Life of Pi sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life, and found that writing the novel met this need. The name of Martel's tiger, Richard Parker, was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (1838). In this book, Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship (and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger). The author also had in mind another occurrence
Life of Pi (film) themes of the tale. Nick Schager of "The Village Voice" also panned the film stating "A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a "Titanic"-by-way-of–"Slumdog Millionaire" narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone." Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, and states "despite some lovely images and those eyepopping effects, it is a shallow and self-important shaggy-dog story – or shaggy-tiger story ... It deserves every technical prize going." Richard Corliss of "Time" selected the film as the third-best movie of 2012, as well as