Short Stories

Toy Story 3 has received rave reviews across the board. Curious, a couple of us here at WonderHowTo went to see it last night. We found it to be decent. Not fabulous. The opening was exhilarating. Full of action and humor and a thoroughly dynamic use of 3D, but the rest of the ...more

Sometimes I forget that I'm also a fiction writer, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share one of my stories with you. I wrote this piece awhile ago for an anthology that never came together and I'm tired of just sitting on it. It's one of the more odd stories ...more

For those of you unfamiliar with Cometbus, I urge you to check out one of the many issues released since 1981 by Mr. Aaron Elliott... better known to his friends (and foes) as "Aaron Cometbus". Aaron Elliott started writing punk fanzines in 1981 in Berkeley with Operation Ivy ...more

I have been writing since I was a little boy. I remember watching South Park at age 9 and writing my own episodes. Aside from some curse words and sexual humor that you don't expect from a nine year old, there really was not much there. In middle school I used to write short s ...more

Shadows of the Dammed (360/PS3) is a polarizing game. It's not shy of being crass and crude. Go ahead and judge the game by the following examples (click to enlarge): The game is a giant penis joke. This is an official trailer for the game.. Now, with what you have seen, choos ...more

Highlight text, tap "Copy," open the app to paste the text into, long-press or double-tap where you want it, and hit "Paste." That's probably what you do when you need to copy text from one location to paste into another on your iPhone. It's a tried-and-true method, but there' ...more

In our media-enriched world, past and present, SCRABBLE has made a name for itself, whether deliberately, subconsciously, or influentially. You may have a read a book that had the popular word game within a chapter, watched a movie that showed your favorite characters bringing ...more

Like any good video game these days, controversy is a must, and that's exactly what Homefront provides. It's a good old-fashioned, controversial hot potato—isn't that the way war always is? It plays out like this: North Korea faces sanctions from the United Nations on nuclea ...more

Why the Love? Every one has a reason for loving something. Mine was that it was the only thing I had. That one sure thing. I loved it because I had nothing, and it cost me nothing. At times I had no idea what was going to happen to me, or where I was going to be. The shore is ...more

Introduction Halo: Reach is Bungie's latest and final addition to the franchise. Microsoft has claimed the title and from now on 343 Industries will be working on the Halo franchise. In my opinion, Bungie's last game is the best out of all of them. These are some tactics and ...more

First off, don't be frustrated. YOU CAN DO IT! Contrary to the message in the image above, it's NOT over. It's just beginning. And when it comes to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, the old cliche does apply: practice makes perfect. I've read quite a few books and ...more

Splitscreen: A Love Story is an elegant short shot entirely on the Nokia N8 mobile phone, created by director JW Griffiths and director of photography Christopher Moon. The cleverly constructed splitscreen film was selected as the official winner of Vimeo's Nokia Shorts 2011 c ...more

The full 30 minute short film by John Hillcoat that was shown on TV. From the description: Red Dead Redemption: The Man from Blackwater The director of The Road and The Proposition, John Hillcoat, brings you an entirely digital Western short film. It uses Rockstar's rich ope ...more

We Care About This: Oscar Noms Are Out!! Best picture: Black Swan The Fighter Inception The Kids Are All Right The King’s Speech 127 Hours The Social Network Toy Story 3 True Grit Winter’s Bone Actress Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole Jennife ...more

ANIMATED FEATURE: Thanks to Tom Berger for another animated movie review! Toy Story 3 finishes off the franchise that was started 15 years ago by Pixar's first feature length film, Toy Story. It's an unsurprisingly fitting end to a great series of films, maintaining all of t ...more

Yeah it's... that's a good movie there Thanks to Tom Berger for another animated movie review! Toy Story 3 finishes off the franchise that was started 15 years ago by Pixar's first feature length film, Toy Story. It's an unsurprisingly fitting end to a great series of films, ...more

The Job Board is a weekly entry of the most ridiculous Cinematography related jobs posted online. Interviewing DP's for Docu-short (SCV) We are putting together a short documentary about Cinematographers who get jobs on craigslist. we'd like to interview a few people and get ...more

