The Academy’s petty disqualification of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s score for “The Dark Knight” from Oscar contention has already caused much gnashing of teeth on these pages, so here’s something to compound the embarrassment.
It seems the Grammy voters are rather less fussy. Zimmer and Howard’s work was nominated yesterday in the category of (deep breath now) Best Score Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media. (Still with me? Good.)
And hey, look who joins them on the list: none other than Jonny Greenwood for “There Will Be Blood,” who of course won last year’s Oscar because the work was simply too groundbreaking to be ignored. Oh right, except he didn’t, because he was disqualified. Sensing a pattern here?
We shouldn’t be surprised by now that a voting body unrelated to the field of film should exhibit more common sense than AMPAS’ music blue-hairs, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
Joining Greenwood, Zimmer and Howard on the list are three more 2008 contenders, Thomas Newman for “WALL-E,” Ramin Djawadi (surprise!) for “Iron Man” and John Williams (yawn) for “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”