A.R. Rahman to vote at Oscars?

India’s music maestro A.R. Rahman and four other Oscar winners associated with the Academy award phenomenon Slumdog Millionaire, have been invited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to join its roster of voting members.

Rahman has been recognized for his music in Slumdog Millionaire and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, while director Danny Boyle is in the limelight for Sunshine also. Besides Slumdog Millionaire, producer Christian Colson has become famous with The Descent, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle for The Last King of Scotland and film editor Chris Dickens chosen for Shaun of the Dead.

They are among 134 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures. “These filmmakers have, over the course of their careers, captured the imagination of audiences around the world,” said Academy President Sid Ganis in an announcement from Beverly Hills, California. “It’s this kind of talent and creativity that make up the Academy, and I welcome each of them to our ranks.”

New members will be welcomed into the Academy at an invitation-only reception at the Academy’s Fairbanks Centre for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills in September. The Academy’s membership would have allowed a maximum of 166 new members in 2009, but as in the previous years, several branch committees endorsed fewer candidates than were proposed to them. Voting membership in the organization is now steady at just under 6,000 members since 2003.