Having just finished reading Peter Hoeg's page-turner Smilla's Sense of Snow, I was ready for The Ice Core Machine, a documentary about the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2--which from 1989 to 1993 sunk a drill over 10,000 ft. into Greenland's glacial surface and brought up a climatic record of the past 250,000 years. Written and filmed by Ned Shenton, one of the team members, the video combines interviews with scientists concerning various aspects of the project, with footage of the drill, the technology involved in running the drill, and shots of the core samples collected from Greenland's bowels. While often interesting, The Ice Core Time Machine has two big drawbacks: the camerawork and editing is often choppy, and the scientists have a tendency to ramble on in sci-tech talk that--unless your chemistry, geology, meteorology, and engineering degrees are current--tends to leave the novice out in the cold. The findings of the GISP2 project may hold important information for us all, but we may have to wait until a more general documentary presents it in layperson's terms. An optional purchase. (R. Pitman)
The Ice Core Time Machine
(1994) 30 min. $20. Aurora Productions. PPR. Color cover. Vol. 10, Issue 4
The Ice Core Time Machine
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