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BruceL's blog
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Welcome to Pitcher Blacker, a fansite intended as a resource for anyone interested in anything to do with the Pitch Black universe (based on the movie and it's sequels and spinoffs). The site is active again, so feel free to browse around everything I put together over the last several years. Feedback is required: Email.
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EFBB: Dark Athena still on track
Great news for gamers; according to, well, whoever the hell this guy is over at About.com, Dark Athena was not cancelled like many people (including me) thought. He talked to one of the Starbreeze guys and got this:
"We are certianly working on it, and we are almost done actually and the game looks great. We are just waiting for the marketing campaign to get started now."
Almost done! Game looks great!
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New TCOR footage over at Riddickstyle
Seriously, holy shit, man. The superfans over at Riddickstyle got a user, Furyanthony, who snagged a SciFi special and edited it all up nice and pretty that includes all kinds of stuff, including interviews and unused footage. Go now!
Twohy stuff
Twohy apparently has lined up a new gig, totally unrelated to any of the movies he's been talking about on his site, called A PERFECT GETAWAY. Synopsis is as follows:
A Hawaiian honeymoon turns dangerous for two lovers when they discover they are being stalked by a pair of killers.
Milla Jovovich is rumored to be starring, so at least we know the commentary will be super-annoying.
Twohy also switched around the news part of his website to no longer use whatever weird homebrew setup it had before. Now it's nice neat Wordpress and appears to even allow comments.
PitcherBlacker is almost 6
Hell, I've had this site longer even than one of my kids, so when April 29th rolls around take a look in whatever direction Phoenix is from where you live. If you squint, you may just see me up on my roof, waving a bottle of Guinness around and shooting blindly into the air. Cause that's what I do on my kid's birthdays too. Six years!
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Rumors about next Riddick movie
Twohy lives. In fact, he's updated his website (click News) twice in the last couple of months . One update is cool and shows a fun short film he shot mocking the enemy in the Writer's Strike conflict and the other one discusses another Riddick film. Hit his site for the full quote, but here's an important bit:
But if another movie surfaces, it probably won't be a Universal movie and probably will be an independent movie. Which means we'll have to make it for substantially less than the last installment.
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK was a fun movie, crammed full of ideas. But PITCH BLACK was crammed full of ideas too. And anyone that has seen any of Twohy's other films (BELOW is a perfect example) knows that he can deliver a great film with strong emotion and a lot of impact despite a small budget. I'm sorry for what this means as far as everyone's fees and the quality of the food on set and all that, but if we end up with a camera, Twohy on one end and Vin Diesel playing Riddick again on the other, then I think the end product stands a good chance of being damn great. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
Rumors about next Riddick game
Some (i.e. none) of you may have noticed that the expansion of ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY to milk the next-gen console owners disappeared off the radar. Me too. So with my usual halfhearted attempt at digging up an answer, after failing to find Pete Wanat's cellphone number I found something almost as good; a CVG article that sites no sources but includes an exciting tidbit about a Riddick 2:
Chronicles of Riddick 2 has gone back to the drawing board at The Darkness developers Starbreeze, and will no longer be the original with a bolted-on multiplayer, but a fully-blown sequel.
This is totally believable, as the general hue and cry over the announcement of the Dark Athena expando-game was that [a] "Hey, these screenshots look exactly like the original," and [b] "We want a real sequel." Tricky situation; I suppose the next-gen console owners would have coughed up a lot of money to play the original and very cool game on their shiny new boxes and $5000 TVs, but then again the next gen rendering tech has passed up the engine used for EFBB a bit and maybe that would have been enough to keep their kind away. Whatever the reasoning, if this is true then it's by far my (and therefore your) preference for the next SKU from the franchise.
Unless it's still only for consoles, then fuck them. Heh, just kidding. Mostly.
It's 2008
Believe it or not, I never intentionally abandoned the site. I just got pulled away by responsibilities and character flaws. So I hope everyone is still doing well, and I'll be shooting for '08 updates as time permits.
