Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

I visited the Delta Township District Library for the third time this week yesterday. Just can't get enough of that place. Well, my second visit was just to pick up the CDs for the box set I got on Monday--they weren't in cases when I checked it out. Simple mistake. The librarians appreciated me not freaking out about it and their repeated apologies made me wonder what sort of tongue lashings they've received in the past. Having spent four years working at a video store, I could relate and I told them so. We shared a "I hear ya bro" moment.

I know I was subjected to obnoxious ranting and raving from unruly costumers during my tour of duty at the video store, I can only image what librarians have to go through. I see it as, I had no reason to get upset about it because I was getting the CD set (a $60+ value) for FREE. But I know there are some people out there who don't see things that way and love any reason to pick a fight with someone. I certainly encountered those at the video store. My favorite was when people accused us of purposely checking movies in a few minutes late so they'd have to pay a fee. Yeah. Because we have nothing better to do than to single out your copy of Corky Romano out of a few dozen others and hang on to it until  two minutes after noon and THEN check it in.

Here's a bit of an inside secret--the computers in the store where I worked didn't start recording things late until after 1PM, even though the listed due back time was noon. So there. This was at a Blockbuster if you care, but don't rely on this information because they could have changed it by now.

Yesterday I returned to the library to drop off my book on CD copy of Old Man and the Sea--loved it. I picked out Lewis Black's book Nothing's Sacred AND it is read by the man himself. It is all kinds of hilarious. And the best part was, I used the library's new Express Checkout (or whatever it is called). Very neat--it is a self-check out system. You scan your card and then what you're taking out. Easy.

Horrible news movie fans, special effects/monster master Stan Winston died of cancer last night. It is a sad day for movie fans around the world, I know I'm seriously saddened this because I'm a big fan of Stan's work. Finding out he had a hand in any film made it 100x more watchable to me. I loved the quality of creatures Stan and his crew were able crank out. They did the effects for Aliens, Predator, and Terminator to name a few. Oh and of course, Monster Squad.

As a fan of traditional effects instead of the over-use of CGI, this really is a downer. Kind of makes you wonder if there will ever be someone like Stan (or the other effects wizards of his generation) ever again. I hope so. I know I'm not the only one who enjoys a quality made creature costume.

Sigh. I should watch Predator or Terminator tonight in tribute. Right after I pour a 40 on the curb.

Kind of ironic that I watched Godzilla: Final Wars last night too. That was chuck full of great monster costumes, it was a fun movie and very ridiculous (but in a good way).

Yesterday was fun:
Found out two copies of The Magic of Eyri were sold. This puts me at 123 sold with 205 copies in print (includes freebies, donations, copies I ain't sold -- don't worry, I don't have 80 copies in my closet, I think only about 5). I've sold six copies online since April (so since my stint at Penguicon), not too shabby. I may not sell a bunch of copies at once, but sales have been pretty steady. I'm still hovering around my ten copies a month average.

I think these two copies were bought on Amazon, because I noticed my ranking changing a bit here and there over the past couple weeks. I really wish Lulu specified who was buying copies from where. Sales that are through non-Lulu channels are all lumped together, be it Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a store buying copies for their shelves through a distributor. I'd really like to know how people are buying copies, especially if a store is buying copies to sell.

Finally got Juno on DVD from Netflix. My only real complaint about Netflix is the difficulty in getting popular new releases right when they come out. Juno has been out on DVD for at least a couple months (or close to it) and it has been at the top of my queue since before its street date. Oh well, regardless I'm excited to watch it.

Oh, and the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. Now it is time for my obligatory "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"-and I didn't even have to use my AK."

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I am a big Indiana Jones fan, so I have been waiting for this movie ever since they started filming it. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my all time favorite movies, so I was really excited when I heard that Karen Allen was reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood for this final(?) installment of the adventures of Henry Jones, Jr.

The important thing to remember when going in to see Crystal Skull is that you really can’t compare it to the original trilogy, nor is it fair to. Many things have changed since 1989’s Last Crusade, including the way films are made—which brings me to one of my first criticisms of the film, its occasional over-use of computer generated effects.

Yes, I’m aware that Indy movies are meant to be over the top pulp-fiction-comic-booky fun, but I really think there is such a thing as too much special effects when it comes to using computers. Thankfully, this did not plague the entire film, only in a few spots was this apparent—and even then it was towards the end when you’d expect nothing less from a Spielberg/Lucas film. But there were a few times where I found myself thinking, “OK, this is a little much.” I can’t really go into too much detail without giving away spoilers, but the final climatic/big special effect money shot really reeked of overkill.

