While it does seem like quite an injustice, the ruling isn't all that surprising. Award Central is reporting that several motion picture scores have been disqualified from being considered for the Oscar for Best Original Score. In all cases, it's not a lack of quality, but rather an abundance of unoriginal music. The four films that will not be getting an Oscar love include Clint Mansell's haunting yet beautiful score for Black Swan, Carter Burwell's compositions for True Grit and the less prominent scores for both The Fighter and The Kids Are All Right. For details on why these scores have been disqualified from awards contention, keep reading below.
In the case of Black Swan and True Grit, they have both been excluded because they exist as "scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music." Black Swan is adapted from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and no matter how much creativity and beauty his score brought to the film, it's simply not "original" enough. The same can be said for True Grit which apparently bases most of its music on 19th century hymns and is therefore not sufficiently "original" as well. On the other end of the spectrum, apparently The King's Speech, which raised concerns because of prominent unoriginal classical-music excerpts, has been deemed eligible for the awards.
Meanwhile, both The Kids Are All Right (also composed by Burwell) and The Fighter (composed by Michael Brook) have been disqualified as scores that are "diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs." Since both of the film use various songs that make up more of a soundtrack than the motion picture score, these films apparently don't have enough music composed specifically for the film to be considered for an Oscar. With several Best Picture contenders' scores out of the running, it's open season for any other composers to get the award this year. Maybe Alexandre Desplat will get two nominations for both The King's Speech and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I.
