News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Saturday December 27th 2025
Paradise
“Paradise” (2016)
*****
A riveting story about a young Russian aristocrat, Olga (Yuliya Vysotskaya), is sent away to a concentration camp where she faces unspeakable circumstances. She has joined the French Resistance to save as many Jews as she can from extermination only to be captured and interrogated for the “crime” of hiding Jewish children.
Olga meets a handsome man, Khelmut (Christian Clauss), at an outing in the 1930s.They would meet again only this time the man is an upcoming German SS officer who is even invited to Heinrich Himmer”'s (Viktor Sukhorukov) suite. Khelmut and Olga rekindle their love from the earlier time. To her surprise, he offers her an escape route at the time the Nazis are beginning to realize defeat may be near. However, what seems to be a window of escape becomes more communicated. (Lushly filmed in black and white.)
Cast: Yuliya Vysotskaya (Olga), Plilippe Duquesne (Zhyul), Christian Clauss (Khelmut), Jean Deni Romer (Shulman), Jakob Diehl (Fogel), George Lenz, Irinda Demidkina (Okhrannitsa Tyurmy), Caroline Pietta Zhyustina), Anna- Mariya Danilenko (Babish), Vera Voronkova (Roza),Yaroslav Khimchenko, Anastasiya Serova. Running time:130minutes.Languages: German, Hungarian, French, Yiddish with English subtitles. Cinematographer: Aleksandr Simonov.
Related Images:
Frank Reflections – May 2017
BY FRANK ERICKSON
How can the forced removal of a doctor from an airplane get more press coverage and national outrage than a U.S. missile attack on Mosul, Iraq that killed 140 civilians? It appears the world revolves around America.
And then the U.S. government drops a 22,000 pound bomb on Afghanistan. They can”'t be stupid enough to believe that such a bomb is going to pave a path to peace.
The government wants “war,” the confusion, the madness, and the broken-hearted desperate acts of those seeking revenge. The U.S. government wants to provoke and incite more enemies. What else is a 22,000 pound bomb about? They provoke to get a violent response as justification to use their military violence to control and dominate the world.
The U.S. government”'s behavior is proof they want enemies. They want to stir it up, but with only those that are defenseless.
Related Images:
Keep citizen journalism alive!
Beyond Word Magic
In The Alley Newspaper April 2017 issue, nestled between front page columns authored by good neighbors, a letter from the President of the United States was found! If overwhelming disdain did not prevent the reading, the ensuing wall of cognitive dissonance was likely to cut it short. Yet, I read on and on”¦to discover, deep on page 8, the credit to a former president, Dwight Eisenhower.
“Hey, that was his ”˜beware of the military industrial complex speech,”'” replied the editor. Okay, I sort of get that. Bush-type presidents have big investments in arms production, so we fought Osama in Iraq, or something like that, making jobless generals to build an Isis with enough poison gas to create false flags in Syria (see what Daddy can do!).
However, check out Ike, line 1: “Throughout America”'s adventure in free government”¦” Oh, gosh, golly. In the beginning , white property holders convened to establish the rule of law (in preference to the practice of gun duels). Such was the origin of “bourgeois-democracy.” Then later, in stages, more or less the rest of us won the right to vote, even as the money power ruled on, more or less. So, to make my point, a modern capitalist state unfettered by democratic constraint, would be a fascist state”¦yes then, we would have a “free government!”… Read the rest “Beyond Word Magic”