Tag Archives: The Razor's Edge

Diary Blog, 23 July 2023, including a few thoughts about Ukraine and about the films of The Razor’s Edge

Morning music

[Elizabeth I holds court]

Battles past

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12315645/Christian-father-removes-nine-year-old-daughter-school-horrified-taught-compulsory-sex-education-lessons.html.

https://www.gov.uk/home-education

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12326387/Teenagers-egg-police-halt-trams-force-shopkeepers-barricade-stores-end-school-celebrations-turn-mini-riot.html

Manchester. Zoo.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12327047/Murderer-stabbed-victim-24-times-fled-scene-bicycle-caught-Gatwick-trying-leave-country-jailed-life.html.

More of the fruits of “diversity”…

Peter Hitchens

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-12327383/PETER-HITCHENS-Ive-learned-one-precious-lesson-expansion-universities-failed.html

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/.

Tweets seen

I would be very glad to see Gove “scrapped” (that’s putting it politely); one of the merely five tweets which resulted in my 2016 disbarment (at the instigation of a pack of Jews calling themselves “UK Lawyers for Israel”) was that referring to Gove, entirely accurately, as a Jewish-lobby puppet and expenses cheat.

Truth is no defence, it seems, in such a case. Gove has always been in the pocket of the Jew-Zionist lobby, and as for his being an expenses cheat, the only reason he was not prosecuted in 2009 was that the rules on MP expenses were too-loosely drafted and executed. Parliament cannot even run its own affairs properly, yet purports to be able to run the country effectively.

Gove is, of course, also a drunk and a cocaine abuser, facts of which both I and the public were unaware in 2016.

Look at that photo: careerist Gove, the Jew Miliband, and mentally-unstable part-Palestinian atheist, “pansexual” and LibDem MP, Layla Moran [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layla_Moran#Personal_life], all pretending to applaud Greta Thunberg, the mentally-afflicted Swedish autistic, who has nothing to say that can help anyone or anything . Of course, that was years ago, and Greta Nut is of little interest to the public now (thankfully).

More tweets

Truth doesn’t mind being questioned“? Very true, but tell that to the Jew-Zionist lobby re. the “holocaust” farrago…

I saw an assessment by some British ex-officer that, were the Russian forces to use nuclear weapons (I presume he means tactical ones) in Ukraine, US and UK forces would respond, directly, by wiping out the Russian forces in Ukraine in 2-3 days! Really? What if Putin decided to raze all major Ukrainian cities, especially Kiev, to the ground, using larger, strategic, nuclear missiles? Would US/UK forces still enter Ukraine (presumably only by air power)?

What if the Russians were to take the “Devil’s alternative” and decided to destroy London and a few key airfields, strategic telecoms centres, and ports? At that point, there is no British Army, navy, or air force to speak of, the UK Government would no longer exist, there would be social chaos in Britain, and it would be all but irrelevant that Russian cities and military facilities would also be eliminated.

If the above were to happen, we would be in world war, “Dr. Strangelove” territory, and the USA would be involved both as target and as nuclear attacker.

This is becoming truly dangerous for avoidance of a real nuclear war, both in Europe and beyond. Are the British ruling circles, for example, really willing to risk a nuclear attack on the UK itself just because they want to deny victory to the Russian forces in eastern Ukraine?

Madness.

The Razor’s Edge

I just wasted 2 hours watching the 1984 remake of the fine 1946 film, The Razor’s Edge, which was based on a novel by Somerset Maugham.

The remake expunged entirely the character of Somerset Maugham himself, who in the 1946 version was both the unseen narrator and also seen in several scenes throughout the film (Somerset Maugham was played by Herbert Marshall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marshall).

Several changes were made, I think not very successfully, in the 1984 version: the film starts at a kind of charity fete, rather than a country club by one of the Great Lakes. The main character, Larry Darrell (played by Bill Murray in the 1984 film, but —far better— by Tyrone Power in the 1946 one) is, in the 1984 version, a former ambulance orderly home from American involvement in WW1 (in the 1946 film, he is a former WW1 American pilot).

The 1984 film leaves out, entirely, the 1946 version’s final parts set on the Cote d’Azur, and resets those scenes in Paris.

The Himalayan scenes, where Larry Darrell seeks and finds enlightenment after consulting with an Indian holy man and “abbot” of an ashram, were much more powerful in the 1946 version; the 1984 film makes the ashram a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, and the scene in which Larry Darrell is enlightened on a mountain is just not at all convincing.

I have never read the novel, but I see now from Wikipedia that Darrell’s enlightenment in the book came after encounter with a Hindu spiritual master. The 1946 film leaves it vague as to the religion of the “abbot”, but the “abbey” is described as an ashram.