It's also not too far away from this site's sixth anniversary. Neat!
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Dark Athena pushed into 2008
I spotted in a number of places (this appearing to be the source) that the release date of the update to ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY being made for consoles has been pushed into 2008 sometime. Presumably this is to expand the release plans to include a PC version to accomodate me personally.
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Dark Athena screenshot comparison
Those shots I saw at Worthplaying of Dark Athena for whatever console they're for got me wondering about how different they would look from the PC version I've got. Take a look (the thumbnails link to VERY LARGE versions, so modemers beware):
Only real difference I can see is that there is a new wall texture, which happens to have a very distinctive pattern that can be seen on two different walls. The texture itself looks better, but that repeating pattern is kind of unfortunate.
Lots of changes here... Now there's a chainlink fence and concertina wire instead of straight strands of barbed wire. Lights have been added to the base of the low wall leading to the entrance, and some sort of louver geometry or texture. Different texture on the sloped leading edge of that wall, too. The left side background looks to have had geometry added or maybe just a new skymap. Man, what's up with the Asian guy's new face?
I'm not sure if I took this shot at the right place, but they seem really close. The new camera mounting plate textures look pretty sweet.
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Large Dark Athena screenshots
This is a few weeks old but still new to me... Worthplaying has six screenshots from the Butcher Bay PS3/360 remake up along with some general game info, so despite the lack of news on the game during E3 it appears to at least not have been cancelled.
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Help out Riddickstyle
The Legion Vast over at Riddickstyle got hacked a few weeks ago and had to revert to an older backup, losing about two months worth of stuff. If you can help out by restoring mostly avatars and photo album images, then get to work and give the crew a hand.
New Media from Butcher Bay Memories
There's plenty to see over at Hollywood Fitness Shows if you haven't visited in a while.
First up you'll see pages 26-35 of the comic complete with two fights, two shivs, two shirtless dudes, four convicts, one guard, and plenty of blood. Still looking fantastic, with the great combination of stylized palette and live-action shots mixed in with game footage and media. Really unique stuff.
After digging into those, click the 'Next' button at the bottom center of the page to see a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage from the next film Fernando and his crew are working on, plus a great new prop... a minigun! The shots come from shooting the minigun action sequence, and were provided with the assistance of Fernando's my new associates and sponsors, AJC Informatics. The site banner shows Fernando and the minigun in action. Awesome!
PITCH BLACK prop on Ebay
God it would be sweet to have a piece of PB, and this one seems totally reasonably priced although it's to the point that it actually seems a bit fishy to me. Click here for the auction page on this painted circuit board off the crashed Hunter Gratzner; here's what the guy has to say:
This is an actual screen used prop from the Vin Diesel movie Pitch Black. The prop is taken from the space ship that they crash at the begining of the movie and is 100% authentic! It has obviously been painted silver and then roughly sprayed with a sand coloured paint to give that dirty "Just crashed" look for the movie. You can see from the photos that it is from the original ship used in the film, I have circled the part in red. I will also supply a CD with high res copies of the photos!
$120 AU if you Buy It Now, but the auction is at $50 AU right now. At least it appears to be for sale in the right country...
New goodies for sale at the Propstore
It's a Necro-fest of new super expensive toys, but then again Halloween is starting to loom just a tiny bit.... Here's a quick list, I'd be amazed if a single person bought one of these things after reading about it here. Amazed, I say.
Hello August
I've just been a spectator to life recently... hanging on by my fingernails while events hurtle by at a thousand miles an hour. When things get like this, I don't even try to keep up online anymore. But it's Sunday night and I'm getting ready to give up on another weekend where I only got about 75% of the stuff done that I needed to, so here are a few updates.
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Butcher Bay Memories teaser trailer released; is awesome.
