Dan Harris's Blog, page 5

Every Movie Is A Superhero Movie

I just don’t know any more. Even a casual reader of this blog, one as casual as I am a writer of it, will know that I GODDAMN LOVE SUPERHERO MOVIES. They’re literally the best, Batman. But…but…

Seriously, guys?

Credit: Comicsalliance.com

That’s just so many films. When DC announced their slate of movies in some shareholder meeting or a Forbes article or whatever it was, I said to myself: Cool, I look forward to Justice League and Shazam has The Rock, so that’s good, and also ugh Aquaman and Green Lantern.

However, I’ve always had a lot more love for the Lee/Kirby side of the fence, so when Marvel dropped the entire remaining Marvel Cinematic Universe release calendar I immediately memorised the order and what month and year they’re all due to come out. Because…because that’s important information.

But I look at that combined calendar above, with not just DCU and MCU movies but your X-Men and Fantastic Four titles from Fox and your increasingly terrible Spiderman franchise from Sony and I think: Am I really going to go to the cinema and watch TEN superhero movies in 2017? Even if one of them is Lego Batman? (Though Female Lead Spider-Man Spin-Off has always been one of my favourite comics.)

I suspect that come April 3rd 2020 we’ll all still be so full superhero-stuffed from ten months prior–having watched Avengers: Infinity War 2 AND Justice League 2 in the space of six weeks–that we’ll be at saturation point. “No thank you, Mr. Cyborg. I’m done. I couldn’t eat another bite. Even if it is wafer-thin. And if you think I’m watching another Green Lantern movie you’re more gullible than those people who thought Marvel would actually kill off Chris Hemsworth and replace him with a female Thor”.

Still, Age of Ultron looks badass. Definitely excited about that.

Avengers, Assemble Again! Because James Spader is an Angry Robot

Altogether now… SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Nuclear Fusion in Ten Years, Say Lockheed Martin

A bold claim, as reported in io9. The company’s own website has more detail including a compelling timeline that has fusion powering small cities in fifteen years and providing inexpensive power to the developing world in twenty.

This is a development worth keeping an eye on, as io9 point out:

Harnessing fusion has been the Holy Grail of physics, a game-changing solution that could provide a virtually unlimited source of cheap energy.

LM also rolled out this cheery guy to explain what the heck nuclear fusion is in case anyone’s forgotten.

I’m disappointed that only the intro had a dramatic dubstep soundtrack, though.

My Books Now on Scribd. Netflix for Ebooks, They Say

Scribd. Never heard of it? Nor had I until a few days ago. For $8.99 per month you get allegedly unlimited access to allegedly over 400,000 books–which sounds like a heck of a bargain if you read even just a few books a month. You can also buy books outright, if you want to keep them.

Anyway. Thanks to the fabulous folks at Draft2Digital–the distributors through which my books reach iTunes and Barnes and Noble–both Ascension Point and Venus Rising are live on the site. Payment terms are pretty reasonable: the author gets paid for any sale as you’d expect, but also for any subscription read where the reader got past the 30% mark. Which is pretty neat. They even count ten 10-30% reads as one sale too, which is a little bonus.

Plus, the Scribd site is SWANK.

Just look at that. Mmm. Shiny.

I’ve added Scribd to the store links for both books in the bar on the left, so head on over and check it out.

Quick Update

So busy. So, so busy. Still writing, albeit not as much as I want. Only 10-15K words still to come to complete a draft of Causal Nexus. Getting there. Bear with me. Stay strong, people!

(And watch Arrow.)

Anyone Watching Arrow? You Should Be Watching Arrow

Ah, The CW. Bizarrely-named TV network, home of Dan and Mrs. Dan’s cheesy favourites The Vampire Diaries and its Bayou-based spinoff The Originals. Mrs. Dan also watches Reign, the Mary Queen of Scots historical soap where apparently everyone’s speaking French but it’s in English and it’s set in Scotland but who cares they have nice outfits.

I’ve got off topic.

The CW. Right. Where every commercial break is home to at least one trailer for another show on the network, from the excruciatingly titled The Tomorrow People to ‘how is this show still going’ Supernatural. And, of course, Arrow, based on the somewhat famous DC comics character, Green Arrow.

This guy.

Based on the clips I’d seen, it looked pretty mediocre. Probably kind of fun and fairly entertaining, but hey – there’s a lot of TV to watch and only so much time. But then I started coming across extremely positive reviews of episodes in the current (or rather, just finished) season two, and it seemed like it was time to give it a shot.

So I slowly worked my way through season one, and it was indeed kind of fun, quite uneven, some good episodes, some pretty bad, but still solid TV. Enough to make me want to stick with it for season two.

Which I just watched in a week.

