This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"! Starting in May 2016, many of the reviews for new feature films have been done on a hosted Wordpress site, and this blog now mostly does shorts and older films.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
"Headhunters": in Norway, a little man wants to have it all, not always legitimately; socialism doesn't end greed
“Headhunters” (“Hodedegerne”, 2011, directed by Morten
Tyldum, Norway), from Yellow Bird, is an action European-Scandanavian thriller
in the style of the original “Dragon Tattoo” movies. It is based on a crime novel by Jo Nesbo, of
the same name. The author’s output of
bestsellers would give new fiction authors reason to ponder just does sell big
with the public, in this case, in Europe.
People in information technology, of course, think of "headhunters" as agency entrepreneurs who call them about jobs in other companies.
In the beginning, the protagonist, Roger Brown (Aksel
Hennie) is not that admirable. He wants
to make up for his short stature (66 inches) by having it all. He works as a “headhunter” for companies, and
one particular candidate Ove (Elvin Sander), a dishonest employee at a security
company, has his own kind of headhunting in mind. Roger has a side business, stealing rare art
work for rich clients. (That reminds me
of the character “Gentle”, an art forger for openers, in Clive Barker’s novel “Imajica”,
which may soon be a TV series; don’t
know if there was any cross-inspiration.) Roger is troubled by his wife’s (Diana, played
by Synnove Micody Lund) need for a baby and inability to satisfy it, and the
possibility she cheats. But Roger also
cheats himself. Roger embarks on an adventure to get Ove to help him steal a
particular work.
At the end, there may well be progeny. But you wonder if Roger had this kind of self-concept problem, how did he have enough libido to attract a taller wife and marry anyway? People hadn't become particularly important to him.
There is a lot in this movie to look at. The locker room scene where Roger notices Ove’s
scars; then the sequence where Roger
finds Ove poisoned in his car, tries to dispose of him and finds a cold lake
revives him, and then shoots him “accidentally” anyway. (The “milk” reference might have come from “Twin
Peaks”.) The after the big mountain car
chase and wreck, Roger pretends to be dead himself, and then later shaves his
head, thinking there are nanotechnology transmitters in his scalp hair. He looks like the alien of the opening scene
of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”.
There is also mention of an odd cream that is applied to the
skin under clothes (maybe the chest) with nanotransmitters (maybe with carbon
nanotubes?). Maybe this could be used as
a kind of Holter device for heart patients.
If this really exists, it offers real ideas for future movie plots.
The official site is here. The movie can be rented on YouTube for
$2.99.
The (Netflix) DVD from Magnolia has a featurette showing the
filming, and the elaborate preparations for the mountain accident scene.
Wikipedia attribution link for "Geirangerfjord from
Ørnesvingen, 2013 June" by Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) - Own work. Licensed
under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
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