This year may have not been the greatest movie year in recent history, but it was a major success in one area: music scores. Between Hans Zimmer's work on Inception; Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for The Social Network; Daft Punk's memorizing beats in Tron: Legacy; Clint Mansell's tracks for Black Swan; and Carter Burwell's music for True Grit, the last few months have proven to be an excellent time to pick up some soundtracks. Sadly, however, the last two mentioned above won't have the opportunity to grasp Oscar gold.
Variety reports that the scores for both Black Swan and True Grit have been eliminated from competition at this year's Oscars. The reason behind the move is because neither Mansell's nor Burwell's music was wholly original, the former based on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and the latter based on 19th century protestant hymns. The Kids Are All Right and The Fighter have also been nixed because their respective soundtracks are largely filled with outside songs that dominate the score. On that same note, Alexandre Desplat's score for The King's Speech has been ruled eligible, despite certain scenes in the film containing excerpts from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (by this same standard, The Social Network is probably safe despite using Edvard Grieg's "In The Hall of the Mountain King").
It truly is a shame to see Black Swan and True Grit eliminated if not just because they are done so incredibly well - if you don't own both you really should. That said, I must also wonder where Inception fits into the mix. As revealed a few months ago, "Non, je ne regrette" by Edith Piaf , in addition to being the song used to prepare the dreamers for their "kick", was also used by Zimmer in the score, albeit very slowed down. Regardless, I don't envy Oscar voters who have to choose the best one of the year. It's not going to be an easy choice.
