Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK
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LA Weekly JANUARY 8, 2010 - by Gustavo Turner

BRIAN ENO HAS PLENTY OF TIME FOR COLDPLAY BUT NO TIME FOR OSCAR PAPERWORK

We fess up to not having paid much attention to the current film The Lovely Bones, a remake of 1990's Ghost with the Patrick Swayze part played by a prepubescent girl and the Demi Moore part played by Marky Mark. Thus, we were completely taken by surprise when we realized that it features a score by none other than Brian Eno!

The way we found this out is because a couple of days ago it was reported by several news outlets that many high-profile soundtracks from last year were deemed ineligible for Oscar competition. The two most glaring examples given of the Academy's "snubs" were Karen O's score for Spike Jonze's hipsterastic Where The Wild Things Are and Brian Eno's score for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.

While the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer was disqualified for having done her soundtrack in collaboration with Carter Burwell (Academy stupid rule #4080: scores "assembled from the music of more than one composer shall not be eligible"), the music for The Lovely Bones was removed from competition because Eno had sampled some of his own previously released work when he put it together (Academy stupid rule #4081: soundtracks are something John Williams and Randy Newman do - anyone more innovative, original, who might (gasp!) use fucking SAMPLES = not kosher!).

Now, Eno could have appealed this (we'd have loved to read an Eno essay on the subject of scoring and sampling!), but reportedly he "simply felt that he didn't have time to submit the required paperwork and submit to the type of publicity campaign necessary."

C'mon Brian! Don't you realize that an Oscar nomination could lead to all kind of lucrative production assignments? Did you look at the deck today and the Oblique Strategy you pulled out said "Screw paperwork"? Can't you take a minute from your busy schedule trying to record scent to fill up some forms? Don't you have an intern (if you don't, please contact Gustavo Turner c/o West Coast Sound)?

In any case - we just missed our chance of watching a surreal Oscar production number starring Hugh Jackman doing a Debbie Allen choreography to some angular pastoral ambient. Thanks, Brian. Thanks so much.


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