For as long as I've loved SCRABBLE, I can't believe I've never come across this before. "CRAZIEST" - A short story by Liz Dubelman about words and numbers as a religion (think Pi), about SCRABBLE being the oracle, about her quest for the "triple-triple". This spoke words to m ...more

This short film was shot entirely on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR. It's called The Last 3 Minutes and was directed by Po Chan, and shot by cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC. The main character is a janitor, whose life is kind of mundane. At least, that's what it seems like, ...more

I'll keep this short and sweet, as the game is online, loads quickly, it's free, and easy to play: it's quicker to play it than describe it: EnterTheStory.com The game is updated EVERY DAY, with a new story every week. Fir Dorian Gray, click on "more books" or "change." See w ...more

WonderHowTo user lex lugo of Bootleg Entertainment posted this fun spoof on musical classic Westside Story to the Canon 7D World forum. The short starts off with some pretty (amazingly) goofy dance-offs; stay tuned 'til the end if you dig 2D violence. Shot with a 50mm II lens ...more

Zack Snyder's worst film, hands down. Watch it if you like your movies a little short on story, acting, logic, etc. Not even the cool action sequences can redeem it. Watch some vintage Gilliam instead.

Long story short, this is a mod by Xilver, who once upon a time did a spell mod called Midas Magic: Spells of Aurum, for TES Oblivion. Well, now he made one for TES Skyrim. Essentially this adds a bunch of new spells in Skyrim. It has some pretty awesome spells already finish ...more

The Standing Stones in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are wonderful little additions to the game. Basically, they give your character modified attributes, or special abilities to give you the upper hand in the game. For example, if you activate The Mage Stone, you'll learn all of ...more

L.A. Noire is the newest Rockstar (GTA4, Red Dead Redemption) game created by Team Bondi ( The Getaway). The game is set in the late 1940’s in Los Angeles. The main character, Phelps, is a war veteran rising through the ranks from police officer to detective. The game is prese ...more

WonderHowTo is pleased to introduce Yumi Sakugawa, who first graced our front page last week when featured in the David Lynch meditation post. Yumi is an artist and illustrator currently working on a 100-page graphic short story collection, and she's officially joined the Wond ...more

This may feel like a Nike ad (and I suppose technically it is an ad), but it's also a based-on-a-true-story-hollywood-motion-picture waiting to happen... This inspiring short film is part of an ad campaign series called Make THE Difference for the TMB Bank, but it's also a tru ...more

Zeiss recently debuted their Compact Prime Lens set at NAB.  The best part: no mount modifications or adapters necessary!  Zacuto has done one better with their new DSLR Baseplate system.  Previous rigs had unwanted play when using the follow focus.  "Zacuto’s new DSLR Basepla ...more

Submit The Rattling Wall is accepting sophisticated short fiction, travel essays, and poetry submissions for Issue 4 until April 1, 2012. The literary journal accepts simultaneous submissions, but asks to be contacted immediately if work that a writer has submitted for review ...more

If you're not familiar with the animations of Jan Švankmajer, you're in for quite a trip. The Czech artist and filmmaker is known for his metaphorical, captivatingly surreal stop-motion and claymation films, and is God to many (including talents such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilli ...more

APOLOGUE n pl. -S an allegory 61 points (11 points without the bingo) An apologue (or apolog) is an allegorical short story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning or principle, typically a moral or political one. It's very similar to a fable, bu ...more

Not being much of a video game buff, I haven't been in the loop when it comes to the enormously popular game Red Dead Redemption. Apparently the game is completely dominant in video game sales. Since it's May 18 release, over 5 million units have sold, making it the most popul ...more

I recently shot a short film for director Keegan Uhl for Canon’s Beyond the Still contest and our film “The Beach” won first place. We had a lot of fantastic support getting the film done, and I’m really glad to see people liked what we put together. Keegan put in a ton of wor ...more

First Ever User-Generated HD Contest Vimeo and Canon have launched this wonderful contest for filmmakers shooting on Canon's EOS 7D DSLR. Here's Canon's official description of the contest: The Story Beyond The Still It's the first ever user-generated HD Video Contest wher ...more

