was still unlikely to increase the chances of non-depressing, crowd-pleasing movies being honored unless it came with a radical overhaul of AMPAS’s famously snobby admissions policy. Turns out, it did not. Variety today has the names of the artists and executives invited to join as voting members in 2009, and since there are only 134 of them, we don’t expect this to move the needle much (the overall membership is around 6,000). Among the famous invitees are stars who either hosted, won trophies, or helped out at last year’s Oscar ceremony — Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Dustin Lance Black, and Danny Boyle among them. How this will affect the awards is impossible to say, though we’re pretty sure Jackman will vote for Nine.
AMPAS invites 134 to join ranks [Variety]