About this item
Highlights
- Movies do more than tell a good story.
- About the Author: Josh Larsen is the co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting, as well as editor and film critic at Think Christian, a faith and culture website.
- 208 Pages
- Art, Film & Video
Description
About the Book
Movies do more than tell a good story. Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen brings a critic's unique perspective to how movies can act as prayers--expressing lament, praise, joy, confession, and more. When words fail, the perfect film might be just what you need to jump-start your conversations with the Almighty.
Book Synopsis
Movies do more than tell a good story. Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen brings a critic's unique perspective to how movies can act as prayers-expressing lament, praise, joy, confession, and more. When words fail, the perfect film might be just what you need to jump-start your conversations with the Almighty.
Review Quotes
"I'm about as far removed from religion and spirituality as one could possibly be, and yet Movies Are Prayers opened up for me an entirely new way of appreciating the movies I love and the art of filmmaking as a whole. As Larsen points out, it's so easy for even the most obsessive cinephiles among us to fall back on viewing cinema through the cynical lens of commercialization or a frothy lens of mere escapist entertainment. By reexamining an array of movies, including the ostensibly secular (Trainwreck, The Muppets), via the language of prayer, this engagement with the medium uncovers a different and fascinating approach to film theory."
About the Author
Josh Larsen is the co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting, as well as editor and film critic at Think Christian, a faith and culture website. He's been writing and speaking about movies professionally for more than two decades.Josh's career began in the mainstream newspaper business, where he started out as a beat reporter for a weekly community newspaper and went on to become the film critic for the Chicago-based Sun-Times Media for more than ten years. In 2011, he joined the Christian media landscape as editor of Think Christian, and in 2012 he joined the long-running weekly podcast Filmspotting, aired on WBEZ in Chicago.A veteran of the Sundance, Toronto, and Chicago International Film Festivals, Josh has given talks on film and faith at various Christian colleges. He also led the "Ebert Interruptus," a tradition established by Roger Ebert that analyzes a single film scene by scene over several days, at the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs. Josh lives in the Chicago area with his wife and two daughters.
Matt Zoller Seitz is the editor in chief of RogerEbert.com. He is also the TV critic for New York magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and television has appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Sight and Sound. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine, and the cofounder and original editor of Press Play, an IndieWire blog of film and TV criticism and video essays.