Holy crap did it get good. I don’t know what changed behind the scenes, or if it was just a case of the writers hitting their stride, but season two starts strong and only gets better. The second half of the season is probably the most consistently excellent TV I’ve seen from a show that isn’t one of the critics’ darlings (Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Americans). Well paced, exciting, funny, believable characterisation, explosions, people in masks beating the crap out of each other–what more could you want?

Ridiculously buff shirtless guys working out, you say?

Yup.

#JupiterAscending #Wachowskis #BADASS

It’s been fifteen years since the Wachowskis made a truly great film. Fingers and toes crossed that this one turns out to be as good as it looks! (But remember, The Matrix Revolutions had great trailers, too. Ugh.) The Tatum/Kunis/Bean combo is very promising, though.

From the streets of Chicago to the far-flung galaxies whirling through space, this film tells the story of Jupiter Jones, who was born under a night sky, with signs predicting she was destined for great things. Now grown, Jupiter dreams of the stars but wakes up to the cold reality of a job cleaning other people’s houses and an endless run of bad breaks. Only when Caine, a genetically engineered ex-military hunter, arrives on Earth to track her down does Jupiter begin to glimpse the fate that has been waiting for her all along-her genetic signature marks her as next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos.

Finishing Strongly: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Contains MASSIVE spoilers for both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’.

Well, I didn’t see that coming. And no, I’m not talking about the stunning revelation in The Winter Soldier that S.H.I.E.L.D. was infiltrated years ago by the alternative universe Third Reich, HYDRA. (I didn’t see that coming either, it’s just not what I’m talking about.)

The revelation was the initially disappointing, then recently fairly solid Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. suddenly being THIS GOOD.

We learned in the previous episode ‘The End of the Beginning’ that season nemesis The Clairvoyant was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and the final scene seemed to set up Victoria Hand–seemingly straight-laced no-fun senior agent, but with distracting red streaks dyed in her hair OMIGOD RED IS THE COLOUR OF HYDRA–as said Clairvoyant. I was somewhat skeptical, given this is a Joss Whedon show, and surely it couldn’t be that obvious?

EVIL! Maybe?

Then the weekend rolled around, and Mrs. Dan and I went to see the new Cap’n USA, and by golly if it wasn’t the best film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet! Also OMIGOD HYDRA etc.

But back to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I impatiently waited for Tuesday to come and bring the new episode–the first time that’s happened for this series, by the way–and hell yeah was it worth the wait. From the Blue Oyster Cult soundtracked cold open, to the ‘Hand recruiting Simmons and Triplett for HYDRA’ fakeout, to the very satisfying reveal that Bill Pullman Paxton was the real Clairvoyant, it was all excellent stuff. Garrett is on his way to the Icebox and a future of never seeing daylight again, and the audience breathes a satisfied sigh of relief.

But wait.

Offered the chance to pop a cap in his former mentor’s proverbial ass, our very own Agent Wooden Top Ward generates more interest in four seconds than he has in the previous seventeen episodes by APPARENTLY offing two S.H.I.E.L.D. redshirts and Ms. Hand herself. (Cue the excellent if slightly on-the-nose shot of a bloody hand above. Get it? BLOODY HAND?)

Which sent Mrs. Dan and I off on a fifteen minute conversation after the show about whether Ward is really a double agent for the Nazis HYDRA or whether he was bound for an exciting life of triple agenting. Our collective money is on the latter; for one thing, Garrett doesn’t say anything like ‘well done, just like we planned’ and actually looks pleasantly surprised at the development. Plus, a risky and possibly suicidal gambit to infiltrate HYDRA and see just how deep the infestation goes is right up Coulson, Hand and Joss Whedon’s alley.

However the story unfolds, I’m just delighted that this series has–after a distinctly underwhelming start–finally and somewhat surprisingly turned into the show we all hoped it would be. There are five episodes left, a bold new story arc for a character we’ve been waiting for something from all year and cameos to look forward to from Robin Scherbatsky and this guy:

And I find myself fervently crossing my fingers for a renewal and a second season. (Current chances: fifty-fifty.) Quite a turn around. Altogether now: HAIL HYDRA!

Wait, wrong team.

 

 

“You’re Afraid. I Remember.”

If this doesn’t end up being the greatest superhero movie ever, then I’ll eat Magneto’s hat.

Writing—So Easy a Caveman Can Do It

Dan Harris:

More sage writerly wisdom from Ms. Lamb.

Originally posted on Kristen Lamb's Blog:

Original image via Flickr Creative Commons courtesy of Sodanie Chea

Recently a Facebook friend shared a post with me regarding Indie Musicians versus Indie Authors. It appears our culture has a fascination and reverence for the Indie Musician whereas Indie Authors face an immediate stigma. We authors have to continually prove ourselves, whereas musicians don’t (at least not in the same way). My friend seemed perplexed, but to me it’s very simple.

We’re not even going to address the flood of “bad” books. Many writers rush to publish before they’re ready, don’t secure proper editing, etc. But I feel the issue is deeper and it reflects one of the many challenges authors face and always will.

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