This year's Oscar race is becoming better contest than any other as I can remember. Here are my picks, not necesarily winner predictions, for Oscar 2004.

• Best Picture: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (It's really the whole triliogy that will win the prize, because the sums of three pictures are great than its parts.)
• Best Director: Peter Jackson (He co-wroted, directed this enormous endeavor to the breathtaking height in the modern Hollywood filmmaking. For that feat alone deserves an Oscar.)
• Best Actor: Bill Murray (He wasn't acting. He was simply there, lend his presence to the movie and his heart to everyone watching the picture.)
• Best Actress: Keisha Castle-Hughes (I'm a sucker for a brilliant young actor/actress.)
• Best Supporting Actor: Ken Watanabe (I haven't seen other candidates' films, but Ken overshadowed and overpowered Cruise to show how a memorable presence is created beyond good looks.)
• Best Supporting Actress: Holly Hunter (I simply adore her. Period.)
• Best Cinematography: City of God, Cesar Charlone (Sometime ingenuity triumps multi-million production value.)
• Best Editing: City of God
• Best Animated Feature: Finding Nemo (No contest here, but The Triplets of Belleville is equally beautiful.)
• Best Screenplay: Finding Nemo (Pixar storytellers have an edge over other great scripts in this field.)
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Mystic River, Brian Helgeland (THE script that gave the material to work with to this year's Oscar-nominated actors.)
• Visual Effects: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Simply Epic-Looking.)

I'm looking forward to next week's telecast of the Oscar.

I'm currently reworking Criminal Sphere for another round of entries for the upcoming screenplay contests. I rushed the writing and prematurely sent out the script to meet the deadlines last year... I was hoping that readers notice its potential rather than apparent lack of refinement of writings within the script. It met with the predictable result that got nowhere. (Sorry my baby.) I'm nursuing the script back to its strength as I think of more of the characters rather than plots after I mapped out all the "plot points." What is this movie about? What does the characters want? The questions got me thinking harder about its theme and I'm surprised to find new emerging theme in the story and the characters, albeit I've yet to work it in the script. The key is to express the theme and the desire into the script so that readers can "feel" it rather than "see" it.

I'm also brainstorming another feature-length screenplay set in post-unified Korea. (Written in Korean for Korean audience of course.) Amazingly enough, I have harder time writing creatively in Korean than English. That proves I've lived in America longer than I care to admit...

Currently reading,

• First Time Director by Gil Bettman. (Great book on aspiring first time director like myself.)
• Making Movies by Sidney Lumet.
• The Complete Film Production Handbook, 3rd Ed. by Eve Honthaner (For the upcoming production of my short film.)
• The Film Director's Intuition by Judith Weston
• Moviemakers' Master Class by Laurent Tirard
• When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story by Ralph Rosenblum, Robert Karen Ph.D.
• Start Your Own Business: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need by Rieva Lesonsky. (My bible and guide to start my own little production company)
• Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro 4 by Diana Weynand.

I hope to find some time to write reviews for these books on this space whenever I'm done with them.