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The Sauna trailer has just been released on Twitch Film, and it’s pretty damn awesome!

Check out more info from Sauna website here.

(This is about a local happening for local people, so the entry is in Finnish. This year among UFO speakers there is an lecture by radical enviromental philosopher Pentti Linkola who I recommend you to read more about.)

Tämän vuoden Uforock järjestetään Tampereen ravintola Telakalla 26.4.

Päiväluennot klo 13-17, 2. krs, ilmainen

* Pierre-Andre Dorzas (Sveitsi): RAELin kontakti ja viesti ihmiskunnalle.
* Jaakko Närvä: Seksi ja erotiikka ufokokemuksissa.
* Pentti Linkola: Mitä on todellinen luonnonsuojelu.

Uforock klo 21.30-02, Liput 5 €

* KLAUS
* Huippu stand-up show
* JANN WILDE & NEON COMETS
* NURKOSTAM plays RUSH

Illalla on viime vuoden kokemusten perusteella luvassa hyvää musiikkia ja hyvää meininkiä, mutta mielenkiintoisin osuus on ehdottomasti päiväohjelma. Viime vuonna esiintymässä oli Juhan Af Grannin ja lopunaikojen tutkija Teijo-Kalevi Lusan ohella meikäläinen puhumassa elokuvien tekemisestä ja erikoistehosteista. Tänä vuonna aiheena on seksi ja erotiikka ufo-kokemuksissa, Raelilainen ufo-uskonto sekä ufottomana puhujana ympäristöfilosofi Pentti Linkola.

Linkola tunnetaan lähinnä valtakunnan ekofasistina, on hän yksi aikamme tärkeimpiä Suomalaisia filosofeja. Vaikka hänen kanssaan ei voisikaan olla samaa mieltä siitä miten asioihin tulisi reagoida, on hän jo vuosikymmeniä nostanut esille epämiellyttäviä totuuksia luonnon kantokyvyn ylittämisestä.

Voimme sanoa Linkolan olevan väärässä hänen kannattaessaan ihmiskunnan joukkotuhoa, mutta voimme vain toivoa, että hän olisi väärässä uskoessaan sen oleva ainoa tapa varmistaa luonnon ja sitä kautta ihmiskunnan selviytyminen lajina.

Tamperelaiset antifasistit ovat myöskin yrittäneet saada Linkolalle porttikieltoa Telakalle hänen “ekonatsisminsa” vuoksi. Vaikka en olekaan samaa mieltä Linkolan kanssa keinoista, aion käydä kuuntelemassa mitä hänellä on sanottavaa syistä.

Finland’s most prominent rock band Poets of the Fall has just released their new album, Revolution Roulette. To get a taster of POTF’s new album, go and visit their MySpace page and listen the song Ultimate Fling.

To those not familiar with Poets of the Fall, they popped up for stardom by doing the wonderful end credits song for Max Payne 2, Late Goodbye.

(As much as I know that this blogpost will be getting the biggest amounts of spam ever, because it has the word ‘Sauna’ in it (foreign spambots obviously think that it’s somehow sex-related…) - our previous spam-magnet has been Atte’s post “Itävaltalaisessa saunassa“, I’m still happy to be writing about it. :)

The Bronson Club -guys have started blogging about their adventures in making the scariest horror-film ever, Sauna. It’s an interesting journey, they are right at this moment shooting in Prague, burning barns and all that… So if you want to have a good view on the production of an interesting film, that’s a good place to start.

Sauna blog.

If there is something we’ve learned when learning all we can about the Nazis, it is how incredibly easy it is to take freedoms away and how sane the reasoning will sound. Unfortunately, recent events here in Finland have reminded me about all this.

After living in a free society for two decades people start to take their freedom for granted. They forget why things like freedom of speech and universal human rights are needed, and instead see censorship as a solution to their fears. Fed a steady diet of tabloids and Most Shocking Sexual Parking Violations on late night TV they see bogeymen under their beds and demand that their rights be taken away.

