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Regardless of the fact that it’s already won the Critics Choice Award and the British Academy Award, Johnny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood score has been disqualified from Oscar consideration for Best Original Score. Rule 16 of the Oscar rulebook clearly states the exclusion of, and I quote, “scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music.”

So, you may ask, Why does that exclude There Will Be Blood? Well, Greenwood used bits of public domain pieces, as well as his own works from pre-existing projects (“Popcorn Superhet Receiver” was composed in 2006 during his residency at the BBC). The score also includes works by Estonian composer Arvo Part. Still…who cares?

A great point was made in the comments of this post on the Variety site, which has since been rendered hysterical by me; “Does the academy know that all the actors are also used before?” Touche, Rafael38. Cate Blanchett (who, I’ll admit, deserves her plethora of awards) is being nominated a second time for playing the same character. There is no rule against that? Of course not, because that would also be ridiculous.

And what about hip hop? If one of the tracks on 8 Mile had featured a sample, would it have been disqualified? Didn’t one of the tracks on 8 Mile feature a sample? Are we going to start disqualifying chord progressions under rule 764 (“Excessive use of C, G, E, F”)? Not to mention a foreign language film loop hole that has many film buffs in a tiff over two major disqualifications.

When will the Oscars (and Grammys!) throw away their dusty rule book? The best score of the year will not even be nominated. Not even considered. Awesome. Typical. I bet the dork at the Academy who pointed that out is that kid from your freshman math class that reminded the teacher everyday about collecting last night’s homework.