Holy shit! As you probably already know, Fernando Dominguez immediately jumped into a new project after completing his Riddick fanfilm Riddick's Redemption. This new project was called Butcher Bay Memories, both a graphic novel and another fanfilm, and incorporates quite a bit from the game. The comic panels have been steadily released from Fernando's site Hollywood Fitness Shows and have been fantastic, but until now there hasn't been any news about the film.
All that has changed, as a teaser trailer has just been released, and it's incredible. Click here! Planet UV! Flamethrowers! Dudes watching spaceships fly overhead! Fireballs! And an Urzo Giganticus, just because!
This is looking to be ridiculously accomplished for a fan effort and I cannot wait for the full deal. Make sure to watch the video and then hit Fernando's site to give him, FX and cameraman Mauro, and the rest of the crew some big props.
Another month off!
Yep, another month with no updates. In my defence, I did some halfhearted searching for news items, but then again I made no content of my own and in fact completely forgot to update about Fernando Dominguez' Riddick movie props. But I've got a week now where my family is out of town, so we'll see if I can stay on the true and narrow. There should be at least some Dark Athena news soon, as Starbreeze released their latest game The Darkness just recently and once they're back from vacation can return to DA.
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Vaako axe for sale
I'm beat, so I'll keep this quick. If you've got about $800 bucks, you too can leap off balconies. Buy!
'Dark Athena' Lead Designer Interview
This interview is with Ian Stevens, who has to dodge a lot of the questions because it's probably too early for him to reveal many details. The all-important question of a real sequel is addressed, though:
We also had some hesitation about moving too quickly into a sequel. The story we tell in Escape from Butcher Bay is an important one, and we felt like it was a better decision to get that experience into the hands of a larger audience before moving on to something new and creating some gaps for gamers that had never played the original.
There's also a little bit about the story of the new content:
...that new episode takes place immediately after Riddick's escape. He and Johns stumble across the Dark Athena and encounter Revas, the Captain of that ship. It will be an interesting story to tell because we get to explore the role of Mercenaries in the Riddick universe.
There's also a video and some screens allegedly showing off the updated visuals they've made to the original game. Check out the interview on IGN.
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On PitcherBlacker's 'Dark Athena' coverage
I wanted to mention a few things about this upcoming Riddick-related game title called "Assault on Dark Athena" and specifically how I'll be covering it here on PBer.
Now, my stats show me that 60% of all my visitors are just here looking to buy goggles and common sense tells me that another 39% are here mostly because they just would like to have sex with Vin Diesel. That leaves about three guys that are interested in the stuff I actually post up, making the bulk of what I do here generally kind of pointless. Having said that, though, whatever the weird compulsion I have to continue running PitcherBlacker is, it has nothing to do with what anyone else wants to read anyway.
With this in mind, it's important to note that I'm a pretty big gamer, so logically I will end up posting any Riddick game news I can find. But I'm a PC gamer, and kind of a snobby one, so the fact that this upcoming release is only for consoles introduces complications. It being kind of a mission pack rather than a true sequel doesn't thrill me much either. My original plan was to post up the occasional bit on Dark Athena and use that as an opportunity to take a snarky swipe at the thumbstick mentality.
The problem with this is that there are a group of developers in Sweden who managed to lift their company to Triple-A status on the back of some spectacular work with Escape from Butcher Bay, and who are now working on this Dark Athena... thing. These guys gave us a great title, and are most likely working damn hard on this expansion. I'd have to be a real a-hole to rag on their work, which will rock a lot of people right down into their HDTVs and potato-chip strewn couches.
So I'm going to cover the hell out of Dark Athena while it's in development and catch a few of the choicer bits once it's released. But as I'm not a console gamer, there will be no game impressions or review from me and I won't be able to add any of the new stuff to the Universe section since I won't actually ever play the game. If the idea of endless posts about the game expansion doesn't do much for you, maybe just check back in sometime in the Fall when it's come out and I've gone back to posts about... whatever it is I usually post about.