Now what does this have to do with anything? Well, the previous government of Finland, one of the most free societies on Earth, and with the best of intentions of course, enacted an Internet censorship law. In theory it was meant to make it harder to profit on the exploitation of children.

In practice, we get a secret list of “illegal” websites, put together by an unnamed, unsupervised bureaucrat. The blocking of this list is “voluntary”, but it was made clear that unless ISP’s complied it would be made mandatory.

After Matti Nikki published the list and criticised it for consisting of almost exclusively of ordinary porn sites that were not illegal, his site was added to the list and he was charged with aiding in the distribution of illegal pornography. This led to a public outcry that revealed some rather scary facts about the system. The sites are blocked based on domain. According to the police, one link to a site that the unnamed bureaucrat considers to be child porn will lead to the entire domain being blocked.

This means that a single spam link to a “suspicious” site on a forum or buried in blog comments could get a whole domain blocked. However, Google is excluded because according to police “it is a browser, not a site”. Webmasters (or the local law enforcement) are not notified and since the list is secret the only way to notice the block is to try and access the site. There is no real way to appeal the decision, only an email link (that initially didn’t even work) on the page that tells you that you tried to access an illegal site.

Simply put, one unnamed individual was given absolute power to block an entire country from accessing a website and label it child pornography. There is no way for anyone else to review the decisions and people who have spoken against this method of censorship have been accused of being child molesters. The minister of Communications basically reacts to criticism by sticking her fingers in her ears and going “Think of the children! Think of the children!”

Furthermore, this law is not only a question of freedom of speech, it’s a question of computer security. There are huge holes in the implementation that make the system a perfect tool for abuse, not only by the people running it, but by malicious individuals intent on harming the business and reputation of sites. And now that the filtering system is in place, there are already demands that it should also be used to block access to gambling sites and sites that violate copyright (the recording industry demands that Pirate Bay should be blocked, like in Denmark).

The good thing is that thanks to Matti Nikki there is now a public discussion and a demonstration that just started at the Parliament. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and people again remember that the end does not justify the means.

(This post is in Finnish, and it’s about Finnish manga Oblivion High, that’s gonna be out soon. And it rocks.)

Ihan hiljattain putkahti sähköpostiin toimittajana uraa tehneeltä, Wreckin ruotsinkääntäjänäkin ansioituneelta Johanna Koljoselta vihjettä siitä, että häneltä on pukkaamassa kotimainen viisiosainen mangasarja Oblivion High. Empiiriset kokeet osoittavat, että Wreckereistä moni on myös mangusti, ja kotimainen manga tuskin on mikään ovista ja ikkunoista tursuileva ilmiö, ajattelin siitä täälläkin kertoa - ja kun tiedän, miten hemmetin hyvä kirjoittaja Johanna on, en voi kun suositella niille, joita aihepiiri kiinnostaa, tsekkaamaan setit ulos, kuten ameriikan maalla tavataan sanoa, saisikohan tähän vielä pari sivulausetta, ihan vaan kun vauhtiin päästiin.

Tässä vielä pieni minitiiseri tuloillaanolevasta sarjasta. Julkaisupäivä ekalle osalle on 31.3.08.

EDIT: Ja koko traileri löytyy tästä:

First teaser for AJ Annila’s Sauna has been released. There’s also a teaser website with a retroish text adventure/choose-your-own-story type of game. With more videos at the end for those who finish the game.

And yeah, we’re working with the same producers as Sauna, but it means that we’ve got a look at the script. It’s good.

Fresh from Facebook, the first picture from AJ Annila’s upcoming horror film Sauna. Tero (the producer) showed us a three minute promo yesterday and the film is looking really good.

2008 will be a bloody interesting year for Finnish movies. After decades of kitchen drama there are four Finnish horror films coming this year. First up is Dark Floors, the Lordi film on 8th of February. Without a set date are Sauna, Skeleton Crew from the makers of Kohtalon Kirja (who are practically our neighbors being based in Ylöjärvi) and the zombies in WWII film Stone’s war.