They've been named: Lord of the Rings is tops with 11 nominations, including best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay. Lost in Translation is also up for best picture. That's a tough choice but I'd lean towards LOTR.
A surprise best actress nominee: Keisha Castle-Hughes, 13, who made Whale Rider such a great picture. Bravo!
I'd skip over anything to do with 21 Grams. But maybe you think differently.
The full list can be found on the BBC Oscar 2004 page.

It has become clear to me that the surface of Mars is not made up of sand or dust or frozen water crystals but is in fact Pillsbury frosting. "So smooth and creamy you can spread it with a paper knife."

Ohmigosh. Last night I found (don't ask me how) this crazy cool Japanese program called "LiFE with Photo Cinema X" that appears to possibly be built in Flash/Shockwave and allows you to mix your photos, music and text like a DJ/VJ.
The app is very simple to use, thankfully, as the program is not in English. Here's how it works: You can assign photos (3 banks of 20) to keys on the keyboard, the number keys are different transitions, and then "play" your multimedia in real-time into a finished piece that you can save out as HTML, a screensaver or a standalone program. There are 40 different transitions (4 x 10) to choose from when using photos, including the themes of Old Film, Stylish, Default and AppleStyles. There are 20 different text themes (2 x 10). It appears the best way to use LiFE is to play your photos first, then replay what you just did while playing your text over the photos and then save your creation.
Look at what I made in less than 10 minutes: Jeremy's LiFE.
I've emailed two different people inquiring about an English version. This should be bundled with Apple's iLife.

Hey, cool. My pals at CSA getting more distribution. Check out their really fine work and buy an image or two, eh?
Veer, which supplies creative types with a wide variety of digital images and clips for use in photography, illustration, and video, as well as unique typefaces, announced on Thursday that it is now the exclusive North American reseller of the CSA Archive, CSA Plastock, CSA Printstock, and CSA Snapstock rights-managed collections from CSA Images. The agreement adds approximately 15,000 to the ones available to Veer customers. [via MacCentral]

Swweeeeet! The iTunes Music Store just got custom RSS feeds that you can set up and generate yourself. Only want to see the new releases in World? Only the Just Added songs in Electronic? Easily done. Very cool.

My pal Craig over at neongreen.com wrote up a tutorial and some php code to grab your latest image from textamerica.com and store it on your own website. Nice!

"Jonathan Caouette has turned heads at the Sundance Film Festival with the most basic of tools: old home movies and a bargain-basement editing program."
Read the Wired News article about the "first" feature length movie made entirely with iMovie that showed up at Sundance, including some nice quotes from Gus Van Sant:
Van Sant described Tarnation as "amazingly original," and the kind of film he'd been waiting to see since the 1970s... "Filmmakers can afford to work now. No more excuses, or filmmakers' block, or procrastination. Either they start shooting, or they are waiting for the vanity crew, or they aren't filmmakers."
I decided last year my new motto was: stop talking and start doing. So why am I talking about it? To encourage others to do the same. I have plans that I intend to start in motion in just a few weeks... in the meantime, participate in WeeklyDV.com and go and rent "Day For Night" by Truffaut. Beautiful film about film.

So TW Cable shows up behind my house this morning and climbs up the pole in the alley and finally lifts my neighbor's cable line off the roof of my garage -- only three and a half months after they were supposed to do it. But then I hear a voice outside my kitchen window and see another cable guy. I go outside and inquire as to what the hell he's doing to my house. "Hey, what's going on here?!" He claims "We've got noise coming off your line so we're fixing it." I give him my incredulous look and say, "Oh, that interesting... considering WE DON'T HAVE CABLE!" He spat some chew, "You don't?" I reply back, "No, we sure don't." He queries me, "This isn't XX Street?" I'm exasperated but remain calm, "No, that's the gray house next door." Yeah, the one with that particular number on the front of the house and on the garage in big black numbers. He tells his partner the news via his walkie-talkie phone. "Well," he says, "if you do get cable, it'll be more ready for you." Yeah, right. I'm waiting for him to leave so I can rip that box off the side of my house and see what he was REALLY up to... (cue suspenseful spy music)

Another MacWorld, another Steve Jobs keynote presentation. Sure, new versions of iDVD, iPhoto, iMovie, Final Cut Express 2, new G5 Xserve and Raid, sleek new iPod minis (at least $50 overpriced in my opinion)... but the best and most exciting thing is called "GarageBand" and will be available on January 16th.
What is GarageBand? Well, a seemingly brilliant app that "turns your Mac into an anytime, anywhere recording studio packed with hundreds of instruments and a recording engineer or two for good measure." Looks wicked easy to use yet seems to be quite powerful. Like a mix of Soundtrack and ProTools LE. The supplied vintage guitar amps alone are probably reason enough to purchase! Very kiff! After watching the presentation I thought a price of $129 would be cheap. $99 would be giving it away. My jaw hit the floor when Steve announced it would be available with all the other four iApps (mentioned above) for only $49! Heck, at that price you can buy a couple copies to give away as presents. They'll sell millions.
Don't believe me? Check out the streaming video from the keynote at the link above and then fast forward to 1:08:34 and start watching as Steve Jobs and John Mayer demo GarageBand. You'll flip your lid.

Damn! Those cute little monkeys and their playful ways -- I can't ignore them!