Okay, so you’re going over your Oscar nominations this morning, get to best score and notice that Jonny Greenwood’s compositions for There Will Be Blood didn’t rate a mention. “What?!!” you cry. “This is an outrage!! Surely this is old Hollywood’s payback and a warning to upstarts like Radiohead who do scary things like ask consumers to pay what they want for their product! We’ll show them who’s in charge!”
Well, not quite. Variety reports that one of the Academy’s rules for eligibility prohibits “scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music.” The Blood score is made up of approximately 35 minutes of music composed directly for the film and 46 minutes of pre-existing work. These include selections from composer Arvo Part’s works, some selections that are in the public domain, such as a Brahms piece, and a few snippets of another Greenwood composition, “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” which had a London premiere in 2006.
Greenwood’s not the only one left out–the Enchanted and Into the Wild scores didn’t rate because they were predominately songs. The main gripe for Paramount Vantage, Blood producers (wow, that sounds…icky), is that although they were alerted to the Wild situation far in advance, they weren’t given the decision on Blood until the last minute, when it was too late to appeal. Don’t worry, Paramount, your little movie did just fine on Oscar nomination day!
