P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood is up for a total of 8 Oscars next weekend, including Best Picture. However, Jonny Greenwood's music, taken largely from Popcorn Superhet Receiver, was snubbed for Best Score, apparently because the film includes too much pre-existing music. Frankly, the Academy really effed this one up: here's one of the leading rock stars of his generation offering up a score that provides a powerful corrollary to Upton Sinclair's story while standing on its own as complex, challenging music. Still, Greenwood may have the last laugh: even without an Oscar nod, I bet we'll be hearing a lot of the TWBB score Sunday night...

As for that pre-existing music, I just saw the film for the first time tonight, and was surprised to encounter the cheery finale from Brahms' Violin Concerto, which Anderson makes healthy use of throughout. Without totally giving it away for those who haven't yet seen the film, it is perhaps the most disturbing appropriation of a familiar piece of music since Kubrick's use of Beethoven in A Clockwork Orange. Definitely worth seeing.