Even the drink which causes the character, Sophie, to fall back into alcohol abuse, is changed from Pertsovka (pepper-and-honey vodka, called —in the French way— “persovka”, in the film) to Zubrovka (bison-grass vodka). I can only assume that that that is because Zubrovka had become well-known, whereas few people in the USA had or have heard of Pertsovka.

Personally, I would give the 1946 version 8/10 as a film, but the 1984 version 2/10.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Razor%27s_Edge; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Razor%27s_Edge_(1984_film); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Razor%27s_Edge_(1946_film)

Incidentally, the 1984 film was both a critical and commercial flop, making back only half of its production budget, whereas the original 1946 version was nominated for four Academy Awards, and won one (Anne Baxter, playing Sophie); it also won two Golden Globes. The 1946 film was not a huge success commercially, but still made back 4-5 times its production cost.

Sometimes, remakes surpass earlier versions, but rarely. In this case, the 1946 version outdoes the 1984 remake in every way: storyline, acting, music, cinematography (despite the 38-year gap). The script in particular is very crisp in the 1946 film.

Late tweets

Mozdok— Ossetia region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozdok#Military.

Macron, the NWO/ZOG puppet: see also this, from 2019— https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/09/on-recent-events-in-france/.

Sign of the coming times…

Late music

Diary Blog, 31 December 2020

Coronavirus

Just heard a story from someone; secondhand but thought reliable.

A lady in her nineties, in hospital for various matters, has apparently just been tested for “the virus” in hospital (where she had already been staying for about a month), and the test was positive.

The said person has no symptoms of “the virus” at all, but has now been put into an even more isolated ward than the one in which she had stayed for weeks. All the nurses and doctors, and I think the patients, wear masks pretty much constantly. I presume that hands are washed frequently.

The above seems to establish, at least on the balance of probabilities, that facemasks are pretty much irrelevant in terms of protection from “the virus”. Also, that the best way to get this virus is to be admitted to an NHS hospital…

Incidentally, I happened to see the comment below somewhere:

I have no idea whether that is arrant nonsense or not. It would seem to fit in with the “Great Reset”, though.

UK decadence

Two couples walk hand in hand as they make their way to a bar in central Liverpool ahead of the Tier 3 restrictions coming into force at midnight
[white women with blacks, Liverpool, 30 December 2020…]

Some aspects of contemporary Britain’s social life must be eradicated.

Ha ha!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9100835/Prince-Harry-Meghan-Markles-episode-30m-podcast-ranked-whale-noises.html

Tweets seen

Image

Belatedly, I did the quiz from last Saturday and, after the previous week’s defeat, am now again ahead of John Rentoul, who scored 5/10 this time. I myself managed 6/10. I failed on questions 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Interesting msm report from Germany

In 2008, just as Lehman Brothers imploded and the world descended into the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, Franco A. joined the army. He was 19.

In no time, he was selected as one of only a handful of German officer cadets to attend the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy in France, founded in 1802 by Napoleon.

His five years abroad included semesters at Sciences Po in Paris and King’s College London as well as at Sandhurst, one of the British Army’s premier officer training schools, and a summer session at the University of Cambridge.

In 2013, he wrote a master’s thesis, “Political Change and Strategy of Subversion.”

Over 169 pages, Franco A. argued that the downfall of great civilizations had always been immigration and the dilution of racial purity brought about by subversive minorities. Europe and the West were next in line if they did not defend themselves, he said.

Ethnically diverse societies were unstable, he wrote, and nations that allow migration were committing a form of “genocide.”

His final section posits that the Old Testament was the foundation of all subversion, a blueprint for Jews to gain global dominance. It might be, he said, “the biggest conspiracy in the history of humanity.”

Franco A. himself began stockpiling a “prepper” cellar with food rations and other supplies. He also began obtaining guns and ammunition illegally, prosecutors say.” [New York Times]

Europ erwache!

Tweets seen

Exactly. Look at the story at the head of today’s blog: an old lady, aged somewhere around 94 years old, now a statistic— a “new Covid-19 case”, because she has tested positive after a routine hospital check. In reality, that old lady has no symptoms at all, though she has lived, I am told, with several other serious medical conditions, and for some years.

That person is now part of the panicdemic narrative and will probably show up very soon in the official statistics, as part of the “second wave”, but what has changed, in reality? Nothing.

The “@amy_amorie” account is one of the best on Twitter.

The Razor’s Edge, a superb film, based on a Somerset Maugham story, and released in 1946 (there was a later, very poor, remake). A box-office flop, but an artistic triumph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Razor%27s_Edge_(1946_film)

A ghost story for New Year’s Eve

[M.R. James, A Warning to the Curious]

Afternoon music

Late music

Happy New Year