Whiteout is an Antarctic crime movie based on the comic book by Greg Rucka. Its a faithful yet plodding adaptation, combining good Antarctic detail with a leaden script and workmanlike direction.
The story is about an U.S. Marshal posted to the American base at the South Pole. A man is discovered dead in the middle of the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, and the question becomes: who killed him, and why did he die?
Watching the movie, one can’t help but assume that the production didn’t have enough money to really do justice to their subject. There are some beautiful exterior shots, but most of the action is set in the usual rooms and passageways of the studio set land.
This is a circus in a suburb of Paris this January. It huddled in the shadow of concrete apartment blocks, a long, treacherous walk from the obscure train station. Note the caravan in the darkness on the right. I don’t envy the circus people who live there in the cold.
Inside was one of the best circus shows I’ve seen. It was Czech, and it was called Obludarium, produced by Théâtre des frères Forman. The electricity was generated by the audience with hand cranks, it was very dark, and there was a heartbreaking, terrifying mermaid.
Minä ja Jussi Ahlroth tehtiin Hesariin kartoitus syyskauden peleistä. Täältä löytyy nettiin typistettyjä arvosteluja. Koko paketti hienoine Brütal Legend -pääjuttuineen ilmestyi kulttuurisivuilla 15.12.2009.
Olen kirjoittanut peliaiheista pitkään, mutta en ole vieläkään oppinut ennustamaan, mitä lausunnot aiheuttavat hätää ja ahdistusta lukijoiden keskuudessa. Kuvittelin, että Modern Warfare 2 -kommenteista saattaisi tulla jotain sanomista, mutta tän juttukokonaisuuden kiistelty näkemys koskikin Dragon Age: Originsin kehnoa visuaalista ilmettä.
Playground Worlds is the collection of articles about roleplaying games published at the 2008 Solmukohta conference. I have an article in the book as well.
Playground Worlds has finally been published online, here. Check it out, there’s a lot of good stuff in there.
Novel: James Vance Marshall: White-Out (Soho Press, 1999)
James Vance Marshall’sWhite-Out is in many ways the quintessential Antarctic novel. Its centerpiece is a long sledging journey undertaken across the Antarctic Peninsula by a group of men fighting for survival. All the usual privations from hunger to the blizzards are featured in turn.
The story starts like the usual Antarctic thriller, with Nazi submarines and a mystery discovery by a British expedition. This proves to be an illusion, and despite the self-consciously sophisticated language, it eventually becomes something profound and beautiful.
Its also fun to read a story featuring Antarctic history from the Eighties and the Nineties instead of the thoroughly explored Heroic Era around the First World War.
Photo book: Paul Nicklen: Polar Obsession (National Geographic, 2009)
Polar Obsession is a collection of photos of the polar regions from National Geographic nature photographer Paul Nicklen’s career. The most impressive thing about Nicklen’s images is the feeling of action, life, even violence they evoke. His images are not mere portraits of animals. They convey animals and environments in a state of change, of a life actually being lived moment to moment.
Nicklen’s sense of motion is impeccable. In pictures of birds and leopard seals you can almost create a little moving picture of the scene in your head. This is especially impressive in his images of dangerous animals like leopard seals. It feels like his camera is always where it whould be, high up in the air or within inches of the roaring seal’s teeth.
National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen explains how a leopard seal tried to teach him to catch and eat penguins in the waters off the coast of Antarctica:
The British ex- video game reviewer, tv critic and tv writer Charlie Brooker has this to say about the much-hyped war game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:
The previous Modern Warfare title featured a chilling level set in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion during which the player could do nothing but crawl agonizingly through the flaming carnage for a few moments before expiring with a gasp. Modern Warfare 2’s big attention-grabbing setpiece is a terrorist atrocity in an airport in which the player (taking the role of an undercover agent) reluctantly takes part. It’s upsetting, chilling and horrifying.
You’re supposed to be upset and chilled and horrified, of course – so on that level it succeeds. But if you must directly evoke the Mumbai massacre, it’s probably best to do so with good reason. Since the rest of the game is effectively a dumb Tom Clancy romp (full of characters who say things like “I’ll see you in hell”), it feels jarringly misplaced, like a cartoonish Bond movie containing a 20-minute scene in which Blofeld tortures his cat to death. Ultimately it’s only there to make the game’s main villain seem more “villainy”. Not good enough.
Check out this short film about dating in the age of the Internet. It’s called Turing Machine. One of the people who made it is the photographer Katri Lassila, a good friend. It’s in Finnish.
