Hugh Jackman, who hosted the most recent Oscar show, has been invited to join the club. Last year’s acting nominees Anne Hathaway, Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson,
Melissa Leo and Michael Shannon also received a golden ticket, as did such newly minted Oscar holders as composer A.R. Rahman and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. There even was room for a number of members of Judd Apatow’s comedy posse: Michael Cera, James Franco, Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd. On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued invitations to 134 members of the film community to join the honorary body. There were a maximum 166 open slots to fill this year, but the branch committees endorsed fewer candidates than were proposed to them. Voting membership in the organization has held steady at just under 6,000 since 2003. The directors branch extended invites to Oscar winner Danny Boyle, stop-motion animation whiz Henry Selick and one-man film studio Tyler Perry, among others. Among the producers welcomed aboard are Paula Wagner, Cathy Konrad, James Lassiter and “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Christian Colson. Other names ranged from such executives as Steve Beeks, Joe Drake and Erik Feig to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, another member of the “Slumdog” crew, and visual effects supervisor Van Ling. New members will be welcomed into the Academy in September at an invitation-only reception at the Academy’s Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills. “These filmmakers have, over the course of their careers, captured the imagination of audiences around the world,” Academy president Sid Ganis said. “It’s this kind of talent and creativity that make up the Academy, and I welcome each of them to our ranks.”
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