Headhunted

'Headhunters' by Jo Nesbo - the gritty thriller has been made into a film.
 

Roger Brown works as one of the most powerful corporate headhunters in Norway. To support his overly extravagant lifestyle, he is also an art thief using the information he gains from interviewing clients to break into their homes. With his friend, the gun toting security employee Ove Kjikerud, they replace the originals with forgeries, which go undetected at least until the trail back to the thieves goes cold. His outward bravado masks his insecurities, especially in his short physical stature. He feels he needs that confident demeanor and wealth to get what he wants, including his beautiful art gallery owner wife Diana. As such, he has a mistress on the side named Lotte. The issue of having a baby - Diana wants to get pregnant while Roger doesn't want her to - is another bone of contention in their marriage. The two sides of Roger's professional life intersect when Diana introduces him to Clas Greve.

Clas Greve, a former elite soldier and executive in the electronics business, is in possession of a missing Rubens painting. A painting whose heist would permanently rid Roger of his financial problems.
But Clas is playing a game of his own. When Roger breaks into Greve's house, it changes his life completely, and soon forces him to run for his life...

The serenity of a Norwegian wood, but trouble lurks below

There are plenty of bloody gore scenes as the body count climbs, but there’s also the humour: the twin police officers in the hospital, the toilet scene, the police radio calls.

This is my second Scandinavian thriller-film (after the Stieg Larsson ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo’ – so much better than the Daniel Craig version) from Yellow Bird Films, and apparently this story too has had the rights for a Hollywood remake taken up. So after I ignored the Norwegian and concentrated on the sub-titles, I really got involved with the fast-paced plot and many unusual and unexpected  twists.

The film stars Nicolai Coaster-Waldau as the suave Clas Greve, and Aksel Hennie as the diminutive Roger Brown, when you first meet him you think small person’s disease, but as the action ramps up you have to feel for the guy, he can’t take a trick, but in the end he has schemed with the best of them. The gift of the film is its ability to change your perceptions of the two main characters as the story progresses – you begin to empathise with Roger as his inferiority complex insecurities take a back seat, while the increasingly silent Clas becomes more sinister.

You just know this isn't going to end well

The film is well executed by its director Morten Tyldum who escalates the graphic action scenes while counterbalancing the comic undertones that are present in some of these scenes - a device which can fail dismally, but here is the success of the film.
The 'Headhunters' DVD has an MA15+ rating for its strong violence and sex scenes.

Shedding light

It was the cover of 'Around the sheds' which first captivated me, and then when I flicked through the pages I was won over.

Andrew's desire was to document an aspect of Australian life that is disappearing altogether.Over the years he has photographed shearing sheds and the people working in and around them poignantly revealing their design, the flow of work from harvest to pressing, and the evolution of technology and innovation in the industry. He began this project with an urgency described by others photographing abandoned places never knowing when their subjects may be destroyed before being recorded. 

Innovation - hand-made gate at Angorichina

Andrew says "In my photographic odyssey, I am taking you on a visual journey where much has changed from thoses early days, yet so much remains the same."

Angorichina Station is east of Blinman in the Flinders Ranges. The working sheep station has been in the Fargher Family for four generations, and is now also an exclusive outback lodge accommodation.  The woolshed, still in use, is a timber slab shed built of native Flinders pine.

The octagonal Deeargee shed near Uralla, Armidale region, N.S.W.

Deeargee woolshed is unique, it was part of the vast Gostwyck property, one of the first sheep runs established on the New England tablelands in 1831. The original 1852 shed was destroyed in an arson attack in 1872, and Henry Dangar then built an octagonal blade shed. In 1888-89 an extension was added to accommodate 27 new shearing machines, and a brick bale storage section in 1903.

Kinchega station is now part of a national park on the Darling River near Menindee in Outback New South Wales. However the 1875 shearing shed still with its blade and machine stands, wool presses and tables, machinery room and  original steam engines. The red gum and galvanised iron building  provided for 64 shearer stands in 2 rows. The last sheep was shorn at Kinchega in May 1967 when the pastoral lease of the property expired. The western section of the original woolshed has been demolished. You can stay in Kinchega's shearer's quarters or camp near the river.

Old steam engine boiler, Kinchega woolshed, Menindee

Andrew will be conducting a talk and exhibition of his work at the St Arnaud Library at 7:30pm on 31st January.
Check out more at Andrew's site -

Steam returns to Dim

I'm still playing with 'now and then' photos, so when a copy of Shane McCarthy's "Patterns of steam" passed my desk at a time when I was recording local railway stations, well, these photos were the result - 

The black and white image from December 1968, is of the K154 steam loco shunting in the Dimboola yard on now disused tracks. On the right is the now dismantled signal box proclaiming the stop as Dimboola. The pedestrian bridges, station building and silos still exist, but the goods shed has been removed.

Also from the wonderful "Patterns of steam" was this one of Kaniva. Here the J555 pauses at Kaniva with a Dimboola-Serviceton goods train in December 1967. Again the changes are evident, the trees have grown, the station building is now boarded up and abandoned, and not visible but behind the empty wagons is a silo complex. Also as at Dimboola, only the main Melbourne-Adelaide track is in service, the others rusting away.