Academy sez 'Brokeback' score is "Fabulous!!"

Gustavo Santaolalla's sparse, guitar-driven score for Brokeback Mountain topped major efforts from John Williams and others to win the "Best Original Score" at last night's Academy Awards.

Long considered the favorite by pundits, Santaolalla's score benefited from the hype around the film.

The real music story of the night was the infuriating muzak burbling behind winner's acceptance speeches. The producers of the show have made some notoriously bad decisions in the past, on average injecting one bad idea into the show each year. Anyone Glenn Close and Peter Coyote wearing headsets and sitting back stage, feeding us facts and figures? Or how about winners -- in what the Academy considered less desirable categories -- accepting their awards in their seats? The idea of underscoring these speeches with bottom-barrel drivel has to top all of these past blunders.

Sadly, the music in the plentiful montages was also dull. I apologize to all of the Golden-agers out there (as that's where most of last night's music was sourced from), but no "Death Montage" has been as touching as when Mark McKenzie's overture from Dr. Jeckyl and Mrs. Hyde was used for the 1997 awards.