Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

Movie Review: Iron Man

I’ll admit that my expectations were set very low when I finally went to see Iron Man this past weekend. And perhaps this was the reason why the film was able to exceed all of my expectations.  It certainly can be added to the list of very enjoyable comic book adaptations, and most of that credit goes to the wonderful acting by Robert Downey, Jr.

I’ll openly admit that my knowledge of Iron Man canon is minimal at best (I’m more of a Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman and Hellboy fan), but I know enough that the film did a more than passable job of condensing over 40 years of Iron Man lore in a way that is pleasing to both comic book and non-comic book fans.

Now back to Mr. Jr’s acting.  Robert Downey’s portrayal of playboy/inventor Tony Stark was, aside from the lovely effects by ILM, the high point of the film.  This role could have very easily been turned into another brooding Bruce Wayne/Batman- like character—both have similar traits: orphaned, very intelligent, non-super powered, inventor billionaires turned crime fighters– but Robert Downey made this character his own, and I’m very thankful for it.  

The scenes I enjoyed the most were those in which Tony is fine tuning his suit and figuring everything out through trial and error (usually with comedic results). This adds a great human element to the story, even a super genius like Tony Stark makes mistakes—but he learns from them and keeps going.  When he finally finishes his Iron Man suit, the audience shares Tony’s feeling of accomplishment and is excited to see what the suit can do.

The first act of the film drags a bit, especially while Tony is held captive in Afghanistan, but after that things kick into high gear.  The special effects are great and look very believable, I found myself forgetting at times that the Iron Man on screen was just computer generated.  I love the shots where we see what Tony is ‘seeing’ through his suit’s heads up display, those were very detailed and great eye candy.

I really enjoyed that they didn’t turn this into some kind of love story and just focused on building the romantic tension between Tony and his assistant (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) Pepper Potts.  

Iron Man was an enjoyable kick off to what will surely be a fun summer movie season and hopefully things just keep getting better.

Oh and make sure to stick around after the credits for an extra scene. It is worth the wait.

I did my first ever submission to icanhascheezburger.com today. It stars the girlfriend's new kitteh, Butters (yes, named after the South Park character) and a purse my aunt made. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Ain't he cute? Make sure to vote for it here.


I was also considering "Purse Cat Questions How You Spent Your Economic Stimulus Check" but I didn't want it to look like I was making fun of the purse.

My order of 40 mini-pins through CafePress is seven days late. I need these bad boys to give out at Motor City Comic Con next weekend. Needless today, when I got home today and they still weren't here (should have arrived on the 2nd according to my email) I was not a happy camper. But, one quick phone call to CafePress later and they have re-sent out my order and upgraded it to One Day Shipping. I should get this new batch by Tuesday. Phew. However, I'm never using their Economy Shipping again.

They also said that if I do in fact get the original order to just keep it as a "thank for shopping with us." Bully. That would be kind of nice, to have an extra 40 buttons to give out after this little fiasco. The original order was sent out on the 23rd of April and whenever I went to check the UPS tracking info, it said none was available. Grrr. Thankfully it looks as if this situation has been taken care of and it should all work out in the end.

The only other thing I gotta worry about is if my promo cards (all 500 of 'em) I ordered through Lulu.com get to me in time. I did tell them that I needed 'em by Thursday after I emailed them back about making a few changes, so hopefully I don't hit any snags there. If it came right down to it, I'd rather have the cards than the pins. They are more useful. But then, if I don't get my cards I can always improvise something at the last minute before leaving for the con. It'd be like taking your cousin to the prom: it wouldn't be pretty, but at least you wouldn't show up empty handed. While I like getting those cards through Lulu.com, the process through which you get them is a tad clunky.

First you order them. They, usually the next day or so, they email you and ask you what you want on them. You send back the info and then, usually a day or so, they email you back what they came up with a soft proof .PDF to approve. If you don't like it, you email them back and say 'hey, change this.' Up until this time, they used the same layout for me each time and it was great. But it looks as if they redid their design because the front and backs are different. Plus they put the link to my book on lulu on the front and back cover . While that's nice,  "www.magicofeyri.com" looks a heck of a lot better than "http://www.lulu.com/content/572500" and I don't want people to go right to my lulu page. I want them to go to my site, look around and hopefully get very convinced to buy the book.

Sigh. The joys of self-publishing.

I started expanding/revising one of my short stories this morning, Slow and Steady. It was a submission I wrote for Shimmer's Clockwork Jungle issue, but it wasn't accepted. However I got back some positive feedback, so I figured I was on the right path. It was my first time doing a short story for a submission, so the draft I sent in may not have been the strongest because I was still learning how to write a short story--and how to work within a word limit.

Slow and Steady is pretty much a steampunk Wind in the Willows. As you can probably guess by the title, It is based on the Tortoise and the Hare fable and involves two inventors who race their mechanical animal machines. The heroes are an old owl woman named Theena and her young duck apprentice, Phillip. Their vehicle is a giant turtle shaped machine that runs on steam. The villain is Count Boodle Bodell, a stocky well dressed cormorant man from parts unknown. His machine is a biped rabbit, but it runs on a mysterious element (the main hook of the story).

