Revoke Gustavo Santaolalla's Oscar for Best Orginal Score!!!
As I've alleged before in these very pages, dear readers, Gustavo's score for
Babel was
not entirely original! In fact, one vital music queue - - underscoring such an important plot point that it was used as
overscore (
all other sound muted) - - was lifted directly from his score for an episode of
Deadwood three years earlier.
I didn't want to make a big deal of it before .... but now the charletan has won an Oscar for his self-plagerism -- and action must be taken! Now I have the proof, ladies and gentlemen ... and I present Exhibit A and B for your perusal.
First up, a 2003 cue from the HBO original series
Deadwood, heard after the dastardly murder of Wild Bill Hickock by the Coward McCall.
Then, Santaolallo's cue from the 2006 film
Babel, for which he won the Oscar under false pretenses. Cate Blanchette is finally med-evacutated by helicopter from a poor Moroccon village after being accidentally shot by two boys. The scene is so vital that, till the last part of the cue, all sound effects of the helicopter and rescue efforts were muted ... so the recycled music could be heard above the din ... the better to fool unsuspecting Academy voters.
The cues are
identical. In fact, the later-used cue is about a minute longer than the earlier one ... leading me to suspect that both instances may have been recycled by an even earlier composition by Mr. Santaolallo! Oh, the shame!
If, after listening*, you are convinced that a great injustice has been done, write to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to express your outrage.
*
with apologies for any inconvenience, simply enter the 3-letter anti-spambot code, click the Download button, wait for the countdown, and click Download again.
It's a sad, sad day for the Academy, dear friends.
