"Immensely stimulating. . . . This book should be required reading for anyone working in film and a pleasurable option for moviegoers who wish to deepen and enrich the experience." –John Boorman, director of
Deliverance,
Hope and Glory and
Excalibur "As the subject of Michael Ondaatje' s offbeat, exhilarating new book, [Walter Murch] makes poetry out of an arcane, invisible craft. . . . Readers with even a passing interest in the movies should find many pleasures here. . . .
The Conversations should be required reading for every aspiring writer–and anyone else involved in learning to shape a work of art." –
Quill & Quire
"Here's one of the more interesting cross-disciplinary meetings of minds to hit book form in some time. . . . In a series of long conversations recorded over a two-year period, Ondaatje and Murch, both highly intelligent and thoughtful artists, transcend the interview-book genre by following tangents, engaging in arguments, contextualizing everything and reminiscing. . . . This is compulsive and compulsory reading for anyone in film school or interested in film history." –
NOW "
The Conversations is an homage and an exegesis–effortlessly inquiring and creative. Constructed as a sequence of five discursive interviews. . . .
The Conversations is companionable, but not excluding, and intellectually exhaustive, though not for a moment tedious. The friendship of the two men throws an illuminating torch light on Murch's shadowy profession. The editor should be thrilled to have his genius commemorated in this way. . . . The probing thoughtfulness Murch displays in his conversations with Ondaatje reveal a preoccupation not just with theory, but with the prospect of a system of notation that might provide a common language to a cinematic profession that is still, essentially, an infant one. . . . Fascinating." –
National Post "It's not often that a quick read provides so much insight." –
Ottawa Citizen "It is the movie book of the season, in fact, the movie book for every season. . . . Engrossing. . . . What the book sparks, aside from rarely probed thoughts about editing, is a desire to see again the movies Murch has edited and to do this at home hand in hand with reading it." –
Toronto Star "
The Conversations is delightful mainly for Ondaatje's palpable pleasure, the novelist' s pleasure for eccentric characters discovered in emblematic moments. Murch . . . is certainly eccentric. . . .
The Conversations faithfully represents Ondaatje's reverance for a man normally beyond public attention." –
Georgia Straight "There's much in store here for film fans. . . . Many fascinating revelations about film as art." –
Star Phoenix (Saskatoon)