Reading over this story again, I realize just how much I like it and how much fun I had writing it. I'm hoping that by expanding it I can make it into the story it should have been. I can expand a few parts and build some things up a bit.  I'm glad I finally got around to writing again, I haven't done much since I finished A Queen's Tale back in March.

I haven't decided yet if this story takes place in the Eyri universe or not. It has references to Magic of Eyri, so I think I might just say that it does but at a different time. We'll see.

In a little over a week I'll be at Motor City Comic Con (16th - 18th) trying to sell copies of The Magic of Eyri. I still haven't got my mini-pins from CafePress yet, and I'm getting very annoyed. I just better get 'em before next Thursday. The same goes for the new batch of promo cards I ordered from Lulu. Srsly. I'll be very angry if I don't get my promo materials in time for the Con.

In some other, much better news, I sold a few copies online over the past couple weeks. Three to be exact. This puts me at 117 copies sold. Neat. One was bought on Lulu and the other two through non-lulu channels. I know one was bought through Amazon because my ranking dipped a bit one day.

Yeah I kind of dropped the ball here and forgot to write about my last day at Penguicon over the past couple weeks. Oops! I've been busy. Honest :/

Sunday

Since I had a 9 AM panel (followed by a 10 AM reading) I decided to call it an early night on Saturday. I kind of regretted it at first because Saturday night is the big party night, but the next morning I quickly realized I made the right choice. My first event of the day was the Guerrilla Marketing --- The Art of Self-Promotion panel. Usually, 9AM on a Sunday isn't the best slot for a panel (see above about Saturday being the big party night), but the room was PACKED. I was joined by The Time Traveler and Michael "Freon" Andaluz. The Time Traveler recorded the panel and I think he's gonna post it on his site at some point. This was a fun panel and it was my first time being a moderator, which was interesting.

The three of us talked about what we each consider Guerrilla Marketing and how we promote ourselves. I told about how I put my website address on everything I can that I give out, or in some cases wear, at conventions. And how I always carry cards with the websites on them, because you never know when you'll be somewhere you can leave a few laying out or meet someone who is interested in the book. I've found that when people ask me what my book is about, giving them the card makes it a lot easier (and they like the cover art on it too).

I must digress for a moment, because I ordered a new batch of promo cards yesterday and I changed what they said a bit. Above www.magicofeyri.com it used to say 'Learn More At" , but I changed it to "Discover the Magic at." I like that a heck of a lot more.

Back to the panel: we focused a lot on internet stuff and I told of how I'm on Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube and Internet Movie Database. I also have this blog syndcated to my profile on Amazon.com. So I'm all over the place. I had a lot of fun on this panel and hopefully those who attended took home some helpful info.

Immediately following the panel, I had a reading with Freon at 10 AM. I was very nervous about this, as I have yet to do a public reading of ay of my stuff. Getting up and talking in front of people doesn't bother me at all, but reading some of my stuff aloud does. Go figure. Well, thankfully (but also sadly) I dodged a bullet. No one showed up to the reading, it was just Freon and I. So we sat around for an hour and chatted.

After the 'reading' I headed over to the Dealer's Room and thanks to William and Deborah Jones, was able to set up camp at the Elder Signs Press (ESP) table. I sold three copies while in the dealers room, which was great, and led to Deborah teasing me that I was monopolizing the table. I stayed in the Dealer's Room until my last panel of the weekend,  How Has the Ease of Computer Animation Changed the Monster Movie?

This panel was a  hoot.  I was joined by William Jones, Jeff deLuzio and another gentlemen filling in for John Scalzi. Sadly Scalzi had a family emergency pop up at the last minute and he had to leave, so I didn't get a chance to meet him. Oh well. I still had a lot of fun. This panel had the most audience participation of all the panels/events I was a part of. We talked about all kinds of things, "less is more", flimmakers having limitations in the old days and how that made things more interesting, movie trailers showing too much, and all kinds of other fun movie related things. We of course touched on Cloverfield and pretty much all agreed that it was a step in the right direction in regards to using CGI in a monster movie.

After the panel I bummed around the hotel for a bit, talking to friends and fans -- even selling a copy of The Magic of Eyri in the halls. But the best part was when I was stopped by a fan:

Him: "Wait...you're Daniel J. Hogan?"
Me: "Yes."
Him: "I bought your book back at ConClave (October '07) -- I loved it !"
Me: "...Realy?"
Him: "Yeah! It was fan-f@#%ing-tastic! I couldn't put it down."
Me: "...Really?"
Him: "It was so hilarious, my mom kept asking me what the heck I was laughing about. It was great, and your world is totally believable."
(one side note: this is the second fan who's told me my world/characters are 'believable.' I guess I'm doing something right.)
Me: "What was your favorite part or character?"
Him: ::thinks:: "The ducks! I loved the ducks."

That was certainly one of the high points of my weekend. So, I'd say Penguicon was a big success. I had a great time.