Review of Hitchcock, Directed by Sacha Gervasi By KENDRICK KUO The opening scene of Hitchcock met with erupting laughter from the theater audience. Ed Gein—the inspiration for the novel Psycho—killed his brother with a shovel to the head in a most comedic way; after which the camera panned to Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) who speaks directly to the audience and prepares them to go behind the scenes of the making of the Psycho movie. The film captures a slice of... Read more
Review of Life of Pi, Directed by Ang Lee By KENDRICK KUO Life of Pi asks big questions but leaves audiences with few answers. This latest Ang Lee movie is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Yann Martel, which already had a large readership before Lee announced the upcoming film release. Life of Pi tells the story of Piscine Molitor Patel who grows up in India, where his father owns a zoo. He changes his name to “Pi” to... Read more
Review of Network, Directed by Sidney Lumet Reviewed by PAUL D. MILLER Before Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, before Keith Olbermann and Chris Mathews; there was Howard Beale. With astonishing prescience, Network (1976)—the story of an angry-man newscaster—prefigured almost all the tropes about media celebrities four years before CNN, twelve years before Limbaugh, twenty years before Fox News, and thirty years before Twitter. Howard Beale is a normal, boring newscaster who is fired for poor ratings. During one of his... Read more
Review of Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre By COYLE NEAL Despite winning both the Hugo (1979) and Nebula (1978) awards, despite the fact that it’s incredibly well-written with a fast-paced plot set in a deeply imaginative world, and despite the fact that it is one of the most thoughtful expositions of second-wave feminism ever turned into a novel; you’ve probably never heard of the book Dreamsnake. In part, this isn’t your fault—the book hasn’t done well in print (though there’s a... Read more
A reflection on Mark Richard’s House of Prayer No. 2 By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER Here at Schaeffer’s Ghost, we’re all about “watching books, reading films.” Mark Richard’s House of Prayer No. 2 walks the line: It’s a book about a writer who’s authored a screenplay (2008’s war drama, Stop-Loss, which I reviewed here). But it’s much more than that. House of Prayer No. 2 is not a book about movies, nor does it focus on screenwriting, although Richard’s screenplay plays a... Read more
A Review of Lincoln, Directed by Steven Spielberg By PAUL D. MILLER There is a scene near the end of Steven Spielberg’s luminescent new film Lincoln in which the President paces the White House alone waiting for news of the House of Representatives’ vote on the 13 Amendment, which will abolish slavery once and for all. It is the moment that will solidify his legacy and ensure the Civil War was fought for something worthwhile. Bells begin ringing across the... Read more
Review of All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot By ALEXIS NEAL First things first: If you have never read this book, read it. I’m not kidding. You can watch the television series, if you like—it’s quite good—but please read it as well. I’m sure they have copies at your local library, and at bookstores (of course, whether they still have bookstores may be another matter entirely). You can even read it on your Kindle. Just read it. You... Read more
Review of The Christian World of the Hobbit by Devin Brown By COYLE NEAL Based on my limited experience, there seem to be two kinds of Tolkien scholars. The first sort are those who truly love and delight in his works and want to know more—they want to plumb the depths of Middle Earth and relish the world he has created. The second sort are those who disdain his writings, and want to kill the joy of others in reading... Read more
Review of Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child By COYLE NEAL A series of murders haunts the New York Museum of Natural History’s “Superstition” exhibition before it even opens. A primeval Amazonian terror stalks the labyrinthine corridors of the ancient edifice, and it’s up to an unlikely cast of characters to find the beast and stop it before it kills again. And this is an unlikely cast, which lends a good deal of charm to what would otherwise be... Read more
Review of Skyfall, Directed by Sam Mendes By ALEXIS NEAL M has a problem. Someone has stolen MI6’s list of all NATO agents embedded in terrorist cells around the world. (Obviously this someone was a big fan of Mission: Impossible.) And it would appear the same someone has a personal vendetta against her—someone with a gift for computer wizardry. Someone who is perpetually two steps ahead of MI6’s best agents. Obviously, this is a situation that calls for Bond. But... Read more
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