LOS ANGELES, Feb 20, (RTRS): Voting for Sunday’s Oscars, the highest honors in the movie industry, closed on Tuesday evening after a big spending campaign by Hollywood studios and the first online balloting system in the 85-year history of the Academy Awards. More than 5,800 movie industry professionals who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were invited to vote in 24 Oscar categories, starting on Feb 8 and ended at 5 pm PST on Tuesday (0100 GMT On Wednesday). The results will be tabulated at a secret location by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, who deliver the envelopes with the winners’ names from backstage at the Feb 24 Oscars ceremony, televised live from Hollywood.

With the races for Best Picture, Director, Actress and Supporting Actor considered too close to call by awards pundits, movie studios have been blasting newspapers, radio, trade publications and television with promotions for their nominees. The Los Angeles Times estimated that Warner Bros, the studio behind “Argo,” and Walt Disney Co, which is distributing “Lincoln,” had spent about $10 million each in Oscar campaigns in recent weeks. The two movies are locked in a tight contest for the top Oscar prize – Best Picture. PricewaterhouseCoopers say there has never been a security breach in the secret voting in the 79 years it has worked with the Academy on the balloting process.

This year, the accounting firm faced another challenge – the introduction of online voting for the first time, alongside the option of traditional paper ballots mailed out to Academy members around the world. “It’s a very robust system with a number of security features,” Rick Rosas, who has worked on the Oscars with PricewaterhouseCoopers since 2001, told Reuters of the electronic method. He said more than half of the Academy’s members voted online. The online system was hit by glitches and complaints from some of the Academy’s members, most of whom are over 50 years old, when the system went live in December for Oscar nomination choices.

Problems
Some members reported problems with passwords and user names and voting for Oscar nominations was extended by 24 hours. The Academy later reported a high turnout of voters. The move to electronic voting is aimed at speeding up the Academy Awards process, especially for members who work or live overseas.
Steven Spielberg’s presidential drama “Lincoln” goes into Sunday’s Oscar ceremony with a leading 12 nominations, including Best Picture, followed by “Life of Pi” with 11, musical “Les Miserables” and comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” with eight apiece, and Iran hostage thriller “Argo” with seven. The upcoming Academy Awards show is the 85th, a significant anniversary that in past years might have brought a reunion of past winners, special film clips or some sort of recognition on the Oscar show. But this year, the number 85 has been quietly retired, and so has the phrase “Academy Awards.” Both disappeared from official AMPAS materials about three weeks ago. “We’re rebranding it,” Oscar show co-producer Neil Meron told TheWrap on Monday. “We’re not calling it ‘the 85th annual Academy Awards,’ which keeps it mired somewhat in a musty way. It’s called ‘The Oscars.’”

During TheWrap’s interview with Meron and his partner Craig Zadan, Meron said they were under the impression that the new approach would continue in the future. Academy spokeswoman Teni Melidonian confirmed that the change has happened for the upcoming show, but described it as the kind of typical adjustment in the ad campaign and overall message that takes place every year in consultation with the show’s producers and the network, ABC. “It is right for this show, but we could easily go back to using ‘Academy Awards’ next year,” she said. The majority of the show’s posters and advertising materials focus on host Seth MacFarlane and the phrase “The Oscars,” with no mention of how long the Academy has been hosting this shindig and no use of the phrase “Academy Awards.”

Phrase
And Academy press releases dealing with the upcoming show, which used to routinely mention the number, stopped doing so around the beginning of February. The last such AMPAS release appears to have come on Jan 29; since then, every release has found ways to avoid the phrase “85th Academy Awards.”
It’s hard to say that the Academy is completely turning its back on its history, given that this year’s show includes a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond movies and a tribute to movie musicals of the past decade. But it is consciously (if quietly) looking not to use a big round number when trying to woo viewers closer to the age of Quvenzhane Wallis (9) than Emmanuelle Riva (85), and trying to get less formal by making the show’s nickname its official name.

Meanwhile, Oscar nominees who don’t end up with a coveted gold statuette at the Academy Awards on Sunday won’t go home empty handed after all. Los Angeles-based marketing firm Distinctive Assets will be handing out its annual “Everyone Wins at the Oscars Nominee Gift Bag”, valued at more than $45,000, to the talented and well-dressed “losers,” the company said on Tuesday. Among the items in the gift bags, known as swag bags, are trips to Australia, Hawaii and Mexico, personal training sessions, hand-illustrated tennis shoes, appointments for injectable fillers and ‘portion-controlled’ dinnerware for those watching their figure, Distinctive Assets said in a statement. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars, stopped its practice of giving gift baskets to presenters and performers in 2007 after the practice came under closer scrutiny from US tax authorities.

Celebrities who receive gifts and free trips at awards shows are expected to declare them to the Inland Revenue Service as income and pay the appropriate taxes. The Distinctive Assets gift bag is not endorsed by the Academy but has been creating consolation goodie bags for 11 years now. The bags are delivered to the losing nominees to their homes directly or through their agents or publicists. This year’s “Not Everyone Wins....” swag bag also includes an under-the-counter water filtration system, acupuncture and aromatherapy sessions, a one-week stay at a fitness and weight-loss retreat, and a one-year membership to London’s Heathrow Airport’s private VIP service. Nominees’ children also benefit: they get to enroll in professional all-kid circus classes. The Academy Awards, the highest honors in the movie business, will be handed out a ceremony on Sunday in Hollywood.