"This is travel writing at its best. As a boy, Chatwin was fascinated by a dried-up piece of skin and hair, said to be from a brontosaurus brought back from Patagonia by a distant cousin and and kept in a glass-fronted cabinet in his grandmother’s dining room. Chatwin’s musings about the brontosaurus eventually led to a trek through Patagonia described in ninety-seven brief chapters filled with sharp observations and crystal-clear prose, gem-like entries in a brilliant diary. The narrative meanders, just as Chatwin did on his journey. Passages describing the stark landscape are juxtaposed with profiles of people encountered, nuggets of historical lore, and the details of rugged overland travel. Readers who insist on a traditional narrative thread might be disappointed, even put off. But for me, Chatwin evokes a serene curiosity that I find ingratiating."

"This is the movie, above all others, that I can watch time and time again and have the same fun as the first time. It’s the sense of wonder and heightened stakes that make this work so well. Michael J. Fox, of course, makes this work: I as a viewer can see the struggle, fun, joy, and pain Marty experiences without doing anything; [Fox] fully embraces and embodies the journey. I like movies that save the day…go figure, and this one delivers. Also, my parents didn’t let me see this in the theaters when it first came out. My older sister got to go see it with my older brother and I was forced to watch Cocoon with my parents. I had nightmares for months of the the cocoons opening and the old people crawling out of them."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."