Robot Claw

Review: Riddick Series

November 28th, 2023

Last week, in order, we watched the 3.5 films in the Riddick series. We’d only ever seen the first one, and were interested in the others. Here’s reviews of all of them.

Pitch Black (2000)

This was a low-budget sci-fi horror film about the survivors of a crashed spaceship fighting for their lives against a legion of alien predators on an otherwise barren planet. As the name suggests, the film is very dark and this is doubly integral to the plot: the aliens only ‘come out at night’ and the antihero can see in the dark.

His name is Riddick, and he is played by a young Vin Diesel. He’s a villian and murderer, and for this reason there’s initially tension between him and the other survivors. Ultimately his martial skills and unusual vision make him invaluable to their survival, and a truce is formed.

The film is obviously inspired by Aliens but weaves a unique story of its own, and despite some dated visuals (especially use of colour grading) holds up fairly well. It’s not a great (or even good?) film, but it’s fun to watch.

The standout of course is Vin Diesel, who has strong charisma in the role of an (objectively) awful person, and very much carries the film. Pitch Black was a success and made a lot of money, and when it came time for a sequel it was obvious which way the story would go…

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004)

This was a direct-to-DVD short animated film spanning the time between Pitch Black and the sequel. It was directed by Peter Cheung (famous for Aeon Flux) and Vin Diesel returned to voice Riddick.

The story is simple and not at all required to understand the film sequel, and I found this animated interlude a little unpleasant due to the grotesque art style. Completely skippable!

The Chronicles Of Riddick (2004)

Set five years after Pitch Black, this sequel focuses on Riddick as he becomes involved in a plot to destroy a planet. The story is absolutely bonkers, and includes grand space battles, an evil empire called ‘The Necromongers’, magical beings called Elementals and all sorts of weird elements such as ‘the Underverse’.

We learn more of Riddick as well, including the fact he’s maybe not so bad after all. It turns out he’s one of the last remaining ‘Furyans’ and has superhuman abilities and mystical powers that may help wipe out the Necromongers. The film keeps throwing stuff at you hoping it sticks, and even when it doesn’t you won’t care because it’s always visually interesting (it here’s a strong Warhammer 40k vibe). Once again Vin Diesel’s weird charisma steals every scene he’s in.

Somehow they got Judi Dench and a young Karl Urban in this. There’s creepy alien dog things, many crazy fight scenes and one of the most insane endings you’ll see. The budget was obviously much bigger than Pitch Black, but for all its bombast the film underperformed and almost killed the nascent franchise.

We never saw this when it came out, but we thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s crazy and silly and very guilty of adding plot elements without any hint of explanation, but it’s also a lot of fun. The best film in this series and very much worth a watch!

Riddick (2013)

Nine years later Vin Diesel had become a megastar due to the Fast & The Furious franchise and the franchise holders decided to return once again to this series. But the budget was scaled back and the studio wanted a film more like Pitch Black and less like Chronicles Of Riddick.

What they made was a sort-of Pitch Black remake, only now the nocturnal aliens are replaced with weird scorpion-things. There’s a very lengthy setup sequence of Riddick being marooned on a planet (and befriending an alien jackal!) before mercenaries turn up to catch him only for all hell to break loose when hordes of the creatures attack.

It’s a well paced film – even if it feels like two – and for its lowish budget I thought the special effects (solidly in CGI territory now) were very good. There’s some decent acting from the mercenaries, including one that has become famous in recent years in a Star Wars show, but once again Vin Diesel steals the show. This is a much better film than Pitch Black, but not quite reaching the enjoyable lunacy of The Chronicles Of Riddick, and I think it’s worth your time.

And so – perhaps to our surprise – we thoroughly enjoyed this somewhat overlooked series! Despite very lengthy gaps between the films they tell a more or less consistent story, and the more we learned about Riddick the more we wanted to learn. There’s still many questions, about the Furyans and Necromongers, and it feels like this is a story that can continue.

So it’s perhaps good to know there’s another sequel on the way, likely to be released a dozen years (or more) after the last one. And with the working title of Riddick IV: Furya maybe we’ll finally get some answers to the true past (and future?) of this fellow Riddick? Let’s hope so.

Posted in Movies | 1 Comment »

Autographs: Musicians

November 24th, 2023

In compiling these entries, I’ve often thought about whether there are any other autographs I’d like to own. It’s an interesting question, because while I consider them novelties I have far less attachment to our autographs than many of our other possessions. Would I value another any more?

Assuming I did, my first choice would be original art, such as a signed work from Frazetta or a mangaka. Theres also certain musicians like David Bowie or Nick Cave that I wouldn’t mind owning an autograph of, especially if it was on one of my favourite records.

Todays entry showcases our autographs of goths and pop stars and ‘genderbenders’ and alternative icons: Musicians. Not one of these did we obtain ourselves, but we’re fairly sure they are all authentic, and a few have somewhat unusual provenance.

