LOS ANGELES - It looked like a glaring snub when Jonny Greenwood's music for "There Will Be Blood" wasn't among the five Academy Award nominees for best original score.
Turns out it wasn't eligible -- because it wasn't entirely original.
Much of the searing music from the Radiohead guitarist had appeared elsewhere previously, said Charles Bernstein, chairman of the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which chooses the nominees.
"The Oscar is given for the best original score -- 'original' meaning written for the picture -- and the majority of the music in `There Will Be Blood' was not eligible because it was not written for the picture," Bernstein said Wednesday.
Some of the score came from a performance Greenwood had done for the BBC, titled "Popcorn Superhet Receiver." Some of it came from Estonian composer Arvo Part; still other parts came from a Brahms violin concerto.
Paul Thomas Anderson's dramatic oil saga received eight Academy Award nominations Tuesday -- tying it for the most with "No Country for Old Men" -- including best picture, best director, best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and best adapted screenplay. Had Greenwood's score been nominated, it would have given "There Will Be Blood" the most nominations, a promotional boon to the studio.
Paramount Vantage, which released the film, did not have an immediate comment.
The five films whose scores were nominated are: "Atonement," Dario Marianelli; "The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias; "Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard; "Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino; and "3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami.
The Oscars are scheduled to be presented Feb. 24. Whether the ceremony itself will take place, and in what form, is still in question because of the ongoing writers strike.
