Month: August 2008

Antarctic Research Blog #70: Virus

 

Virus

Film: Kinji Fukasaku: Virus (Japan, 1980)

Virus is an Eighties catastrophe movie about a virus that kills everyone on Earth except for the people living on Antarctic bases. Its definitely a Cold War movie, with the Americans and Russians sharing the blame for the apocalypse that follows.

As sometimes happens with catastrophe movies, this one doesn’t really have any main character, but instead focuses on the effect of the virus first on the world and then on the Antarctic community.

The main thing to like here were the values. Its a wholly pacifist movie, casting the main world powers in a dangerous, possibly psychotic light, espousing the necessity of cooperation if we are to survive. Its dated now that the Cold War is long over, but you can still appreciate the sentiment for the time it was made.

Married for the third time…

 

…to the same woman. On Friday the 15th of August, I got married to Maria Pettersson in Vanha kirkko, Helsinki.

(The two previous marriages were in Las Vegas on the 7th of July, 2007 and in the Helsinki magistrate office shortly after that.)

The wedding was as perfect as it could have been.

I made a short video for the party, entitled Murmeli pitää puheen häissä (The Marmot makes a speech at the wedding),  photo composite, 01:51.

Post-Ropecon

 

Ropecon is over for now. I saw a lot of interesting programs, didn’t manage to see a lot of stuff I’d wanted to, and held a few program items of my own. My Roolipelaaja presentation experienced almost insurmoutable technical difficulties, but my larp Lumimyrsky (Snowstorm) went well. I’ll put up documentation from the game shortly. Meanwhile, here’s a photo from the game, by Niklas Vainio:

Lumimyrsky 1 500px