This is Dreamscapes, a multi-CD box set released by Alphaville many years ago. As you can see I have one of the earliest, autographed, versions. The signatures are of Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd, the two most important members of the band. Interestingly this CD set is very rare and expensive these days. I’ll never sell mine.

Many years ago, shortly after I moved to the USA, we stopped in an unremarkable record shop (remember those?) in Utica, NY and we’re astonished to find two autographed Fields Of The Nephilim albums just sitting in the racks. They weren’t expensive at all, and we snapped them up quickly. Both are promos, and are autographed by four of the five members around the time of the release of these records. Here’s a detail of Carl McCoy’s autograph:

As you can see they were done in a non-permanent marker (although it’s long since permanent) and smudged a bit. Compared to other examples from the era I’ve seen online I’m fairly sure these are authentic, but it’s a real curiosity how they ended up there and how the shop didn’t even seem to know what they had. Given FoTN is the band that caused Kristin and I to meet, this was quite a find!

Speaking of autographed records, here’s a fully autographed copy of Black Celebration by Depeche Mode. This was Kristin’s since she was a teen, and was obtained for her by a friend in England (who bought it at a record shop after the band made an appearance). The autographs on it are spectacular and a quick search online suggests this could be a fairly valuable item.

Speaking of this record, here’s a photo of the back:

Now you know where the line at the top of my blog comes from!

The above is Pete Burns autograph, again obtained for Kristin by her British friend. This one was obtained in person, and cleverly it’s on the back of a Pete Burns postcard! If you don’t know he was the lead singer of Dead or Alive, and passed away some years ago.

Lastly, here is another contender for our most famous autograph: Boy George! A big, beautiful signature worthy of the artist in his prime, this one was also obtained in person by Kristin’s friend (the mind boggles what his personal collection was like), and is on a page torn from Smash Hits magazine!

There’s also another celebrity autograph somewhere in this house, although try as I could I wasn’t able to find it. The signer in question is Green Gartside (aka Scritti Politti), and KLS obtained the autograph herself on an airplane napkin when she flew from England back to the USA 1985. She had spotted him boarding the plane, and wandered up to first class to ask for his autograph!

And thus ends this five day showcase of our autograph ‘collection’. It was a lot of fun to compile these, and we learned that we had many more autographs than we thought. But in addition to the few I mentioned this week, I still think there may be others forgotten and hidden away somewhere in this house. If I ever unearth any, you can expect an addendum followup one day 🙂

Posted in Blog, Music | 2 Comments »

Autographs: Actors

November 23rd, 2023

In 1930 a signature machine called an ‘autopen’ was invented. This device can reproduce signatures automatically, and while intentionally designed for government (so an official could quickly ‘sign’ many copies of the same document) in time it became used by celebrities. Famously Queen Elizabeth started using autopens exclusively from 1959 which makes any of her signatures since then reproductions.

Autopens are often used to ‘sign’ collectible items – such as books – and very rarely is their use disclosed. It’s possible that some of the books or cards I’ve shown already have autopen signatures on them, so there’s an element of faith involved in buying a signed item. To avoid this, autograph collectors tend to prefer personalized or inscribed items since they show the signature is authentic.

Today I will show our autographs of actors, many of which are personalized and most of which were obtained from the signer in-person. There’s some famous autographs here today!

Lots of Doctor Who to start: Here’s two separate signed photos from Peter Davison (the 5th Doctor), both personalized. I got the one on the left myself at NYCC, and Adam got us the one on the right.

And here’s the 8th Doctor, Colin Baker. He was friendly and gracious when we met him also at NYCC, and I recall he was just sitting there mostly ignored by the crowd. This was years before the Who revival and I imagine he was nearly unknown to the average American convention-goer.

Here’s the 8th Doctor, Paul McGann. Adam got this for us as well, and it’s my favourite Who autograph. I hope the rumours of him getting his own series on Disney+ are true!

Even more Who, and once again thanks to Adam for all of them. I can only imagine how many Who autographs he has in his own collection!

This last Who item is a bit different; it’s the autograph of Nicholas Briggs, who has worn many hats in the history of the series but I’m calling him an actor today since he’s done most of the Dalek voices since the revival. I got this myself from him when he was at NYCC.

Moving on from Dr Who, the above is the autograph of none other than Warwick Davis! He’s been a lot of characters in a lot of shows (not to mention played himself in several), but he’s perhaps best known for playing Wicket the Ewok in The Empire Strikes Back. He’s a very well-known actor, and this is another contender for the most famous autograph we own.

And keeping with Star Wars, we’ll end today with the autograph of none other than George Lucas’s son Jett. I got this in 2017 one from a $60 (yes sixty dollar) pack of Star Wars cards. Every pack had an autograph but only a few of the signers were famous people. As you can see, mine wasn’t 🙂

As an addendum, let me once again recall the day I met Q (to get an autograph), which was still a surreal experience even all these years later.

