To be honest I’d completely given up on finding out what happens next to Riddick after David Twohy’s bonkers sf movie The Chronicles of Riddick bombed at the box office.

Of course, by all reasonable standards, The Chronicles of Riddick is cobblers - sadly, however, it’s exactly the kind of cobblers I love. Which is why this nugget from Io9 genuinely perked me up on a bad morming. Vin Diesel told an MTV interviewer:

David Twohy right now is writing the scripts. The only question is whether we take a page from the Lord of the Rings guys and try to shoot the two chapters at the same time. There are two more in mind… The Chronicles of Riddick was presented as a three part trilogy that would answer Pitch Black in the same way that Lord of the Rings answered The Hobbit.

You can read my review of The Chronicles of Riddick (from issue 169 of the BSFA’s Matrix) after the crease.

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Posted August 26, 2008 Comments(3)

I do intend to get back to regular posting on this blog. I’ve got a selection of books I’d like to talk about and quite a lot of other stuff has happened but, to ease back into things, here’s a meme I caught off Jetse de Vries (from Chris Roberson) - put the date of your birth into Wikepedia and take four events, three births, two deaths and a holiday.

Here’s what you get when you put in 28 March

Events

• 193 - Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus.
  Pertinax lasted 88 days - I don’t know what Didius Julianus paid but it wasn’t worth it by June 1 he was gone, replaced by Septimus Severus (who then had to battle two rival Caesars - 193 was a hell of a year)
• 1930 - Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara.
  “why did Constantinople get the works? Thats’ nobody’s business but the Turks”
• 1979 - In Pennsylvania, a pump in the reactor cooling system fails in the Three Mile Island accident, resulting in the evaporation of some contaminated water causing a nuclear meltdown.
  Cough!
• 1979 - British Prime Minister James Callaghan, is defeated by one vote in a Motion of No Confidence. This results in Parliament being dissolved to make way for a General Election
  The defeat of Callaghan is one of the first political events I recall clearly. No one imagined that Thatcher and the Tories would be in power for 18 years.

Births

• 1522 - Albert the Warlike, Prince of Bayreuth (d. 1557)
  Now that’s a name!
• 1942 - Neil Kinnock, British politician
  A genuinely brave politician - decent bloke.
• 1975 - Richard Kelly, American film director
  Southland Tales? Bwahahaha!

Deaths

• 1987 - Maria von Trapp, Austrian-born singer (b. 1905)
  How do you solve a problem like Maria?
• 1987 - Patrick Troughton, British actor (b. 1920)
  Not dead. Regenerating.

Holidays

The Feast of St Gontram

“king of a fourth of the kingdom of the Franks, and made his capital at Orléans.” […] “he was the protector of the oppressed, caregiver to the sick, and the tender parent to his subjects. He was open-handed with his wealth, especially in times of plague and famine. He strictly and justly enforced the law without respect to person, yet was ever ready to forgive offences against himself, including two attempted assassinations.”

Can’t beat a benevolent dictator!

Posted August 21, 2008 Comments(0)