Siberia, Antartica, and taking picures

Last night I watched TransSiberian, the excellent thriller by indie director Brad Anderson, with Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, Eduardo Noriega, and Sir Ben Kingsley. It is a Catalan production, which is interesting--Barcelona is one of my favorite cities, and they support independent artists to a degree that not many other cities can match. It starts out in Beijing and most of the action takes place on a train crossing through the vast snowscape of Siberia. [Digression: I had heard about it from some friends when it came out in August, then sort of forgot about it. We have a BluRay disk player and a massive 50 inch plasma screen, and after my husband rented WALL.E (which is available in BluRay) the other night but forgot and got the regular DVD, I was determined to find a BluRay movie last night. TransSiberian was the only thing I could find that was interesting that I hadn't seen. I hope the BluRay production picks up soon. It really is a lot better.] I read some reviews of the film after seeing it, and without giving away the plot, let me just say that most of the reviewers seem to be focused on the marital relationship and have missed the fact that it is about chicas malas, as Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) calls them, surviving some pretty grim shit. Woody Harrelson is great, and his character is way more complex than I was prepared for, given my cultural bias against mid-western Christian missionaries.

Emily Mortimer plays Jessie, who has a nice digital Canon, and she takes a lot of pictures. Although she claims it is just a hobby, it seems like it is what she cares about most. The film shows views through her camera's viewfinder as she focuses (literally) on people, and the pictures are almost her undoing as well as her salvation. But what concerned me was the fact that she would go from the overheated train out to the sub-zero station platforms and take photos--wouldn't the lens steam up? wouldn't the memory chip freeze? Sorry, I've always been like this, always looking at practical realities.

I thought about my friend, Lisa Blatt, who is in Antarctica, taking pictures. And then this morning I got an e-mail from her with three photos! She says it is a challenge, and the glass on her 4x5 has broken, twice. But today she has e-mail, and we had a conversation.