Well, if one cue is from Deadwood and another (as per mousepod) from The Insider, I'd say Santaolallo's score for Babel is sufficiently diluted by his earlier compositions to be disqualified from Oscar competition.

If he had used Happy Birthday instead, would that have been enough to dilute it? That's been used in thousands of different places, but is 2 minutes of re-used music in a 120 minute score enough to disqualify it? If not, what's the dividing line? Obviously changing one note of a score isn't enough to be original and reusing 3 notes isn't enough to be not original. Is the pivotal-ness of the scene a factor or not?

In the end, it's a judgment call on the Academy's part. They obviously felt that one segment of recognizable music did not invalidate the entire 120 minutes as being a original work "as a whole". You obviously disagree and feel that the prominent use of the pre-existing music is enough to taint the whole. I've seen neither Deadwood nor Babel (nor The Insider), so I have no point of reference. But in terms of blatant rule violation, I don't see one as it's a subjective definition.


(ETA: The cue from The Insider is the same one that we're talking about. It's in all three)

That makes it even funnier.

Just one thing, tho. Film scores are not generally 120 minutes long.


And I don't mind if it's a judgment call. I just have my doubts (based on nothing) that any sort of consideration was made of non-original portions of this purported original score.

I guess I'm still peeved, years later, that the lone original song from Moulin Rouge ("Come What May") was disqualified from Oscar consideration merely because it was written for (but did not appear in) a different film.

To my mind, going by the same logic, sneaking two previously composed and media utilized music cues into a score is not fair game. As it turns out, the frelling Babel soundtrack CD has 36 tracks ... so I guess one could say that 10 minutes of recycled music is no real dilution.

I confess to being a little confused by there being 2 CDs and 36 seperate tracks on that soundtrack. Babel didn't strike me as that heavy on the score ... but I'm not willing to subject myself to it again just to find out. Given Mr. Santaolallo's reputation for recycling, I wouldn't be surprised if the Babel CD was really just a greatest hits album.

I've found the CD Single for sale on Amazon and Verve Records' site, but I haven't found a site that lets you listen to it easily without having to download tons of software etc.
I'll get you a copy when we meet each other irl.
:)

Here's the Amazon listing.

And heheheh, I didn't see GD's ETA before I posted. Yes, that makes it funnier ... though in an earlier post, I alluded to evidence that the cue had been used earlier than the two examples I posted.

Sheesh, at this rate, I'm surprised it wasn't in the Brokeback Mountain score. I wonder why not. No wonder €uro didn't find that score memorable. It didn't include the Santaolallo trademark!

Perhaps there's some Academy rule exemption for a music cue that a composer re-uses in 75% of his films.

Oh, wow. I just listened to these tracks. The Deadwood piece in question is actually the only bit of score from Babel that registered with me (and apparently the only one that registered with the professionals, too-- used at the climax, as well as so frequently in the trailers and the awards montages, etc.)

Sure, he's stealing from himself... but Tom points out that if he wrote it for Deadwood, in all likelihood it legally belongs to HBO and not to the composer himself.

Not to mention that, as the blogger Alex linked to suggests, if he stole two minutes of his own Brokeback score, that is 2/13ths of the original music from that movie. 15%. What a hack.

I've decided we should send a CD of the Babel score alternated with its matching Deadwood, Brokeback and Insider pieces to the LA Time "Envelope" reporter and see if we can smoke this out. Three different direct and lengthy lifts, in my opinion, is quite the diluted score.

ETA: the same clip in Insider? This is getting ridiculous.

Just doing a little more research - it seems that James Horner's score for Aliens (nominated in 1986) used cues cut for Star Trek II and III... will verify when I get home. I still think that this is more typical than one might imagine (not that it's an excuse).

...research continues... the Academy withdrew Nino Rota's nomination for the first Godfather movie when they realized he used cues from a previous work of his.

I seem to remember similarities between the "Han and Leia" section of the Empire score and parts of Raiders, too.