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Miscellaneous Dark Athena stuff
Before I head off to the mountains to build my new buffalo skin tipi, I thought I should toss out a few random items regarding the BUTCHER BAY expanded game called "Assault on Dark Athena." So far we have a few bullet points:
- PS3 and Xbox360 only
- Visual upgrades
- A new chapter with a merc ship called the Dark Athena
- multiplayer
Pretty cool for the consolers who never played the original BUTCHER BAY, not so great for the rest of us. But it's being done by Starbreeze so it will at the very least have a good chance of being well done.
Vivendi/Sierra/wassernames have opened up a forum for the upcoming title, and they posted the announcement press release there. Ignore my thread crying about a PC version.
There's also a large version of the teaser image I posted below along with an animated shot of Riddick from TCOR on the official game site. The old game material appears to have been stripped away, in preparation for new stuff. Note that the "sign up for updates" link will get you Sierra's overall newsletter, not something Dark Athena specific.
There's also a video interview all over the place out there (try here) between the BUTCHER BAY executive producer Peter Wanat and the super-annoying Geoff Keighley. NOTE that none of the game footage shown is from the new stuff. Anyway, more bullet points:
- "lots of new content, lots of new features"
- Redoing content. All the textures are redone.
- Some of the new content takes place immediately after the end of the first game
- Yes on SIXAXIS for PS3
- Something about content Uni had made them take out of the first game hopefully getting put back in
- did not confirm MP
There ya have it. Now we wait for the media to start rolling out.
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Escape from Butcher Bay: Assault on Dark Athena
Technical changes because it's being released on the Xbox360 and Playstation 3, same game but with new 'chapter' added.
"The game introduces the ominous Merc-ship Dark Athena, which sits silent like a marauding spider, awaiting helpless prey in the dark reaches of the galaxy. Players will combat Captain Revas and her slaves-turned-controllable combat drones..." Well, you'll combat them but only after you combat all the same stuff you did the first time(s) through the original game.
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Next Riddick game actually just the same game, again?
Rumor time... Spotted via Kotaku that Firing Squad spotted in Game Informer mag's latest that the next Riddick game might actually be the same game, but made for two of the new consoles (Xbox360 and PS3). The rumor mentions an additional chapter being added, and something about taking advantage of the next-gen console hardware graphic capabilities.
I ain't buyin' another console, folks, since I'm a PC gamer through and through so if this is true, it's going to be all thirdhand information from here on in...
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Replica prop: Shaver shiv
So should you be one of the few PitcherBlacker visitors that don't regularly drop almost two grand on real Riddick props, then maybe this replica might be more up your alley. Made by longtime replica making Riddick fan Scott, it's looking pretty sweet. Click the thumbnail for a fullsize shot.
Detailed Riddick history timeline
One of the new members over at Riddickstyle made a post that pointed to this nicely detailed timeline on FanFiction.net that seems like a great guide to trying to piece together the backstory that the actual creators themselves pretty much tossed together. Great resource for 'ficcers.
Ebay props: Meccan Guard Helmet
Neat! Helmet! New Mecca! Will cost you at least 445$ UDS! Click Ebay link here!
More props: The Real Swingblades
Forget it; you can't afford these. But it'd still be sweetass to own a set of official screen-used Crematoria stunt Swingblades, second only to the goggles for recognizability. Yep, it's the Propstore again.
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Complete collection of trading cards
Here's something cool... site visitor Case Aquino sent along this photo of his complete collection of Riddick trading cards by Rittenhouse. Click the thumbnail for the fullsize shot.
Pretty sweet, I've always wanted to get a complete set but was always too afraid that my wife might find them, heh. Now get to work on the Pitch Black cards, Case!
Mikael Säker leaves Starbreeze
Well, crap. Lead writer and designer on BUTCHER BAY, Mikael Säker, has left Starbreeze and gone to work for Avalanche, according to his blog. This is too bad, as I enjoyed his Riddick-related design and game theory posts and was looking forward to similar articles on a BUTCHER BAY sequel. So with him at a different company, the Starbreeze forums dead as the developers death-march toward finishing The Darkness, and all the BUTCHER BAY artists living on LiveJournal and never posting anything about the game anyway, I guess I'm screwed for more info on the game.
