He won the Golden Globe, and now Trent Reznor — along with co-writer Atticus Ross — have an Oscar for their mood-setting Social Network score. Once again, it was strange to see Reznor up on stage, but he and Ross both looked and sounded like your regular old, very humble Oscar winners (and, surprisingly, another winner, The Fighter‘s Melissa Leo and not Reznor, dropped the night’s only f-bomb). Reznor’s wife Mariqueen Maandig was with him at the show. Watch Ross and Reznor’s acceptance speech below:

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The show’s producers said none of the nominees were invited to sing at the March 7 awards ceremony. Randy Newman’s totally wry and bemused about this. More at EW, including a clip of Elliott Smith’s memorable, jarring performance at the ’98 Oscars.

Finally, the Academy seems prepared to recognize that guy. Check the full list of noms over here.

Karen has a Golden Globe nom, but her WTWTA work has been snubbed from Best Original Score Oscar contention, likely for its “predominant use of songs.” As for Eno’s The Lovely Bones? He just couldn’t be bothered with the publicity campaign. (via 24bit)

Videogum liveblogged and livetweeted the Academy Awards last night, including the red carpet pre-show and Barbara Walters special, and Gabe did not kill himself. Success! Slumdog Millionaire won eight statues, including Best Picture and Best Original Song for A.R. Rahman’s “Jai Ho,” which beat out the M.I.A-assisted “O Saya” from the same film and WALL-E theme “Down To Earth” which John Legend sang in the ceremony (so unnatural, Peter Gabriel). Beyoncé did a cheesy song-and-dance with host Hugh Jackman — his solo opening number was just a little less — and the kids from High School Musical and Mamma Mia!. Queen Latifah sang with live Auto-Tune during the Dead People Montage so the memories of Charlton Heston and Paul Newman wouldn’t have to compete for applause. And Penélope Cruz, Heath Ledger, Kate Winslet, and Sean Penn took the acting awards. Can’t wait for Slumdog 2.

The self-proclaimed “old fart” had agreed to perform his award-nominated Wall-E song “Down To Earth” until he was told he’d have to cut it to one-minute and fit into an Oscar-song medley. Songwriters “work bloody hard and deserve (a bigger part in the ceremony),” he stated. We respect his protest, but Videogum‘s liveblog will proceed as scheduled. Somebody needs to make all the Harvey Weinstein jokes. It may as well be us. (via Variety)

Fan favorite Slumdog Millionaire has 2/3 of the song nominations, Peter Gabriel’s WALL-E tune the other third. M.I.A. doesn’t get a direct nod, outside of releasing the soundtrack on her imprint. And Golden Globe winner the Boss must be pissed. As far as scores, Slumdog and WALL-E are joined by three other films that had music in them. Read the nominee lists here.

Last night’s Academy Awards was probably the most exciting one I have ever seen, which doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the most boring thing I’ve ever seen, but it was less boring than how boring the other ones were. There were two good movies that I wanted to win prizes (that’s what I consider the most prestigious industry accolade given out by the American movie industry, “a prize”), and there was one movie that I really didn’t want to win any of the prizes. Sound familiar?

Won’t you join me for a journey into Trying Too Hard Metaphorland?

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As far as predicting Best Song awards go, there’s little conventional wisdom to rely on aside from Randy Newman probably being nominated, and a song you probably don’t care about winning. Not so at all this year; no Randy Newman, and a song we’re not entirely apathetic about actually won. Really there was no contest: nothing against the ear droppings from Enchanted, et al, but when a tune provides the central axis for an entire narrative and captures a film’s overall message as did Once‘s “Falling Slowly,” it shouldn’t even be a question. Thankfully, it wasn’t. The Frames’ Glen Hansard and girlfriend, Once co-star, and singing partner Marketa Irglóva took home the gold, and their acceptance speech(es) provided a night highlight. Glen delivered some touching words, and a sour note in Oscar history was avoided when Jon Stewart brought Marketa back out, after commercial break, to make right the orchestra’s ill-timed acceptance speech exit music. She says some nice things about independent musicians. Very awwww.

Soon thereafter the award was given for best soundtrack. If only Jonny Greenwood had been eligible, we could’ve had ourselves a pretty Gummy run at the Oscars for a few minutes. Still, that stretch was amongst the night’s highlights largely for Jon Stewart’s reactive wit; couldn’t find a YouTube that captured it (and unfortunately edited out of the one above), but after Glen’s moving and humble speech Stewart clapped, waited, and delivered: “Wow. That guy is so arrogant.”

Glen and Marketa weren’t the only Europeans winning big last night. Actually, it was practically only Europeans winning big last night: Daniel Day Lewis, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard (playing Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose), and Tilda Swinton, marking the first and only time since like the ’50s when all four major acting awards were taken by people with cooler accents than us. After the jump, last night’s performance of “Falling Slowly” as well as a few words from fellow Oscar winner Diablo Cody.

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Our look into Jonny Greenwood’s odds at winning the Oscar started by presciently realizing, “first he’ll have to get nominated.” Of course we figured he was a shoo-in, and of course we were wrong. Variety pissed all over Jonny’s hopes yesterday by revealing his “original score for There Will Be Blood has been ruled ineligible by the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences” because consideration “excludes ‘scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music.’” (Greenwood’s score contains 35 minutes of new stuff and 46 minutes of pre-existing material, including some public domain works by Brahms and portions of his 2006 piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver. Silly Jonny.) Variety also mentioned Enchanted and Into The Wild weren’t eligible due to “predominant use of songs.” Jonny’s just gonna have to keep himself warm with that BAFTA nom.

So Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and obviously sort of anticlimactic on the music side (but damn, we have some serious movie watching to do). Notably, Into The Wild‘s “Guaranteed” got snubbed from Best Song, completing the EdVed shutout (there’s always that Golden Globe, EdVed). For good reason, though — the academy had to make sure to nominate three songs from Enchanted. Well, at least now you know which song you’ll be rooting for on that glorious, writer-picketed night:

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