Immigration Laws United States Citizenship Citizens of The United States are able to enjoy every benefit that the U.S. has to offer to the fullest. But if you are not a citizen then it is a different story. A person can become a U.S. citizen through birth or through a proce ...more

Words that will help you with your writing Alliteration - The repetition of aconsonant sound. This si important because it makes words stand out, and because it can help set the mood for something. Assonance - The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in neighborin ...more

After a decent amount of downtime, one of the best indie game sites on the internet has finally relaunched! PixelProspector is a one-man gaming blog and YouTube channel devoted to the weird and beautiful world of indie games. In the first half of 2010, it received a huge boost ...more

Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago ...more

Most of the oddest games in the world are free web games. They may not always be well made, but low budgets (and consequently low risk) allow them to be as weird as they fancy. That's a big part of why they are so interesting. Prime examples such as Don't Take It Personally, B ...more

Were you horrified when Gwyneth Paltrow's head ended up in a box in Se7en? Do you share Harrison Ford's opinion that Han Solo should have died in Return of the Jedi? Think Kurt Russell could have handled aliens better in The Thing? Well, sorry—you're out of luck. There's nothi ...more

If you're interested in nabbing superhero memory strength, the secret behind training your brain is not necessarily what you might expect. Your standard G-rated brain strengthening exercises range from crossword puzzles to Sudoku to calculating fairly simple math problems to i ...more

Everybody loves Oprah Winfrey. Maybe it's because of her philanthropy. Maybe it's her onscreen personality. Maybe it's the fact that it was a rags to riches story. Or maybe it's because she likes SCRABBLE... The iPad SCRABBLE App by Electronic Arts had made it onto Oprah's Ul ...more

Like a great acting performance, making a really good game is all about choices. While creating or playing a game, those involved have to constantly make small choices that will affect the outcome, either positively or negatively. And the only thing worse than choosing wrongly ...more

Well, why aren't you? They're all the rage in pop culture right now, what with The Avengers blowing away audiences and the finale to the Batman trilogy coming out soon. Not to mention that Marvel is remaking Spider-Man! The original is only like, what, less than ten years old? ...more

I read Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God on the recommendation of a philosophical friend and before I had finished it I was adding Keller’s The Prodigal God to my list of books to read. Keller has a gift for succinct and wise writing. I believe he truly has his finger on whe ...more

Author's Note: Hi there, some of you may know but most of you probably won't. My name is Semeria and I am an author on the rising. I plan to be posting one of my novels on this website for people to read. Comment and let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy the story. ...more

Since the launch of Edit on a Dime several weeks ago, I’ve been putting a variety of automatic video editing apps though their paces. One of the first tested was Magisto, a web-based app that’s directly accessed through YouTube, which I enjoyed, but found some obvious problems ...more

Carpe Fulgur translates to something along the lines of "Seize the Lightning" in Latin. Sometimes that is enacted with golf clubs by idiots. But the three intrepid indie video game localizers who work under that name are trying to do it the right way: metaphorically. They are ...more

World of Warcraft has been on top of the world for seven years. No other MMO has come close to challenging its dominance of the genre, and it has generated billions of dollars for Blizzard. They have spent a lot of money adding more and more content, to the extent where the fu ...more

Steam has been a game-changer in the PC indie game market over the last eight years, making smaller games available to millions of users at lower prices than ever before. And few times in those eight years have there been as much indie awesomeness on sale for as little money a ...more

This is a tool I wouldn't want to do without in my kitchen. It's full name is the Jaccard Super Tendermatic Meat Tenderizer but if you refer to the "Jaccard", most food folks will know what you are talking about. Jaccard makes lots of food prep products but this is probably th ...more

Have you ever been in the situation where someone whose taste in books you respect and generally agree with recommends a book that you have seen from time to time and you’ve always thought it looked just “Meh” and then you finally read War Dances which is by the same author an ...more

With the mass arrests of 25 anons in Europe and South America, and the rumors of an FBI sweep on the east coast of America floating around, times look dicey for hackers. Over the past few days, a lot of questions have been posed to me about removing sensitive data from hard dr ...more