Best Unoriginal Score

In a pair of posts on the New Yorker website, Sasha Frere-Jones and I attempt to make sense of the nominations for Best Original Score in this year's Oscars. In particular, we address the disqualifying of Cliff Martinez's music for Drive. We both want to know: if Martinez did not qualify, why was a nomination given to The Artist, whose climactic scene is driven by Bernard Herrmann's celebrated score for Vertigo? It seems to us that the rules are being applied in a blatantly inconsistent manner.