Whiteout is out at the cinema right now, starring Kate Beckinsale and getting alright-ish reviews. But I’ve had that glorious image in my head since I first saw it – for two reasons.
First – it’s a really impressive poster, visually stunning. And so cold.
Second – it’s utterly, completely wrong as far as I see it.
Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber’s murder mystery graphic novel that the film is based on is a rather excellent book, a variation on the classic locked room murder – after all, if there’s a murder in the Antarctic that just makes the locked room the most barren and deadly continent in the world. In Marshal Carrie Stetko they’ve got a ballsy, damaged leading lady seeking to find a murderer before the dark Antarctic winter closes in. On top of that the writer and artist combine to create a truly alien setting; bleak, barren and cold, oh so cold. But not the sort of cold that’s in the poster, not an icy cold. The cold in Whiteout comes from snow, not ice. That’s what whiteout means.
But it’s still a nice poster.
(You can read the first 30 odd pages of Whiteout here at the Oni Press website.)
September 18th, 2009 at 8:10 am
I like the poster, it looks a lot like the cover of Geraldine McCaughrean’s fab novel, The White Darkness, also set in Antarctica.