Next is the subject matter/theme of this chapter.
Lost cities? Yes, please!
Haunted graveyards? Awesome!
Stolen treasure? Woo-hoo!
Aliens? Huh?
Physic powers? Uh…what?

While I was originally intrigued by the idea of Indy visiting Area 51 and being connected to the Roswell Crash, I decided that Indiana Jones and aliens just don’t mix. Save that stuff for X-Files. It was just too left field for an Indiana Jones movie. There are plenty of other cool legendary artifacts they could of have centered the film around. What about the Spear of Destiny? The plot could have been that Hitler originally had it, lost it, and the Russians are trying to find it and Indy gets mixed up in the whole mess (and he’d have to fight the Nazis and the Russians! How crazy would that have been?)

Or what about something with Atlantis? I could go on and on. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed the movie, it was a lot of fun. I just didn’t like all the alien stuff.

Harrison Ford did a decent job reprising the role and once they finally got the ‘Oh man, I’m too old for this’ jokes out of the way, I found myself forgetting how old he really is. Some of his stunts and action scenes could have easily been from any of the older Indy movies—he’s still got it.

One thing that didn’t seem to stand the test of time was the chemistry between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen. I don’t know if it was just the script or what, but some of their lines between each other seemed forced or lacked any kind of spark. But they had a few exchanges that were pretty darn good, usually when they were fighting with each other.

I’m still not sold on Shia LaBeouf as the big blockbuster star that Spielberg seems to think he is. Sure he was ok, and he had a few good scenes but overall I wasn’t that impressed with him or his character, Mutt Williams.

Oh and Jim Broadbent was horribly underused. He was a great choice as a replacement for Marcus, but I would of liked to see a little more of him. And I got sick of all the Red Scare stuff they kept throwing at us. Yes, I get it. It takes place in the 1950s and that was going on, and the bad guys are Russians in the film, but c’mon.

I also wasn’t a fan of some of the cinematography and lighting. Some of the film had this ‘made for TV reunion movie’ look/feel to it; I felt that lighting could have been way more interesting at times. There were parts where it was very flat and boring.

What I DID like: the casual references to what Indy has been up to for the past 20 years. Very neat, especially what he did during World War II (“Colonel Jones…”). John Hurt was great and Cate Blanchett was convincing in her role. The chase scene in the jungle with the trucks and such was thrilling to watch on the big screen, I loved that part. It was wonderfully over the top.

Thankfully, this film did not suffer from the same fate as Episode I: The Phantom Menace, it captured some of the charm of the original and is fun to watch (which can be chalked up to the fact that Spielberg has been making movies for the past 20 years, unlike Lucas who had a very long hiatus between Howard the Duck and Phantom Menace).

Despite its faults, this is a film worth seeing in the theater and a fun way to spend two hours. My expectations weren’t set too high going in to this, so thankfully I wasn’t too disappointed.

And to be honest, I can’t wait to see it again.

 

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty amazing day: I'm seeing Indiana Jones in the morning with Lovely Assistant and later that night I'm going Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals! Woooo! Let's Go Red Wings! (and a special thanks to my buddy Jon for getting me a ticket)

AND to kick off this awesome weekend, Lovely Assistant and I are going to Famous Dave's for dinner tonight. Hmmm, BBQ. We ate there last weekend at Motor City Comic Con and loved it (NOTE: not going back to the same one). I'm usually not one for chain resturants but Famous Dave's is a tasty exception, along with Red Robin.  I'm a sucker for good BBQ (and good burgers).

On the subject of writing related news, I'm almost done with the revision of my short story, Slow and Steady. Lovely Assistant checked the spelling and grammar last night, so after those many changes are made I'm gonna send it off to Jay at Comics Obscura so he can decide if he wants to adapt it into a comic. I'm excited.

And I  sent Michael a list of what drawings I want for the first ten chapters of The Magic of Eyri. I think I did a good job at keeping my requests simple. I'm looking forward to what he comes up with, I'm sure it'll be nothing less  than amazing. These will be for the long promised 2nd Edition (or Special Edition, whatever I end up calling it) and the serializing of it on magicofeyri.com

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.