Matt Zoller Seitz

Becoming Alien, Second Edition

Arts & Literature

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Movies Are Prayers

Arts & Literature

Foreword

“Larsen writes about love, loss, grief, suffering, and endurance. He writes about ecstasy and abandon, shame and guilt. He finds all of life in movies, even in movies that outwardly seem to have little to do with life as most of us know it, and he connects it back to scripture, to a rich tradition of spiritually inclined literature and visual art, to his own experience, to the history of this country and others, and to faiths besides Christianity. He can read a film as if it were a sacred text or admire it like a cathedral; other times he seems to have moved into it and lived inside it long enough to absorbs its sounds and smells, and memorize the way the sunlight hits the bedroom floorboards. The result is an essential book for anyone who thinks of cinema as a place of introspection as well as escapism, and believes that you can find signs and miracles anywhere if you know how to look for them.”

Off the Map

Arts & Literature

“Niles Schwartz’s brilliant study of two of Michael Mann's least-appreciated features breaks through the director’s shimmering surfaces and plumbs their roiling depths.”