Oscar voters face difficult task in choosing winners

LOS ANGELES

Once again this year, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are subject to all sorts of lobbying by Oscar nominees looking to influence their votes.

But these folks are all film professionals who like to make up their own minds.

Oscar is getting ready for his close-up and his big show will be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world. But only an elite few are invited to join the "Academy" and judge which films are most worthy.

"The first thing I do is I look at the ballot to make sure that I've seen everything," said Bob Iger, Disney CEO.

Iger is one of many familiar names who got a vote in the Oscars to sound off on the difficulty in choosing a winner.

"When you vote for the Oscars, how do you do it? Seriously," Robert Redford said.

"It's really frightening because sometimes you just, your stomach rumbles because you just, you just love two performances," Kim Basinger said.

Imagine trying to choose between Cate Blanchett in "Blue Jasmine" and Sandra Bullock in "Gravity."

"I judge by how a performance connects to me emotionally, and that's always very important to me," Glenn Close said.

There are roughly 6,000 academy members eligible to vote, which is a relatively small group, given the big impact of their decisions.

The membership is divided into branches, one for each craft of filmmaking. The largest, with more than 1100 voters, is the actor's branch.

"I just try and honestly think about the films that move me the most and the performances that resonated with me personally, emotionally in some way," Jonah Hill said.


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