Steven Seagal vs huskies and Lego hair

Love him or hate him, Steven Seagal tries hard, he tries really hard. It's probably fair to say the actor/producer/director/martial artist/guitarist/activist/deputy sheriff isn't blessed with cinema goers racing to see his latest flick. But like I said, the guy puts in the effort, albeit taking himself maybe a little too seriously.

Back at the peak of his career he could have really excelled. As a former Navy Seal taking on a group of mercenaries on a US navy battleship, Under Seige was his first big break. The film made him a household name, a fresh face in the celluloid industry that had people stopping and paying attention to this unknown and mysterious martial arts guru. But without sounding too harsh here, Seagal's choice of future films were like going on a second date with someone and realising the charisma and charm that was evident the first date is all but gone, leaving you thinking "what the heck did I see in them before?". Not that I'm saying Seagal was a romantic fascination or even a pin up stud to me, but audiences and myself had sobered up and promptly lost interest.

The studios were thrilled with the box office success of Under Seige, offering Seagal the sequel Under Seige 2. Seagal agreed, but only on the condition he could make and produce a film about Eskimos in Alaska. Eskimos? The studios didn't quite share the same enthusiasm, but Seagal was adamant and the film On Deadly Ground went ahead, despite skepticism from critiques and studios alike. To them it was simply career suicide. It was the equivalent of Jake Gyllenhaal deciding to make 'Teletubbies: The Movie' after the success of Brokeback Mountain.

However On Deadly Ground is so bad, that it's actually is quite good. The classic made-for-TV film that is often quite amusing, but for all the wrong reasons. Micheal Caine sporting blacker than black lego hair being just one of numerous reasons. Not simply content with peppering the plot with Seagal trademarks like knife wielding, semi automatic weapon handling and a frown that would snap a chopstick, Seagal wanted the film to have a heavy environmental message throughout. Our treat for the end of the film (once you get past the bad wire stunt work, angry huskies and hallucinogenic eskimo dream sequence), has Seagal's character, 'Forrest Taft', delivering a speech on pollution, corporate greed and the general fragility of Mother Earth. With oil rig villains dispatched, this is the poignant moment people, so pay attention. The speech was intended to be over 10 minutes long and thankfully was reduced to 4 minutes. Despite it's best efforts to captivate and educate, it was drowned out by the sound of seats flapping as the majority of the audience got up to leave the screening in complete disinterest. Oh dear.

See it and weep On Deadly Ground speech

Seagal doing the rounds

Golf buggie chase and movie pitch in the Orange ad
One for the ears Songs from the Crystal Cave
On TV Lawman

Like the illustration? Check out another here

Illustration: katejonesdesign.co.uk

Horizon Field: Antony Gormley

Famed for his remarkable Asian Field installation, Antony Gormley has created 100 life-size human figures to stand in solitary splendor in the Austrian Alps. As part of a two year art project in the ski resort of Lech in western Austria, the figures (made of cast iron) will populate 58 sq miles of some of Austria's most stunning scenery. Several figures are accessible by foot and when the winter season starts, can only be reached by skis. Just don't rely on them knowing the way back to the chalet.

Horizon Field in construction

To find out more about Horizon Field which has been put together by Kunsthaus Bregenz Museum, visit the website here.

Nacho Gil

Wonderful collection titled The Animals by Argentinean designer/artist Nacho Gil. Love the simple but beautiful execution of these graphical designs. My favourite? Has to be the snow leopard of course.

Eat the peas, or get stuffed

It would appear (according to scientific research) that the ice caps from the Antarctic are receding at an alarming rate. Evidently they have receded so much that polars bears have resorted to camping out in home freezers; in Birds Eye's latest ad campaign, a polar bear (albeit stuffed) is found exactly in that way. The ad takes on a slight hint of menace with the stuffed toy, voiced by Willem Defoe, pointing out to a housewife about her choice of frozen foods. 'You got it wrong again, didn't you...' is the (sorry for the pun) chilling tone set here. Talk about making the consumer feel like they have the brain size of an amoeba. The new campaign is far removed from the days of old Cap'n Birds Eye, but then again those ads seemed to have a whiff of 'the kid on santa's lap in the shopping centre'. A wise decision to move away from.

Agency: AMV.BBDO

View the peas advert here

View the fish fingers advert here

Star Wars galaxy

I came across Justin Van Genderen who's created simple but stunning poster art of the iconic planets found in a galaxy far far away.

Blurb books

You may have already come across this site but blurb.com has come up with a great idea to enable you to create your very own album as a printed book. There's a choice of paper, cover finishes and book sizes. The larger the book the more you pay, but it also means you could produce one for as little as £2.95 if you wished.

To get started, you download Blurb's software Booksmart and install it on your Mac/PC. It's more intuitive to use than some other online album publishing programs out there and as the software's not used via a browser you're not at the mercy of the internet suddenly cutting out on you.

I had a stab at using Blurb's software and put together a collection of snaps taken from skiing. There's a pretty good selection of templates to drag your images into to create your pages, allowing you to feature images or text or a combination of both to work up your spreads.

I was pleasantly surprised with the finished results, and personally it beats burying snaps under cheap pocket sleeves when you can show off images impressively across a spread for that 'oooh' reaction.

2010 Winter Olympics

Here's a brilliant animation that made me stop munching my supper and watch with fascination. The brains behind this were Studio AKA which follows a masked figure and his quest across a stark black and white winter landscape. Our protagonist finds himself hunted by wolves, jumping across wide chasms, speeding down ice slide runs, curling a rock at a bear of gigantic proportions, and fixing broken inukshuks along the way. Absolute gold stuff!

Watch the video here.

White planet

Another glorious set of images courtesy of the guardian www.guardian.co.uk/inpictures. There's an abundance of gems in the latest album but I've picked out a few that I think, quite frankly, are stunning satellite views of the earth.

The Mid-Atlantic states were completely white on 20 December 2009. The storm deposited between 12 and 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC on 19 December, according to the National Weather Service. For many locations, the snowfall totals broke records for the most snow to fall in a single December day. Photograph: Aqua/MODIS/NASA

The late-December snowstorm that left a swath of white across the south-central United States on 25 December, 2009, and covered the Texan town of Snyder. Photograph: EO-1/NASA

Nunavut territory in the Canadian Arctic, a shallow extension of the Atlantic Ocean. Due to the low elevation of the sun at this time of the year, the top of the image appears very dark. The position of the low sun gives the clouds in the upper part of the image a reddish tint. Photograph: AATSR/Envisat/ESA