Until a sequel is announced, that is!
Propmakers: closeup images of Irgun knife
The Propstore has even more TCOR prop goodies, this time the cuirass that Irgun wore, with the knife handle sticking out of the chest that Riddick placed there. The cool part is that the Propstore has some really detailed closeup shots of the handle, which should allow any enterprising propmaker to make a damn nice accurate shiv. Hint hint.
Christina Cox's show picked up for second season
I claim this as a victory for dudes. Hopefully the fansites I was dumb enough to add as friends on MySpace will quite flooding my comments with GIGANTIC images of the male costar from Blood Ties now, fer chrissakes... Proof on Variety.
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More props: Shaver shiv
Another neato prop appeared on the Propstore recently: Riddick's head shaving shiv from Helion Prime.
A rubber knife used by Riddick (Vin Diesel) in the ectrifying sequel to Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick. The character can be seen using this knife in the scene where he confronts Imam (Keith David) after landing on Helion Prime. This detailed knife is made out of rubber and has ornate designs all over it. The rubber knife would have been used in stunt sequences were a real knife was not needed due to safety factors and weigth. The knife comes custom framed with a laser cut mount board featuring two movie stills and the film’s title. Measuring 58cm x 51cm approx (23" x 20").
The knife will set you back an 'ectrifying' $1649.00.
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Incredible prop: Lensor head
Spotted a sweet new TCOR prop for sale at the Propstore of London; a motorized and illuminated Lensing Necromonger head.
Sure it's over three grand, but the lens rotates and the interior lights up! The Propstore also has a 5MB video up showing the remote-control operated lens collar moving around.
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Fernando's Riddick project lives!
Oh happy day, Fernando has started his Butcher Bay Memories project up again, allowing me to continue posting news without creating content of my own. This latest update shows a bunch of new prop photos that will most likely be used in the comic series (and fan movie).
There's also a shot there of Fernando modeling the goggles, showing that unlike some of us he wasn't spending the last month of time off elbows deep in alcohol and brownies. Good job, man. He also sent me an update of what's going on over there in Tenerife with him and his crew, plus some discussion about the props themselves.
O.k,I´m back , Mauro is actually very stressed and has no time for the comic
update but I promised you that he has all the photo material to do it,if he
finds some free time.
In my personal website you can find pics of some props used for the comic
and the new coming video.I hope you like them,everything is self made.
The orange lenses of the goggles are Oakley´s iridium onces,they give are
very cool effect.By the way I´m able to adapt any type of lens to the latex
frame.As you see I presented them with different type of textures.painted
black, black latex,etc....
And Sam Fisher´s goggles(see Splinter Cell Double Agent and compare the look
of the main character(Fisher)when he enters Elisworth penitenciary with
Vin´s.
I´m starting with the edition of Butcher Bay Memories in a couple of weeks,I
HOPE.
Thank you very much.
Well, as always, the work looks terrific and I can't wait for more pages showing that hot blonde girl more Butcher Bay Memories goodness!
Christina Cox is beautiful and deserves a job
About the only thing the PitcherBlacker MySpace Page has been any good for is getting updates from all the different fansites for Christina Cox's vampire cop show, Blood Ties. These fansites, by the way, are probably run by people working for the production company, but who cares. Anyway, I guess the show is in jeopardy of being cancelled, which tells me that the people at Lifetime must be blind. But anyway, go sign the petition even if you live somewhere that doesn't get Lifetime (which is most places) and send the message that cancelling TV shows starting hot Canadians is not ok.
Back in black, and grey, and white, and #8DD56S, and...
So I didn't update for a month... who cares. Go ahead, sue me. January through April updates have been tossed into the archive section. See ya in July!
That was a joke, btw.
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