Review of Total Recall, Directed by Len Wiseman By COYLE NEAL “But it irks me, Lord, to link that phase of my existence with my present life, the life I live now in this world; I do not remember passing through it, I have to rely on the reports of others concerning it…”[i] Augustine wrote those words thinking about his infancy, asking whether or not his identity is affected by a period in his life which he cannot remember. The... Read more
Review of Total Recall, Directed by Len Wiseman By ALEXIS NEAL Factory worker Doug Quaid is dissatisfied with his lot. He lives in a miserable post-apocalyptic world that is sharply divided along economic lines. What remains of humanity is crammed into two vastly overcrowded zones—the United Federation of Britain, home of the haves, and what is known as the Colony (modern day Australia), home of the have-nots. Every day he takes ‘The Fall’ through the center of the earth to... Read more
Review of Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle By COYLE NEAL In my college Epic Poetry class, I was given the assignment of writing a new Canto to Dante’s Inferno. I had two ideas that seemed equally appealing, so I stuck them both into my own three-page masterpiece of undergraduate prosy. First, being the unique and creative individual that I am, I thought that Hitler probably deserved a place in hell. Rather than simply stick him with the suicides... Read more
Review of The Dark Knight Rises, Directed by Christopher Nolan By KENDRICK KUO In continuation of Alexis and Paul’s tracing of Christian themes in blockbuster action films, I’d like to add my own voice. Both have argued for the power of Christian mythology (in the true, Narnian sense of the term) in the storyteller’s craft. Tales that touch us most deeply are those that echo the Great Story and its handmaiden themes. With this, I am in full agreement. Paul... Read more
Review of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens By PAUL D. MILLER “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anyone else, these pages must show.” I immediately liked the tenor of the book from the first sentence. Dickens is very funny—I loved the witty asides—and some of the writing, in particular that chapter about the storm in which Ham is killed near the end of the book,... Read more
Review of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis By ALEXIS NEAL A devotional classic, dating from the 1400s, this book has been published into almost every language, and some argue that it is the most widely read devotional work next to the bible. The author (generally accepted to be Thomas à Kempis, a 15th Century German monk), takes the reader through the various spheres of life and admonishes and encourages the reader to, well, imitate Christ in each of these areas. In one sense,... Read more
Review of The Dark Knight Rises, Directed by Christopher Nolan By PAUL D. MILLER What do you get when someone rewrites A Tale of Two Cities, sets it in modern-day New York with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis underneath, turns Robespierre into a drug-addled terrorist warlord modeled on Darth Vader, and ends it with an apotheosis copied straight from Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus? You get The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Christopher Nolan’s Batman finale is one of the most ambitious, sophisticated, and... Read more
Review of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Directed by Alison Klayman By KENDRICK KUO Ai Weiwei is an unknown, strange sounding name to most Americans, but Americans are nonetheless becoming more aware of the plight of Chinese dissidents. Earlier this year the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, known for protesting against forced abortions, escaped from house arrest and fled to the U.S. Consulate. He eventually struck a deal with the Chinese government, allowing him to pursue academic interests atNew YorkUniversityunder the patronage... Read more
Review of Allison Hewitt is Trapped by Madeline Roux By COYLE NEAL “Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them.” Revelation 20:13 The last zombie book I read left me thinking, “this was great, but what it really needed was a good dose of feminist angst.” Fortunately, I stumbled across Allison Hewitt is Trapped. In this book, the title character blogs her way through the zombie apocalypse. Beginning at the bookstore where she worked, she and a... Read more
Review of the Aeneid by Virgil By PAUL D. MILLER Reading Homer feels like spending time with a rustic, patched-together story. Homer matches odds and ends of an oral tradition that weaves various memories into a grand story about the olden times of courage and sacrifice. Virgil, by contrast, is a dictator’s propagandist. The Aeneid is much more coherent and smooth than the Iliad or Odyssey, but it is also told for a very different reason. Homer pointed back to... Read more
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