http://sophisticatedhokum.com Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:04:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yesterday’s story about the AP’s typographical goof reminded me of something a pretty geeky Washington Post copy editor once did on purpose in coming up for a headline for a pretty obscure story. The article was about a South Korean high-wire championship that featured tightrope walkers performing their daring feats high ... http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/27/sometimes-what-looks-like-a-typo-is-not-a-typo/ While your word processor’s spell checker will help you catch a typo when your fingers are blazing away at the keyboard and you accidentally type too many letters, it will NOT correct words it recognizes that are sorely out of context. This is a lesson the Associated Press learned recently when ... http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/26/your-spell-checker-does-not-look-at-context/ "You only get one life so you might as well make it a happy one, and that's why I tend to just jump into things. I'm sort of a fearless idiot that way." -- Nia Vardalos http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/22/jump-right-in/ Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter behind Flashdance, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls, presents a tongue-in-cheek look at screenwriting in The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God! that is part autobiography and part Rough Guide. Eszterhas shares his tips about surviving Hollywood in acerbic, bite-sized paragraphs that unabashedly praise the people he ... http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/19/the-devils-guide-to-hollywood/ Screenwriter David Goyer discusses his attraction to darker themes and conflicted characters in The Dialogue: Learning from the Masters, a DVD I recently picked up given I really enjoyed his work on films such as Blade and the very creepy Dark City. While this series seems to be aimed at more ... http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/15/the-dialogue-with-david-goyer/ If you’re working on a screenplay or teleplay that features an evil genius as an antagonist, you might want to visit Peter Anspach’s Evil Overlord Inc. for a few tips that will give your villain a fighting chance, and bust some common clichés in the process. Anspach’s hilarious list – which ... http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/12/i-will-not-interrogate-my-enemies-in-the-inner-sanctum/ I love using my MacBook Pro while working outdoors, but its underside does get hot sometimes, especially when the outside temperature peaks. As such, I have to always make sure to keep it raised up a bit, in order to keep it cool. Normally, I use Rain Design’s wonderful iLap at ... http://sophisticatedhokum.com/2008/08/08/cool-your-laptop-with-a-baking-rack/