Only one more day of autographs to go. What will the category be? Will there be anyone very famous? Wait and see…

Posted in Blog, Celebrity, Trading Cards | 4 Comments »

Autographs: Wrestlers

November 22nd, 2023

While documents featuring the signatures of famous politicians have sold for millions, the value is more in the document itself than in the autograph. Take George Washington for example: a document he signed sold for $9.8 million in recent years but his autograph alone can be had for only thousands.

In terms of true value, it seems the holy grail is William Shakespeare. Only eleven of his signatures are known to exist, and five of those are in museums and will likely never be publicly sold. The last time one of the other six sold it surpassed $5 million and experts speculate that the next time one goes for sale it may set a record and exceed $10 million.

These numbers are stratospheric and, but perhaps even more mind-boggling is that the autographs of some living people aren’t too far off. Since 2000, ten sports cards have sold at auction for over $2.5 million, and five of those were autographed. In 2021 a card autographed by an NBA player named Steph Curry sold for $5.9 million! Imagine being the guy that pulled that out of one of the ($500!) packs.

Todays entry showcases sports autographs as well, specifically wrestlers! For a few years Kristin bought a special trading card set that guaranteed several autographs in each box. The list of signers was long, but it was always exciting to open a pack and find an autograph. Here’s all of them:

That’s a lot! Too many to put in this post, so I’ll show detail of some of the more famous ones and leave you to squint at the above pic to appreciate the signature of such sports entertainers as Liv Morgan, Randy Orton or Sid Vicious. (Also we have so many that some are double-stacked in the curio, but the guys you can’t see are rookies that didn’t become famous!)

Kurt Angle was a favourite of both of us for many years, and it was great when he returned to the WWE after years in other promotions.

Roman Reigns is probably the biggest star the WWE has right now, and while I found him irritating at first he grew on me and I can’t deny he has earned the respect of the fans.

Ric Flair is probably the most famous wrestler autograph we have, and possibly the most famous autograph we have of any person. He’s a household name that has been wrestling for over 50 years!

If you’d like a clear pic of any of the other cards let me know and I’ll send you one. But for now I’ll end todays post with this last, very unusual autograph:

I bought this at Albany Comic Con from Fred Ottman. He wrestled under several names during his long career and was perhaps most successful as ‘Tugboat’ but most remembered for the ill-fated and unintentionally hilarious live-on-TV introduction of his ludicrous ‘Shockmaster’ character (yes that’s a bedazzled Stormtrooper helmet). If you haven’t seen it you can watch it here. When you do, don’t miss Ric Flair’s insane tan!

Lastly, this is perhaps the category that we could have populated the most had we been inclined. For many years we attended New York Comic Con, and almost every year there were several wrestlers signing autographs, and it seems every few months there’s one doing signings at our local mall. In addition signed cards can be purchased for surprisingly low amounts (just a few dollars in some cases), and I imagine there are wrestling fans out there with hundreds of autographs. I think that’s wonderful!

Posted in Blog, Celebrity, Trading Cards | 1 Comment »

Autographs: Artists

November 21st, 2023

Chances are, if you’ve purchased original art you got the ‘autograph’ of the artist with it, since most artists sign their works. As far as I know we own one original painting – a watercolour of a cat – and it is indeed hand signed by the artist.

But buying original art can get expensive very quickly, and may not even be possible with some (especially digital) artists. So it ends up being a challenge the same as any other sort of autograph.

We don’t have many autographs of artists, but the few we do include a couple of very special ones. As you’ll read, all of these were obtained in different ways as well. Here they are…

Fifteen years ago, at New York Comic Con, we were lucky enough to meet Simone Legno, creator of the brand Tokidoki. His star was still rising, and he was actually signing autographs! Not only did we get the above poster autographed, but he also drew a character on it. In addition he autographed a Tokidoki purse Kristin was using at the time:

What makes this special is I videoed him signing, and you can watch it on YouTube. How’s that for provenance! Incidentally the poster has been framed and hung on our wall ever since, and likely always will be.

Since I was a child I’ve loved the fantasy art of Chris Achilleos. About 30 years ago I bought a pack of trading cards of his work, and to my surprised found a redemption card for an autograph. I dutifully sent it off, and sure enough some weeks later received the above in the mail. It’s been a treasure ever since, and even more so now since he passed away a couple of years ago.

I can thank Adam for all of the above (I think). He obtained these signed basic land cards at Magic The Gathering events he went to, and gave them to me since he knew I collected the lands. The 11 cards are the work of 4 separate artists, and they’re all ‘real’ cards and not artist proofs. I believe he even prepared in advance and brought the cards with him. Now that’s a man that knows how to obtain an autograph!

Incidentally I said ‘I think’ because I have a dim memory of being inspired by him to do the very same thing, and bringing some cards to NYCC one year to get them signed. But did that actually happen? Who knows!

Posted in Art, Blog, MTG, Trading Cards | 1 Comment »