This comic fable about making an Exorcist-like horror movie has its moments—and, heaven knows, may not overestimate the gross appetites of a portion of the American reading public. Each Blatty (Legion, 1983, etc.) paragraph drools with faux- movie dialogue and highbrow asides (to The Magic Mountain, Shakespeare, Emily Brontâ, Dickens, Prince Miskin, etc). The most memorable figure in the book is reminiscent of the Nazi playwright from the Mel Brooks film The Producers, rendered here as a demented film projectionist in a Prussian army helmet, Jesus Machtmeintag (Makemyday). His scenes are particularly droll. `` `Go avay!' shrieked the deep German voice hysterically. `You haff zer wrong man, I tell you! I am innocent!' There followed adamant denials that he'd ever gone bowling with Joseph Goebbels, weekend flying with Rudolph Hess, knew anything whatever of letters of transit, or had ever defaced Casablanca posters to suggest the film's hero was Conrad Veidt. `All lies!' bellowed Machtmeintag in a fury.'' The scenario: Celebrated director Jason Hazard has been in the dumps for three years when archfiend/studio head Arthur Zelig hires him to direct the film version of Jonathan Drood's bestseller, The Satanists. Hazard has run off with Zelig's ex-wife, leading actress Spritely God, and Zelig schemes to make sure that The Satanist will be a colossal bomb, blowing Hazard completely out of the water and driving Spritely back into his bed. She, however, is so aghast at Drood's script that she demands the studio be exorcised. Various exorcists show up throughout, including Don Rickles, who fails to exorcise Spritely's cat, Barbra, which sings like Streisand and turns into a gigantic rat on a levitating bed. Perhaps Mel Brooks will direct the movie? Echoes of musty old Max Schulman novels, with some laugh-out- loud lines about Hollywood lost in extra-luxuriant false classicism and excess.
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1996
ISBN: 1-55611-501-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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