Reviewed by W.W. Rowe, author of A Dog's Tooth, Amy and Gully in Rainbow Land, The Rabbit and the Tigerdile, and The Robber Chief.

Dean Sluyter (rhymes with "inciter") has found a clever way to make dharma accessible to the cinema-soaked Western mind.

Using skillful means, he explores movies to translate and convey the subtle depths of Buddhism. As a result, this surprising book spins straw into gold.

Sluyter, an award-winning film critic, is the author of two previous books about Eastern spiritual teachings. In Cinema Nirvana, he focuses on fifteen movies, from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs to Casablanca. From The Graduate to Jaws to The Godfather to A Night At The Opera. While learning about famous films, the reader simultaneously receives dharma teachings, plus information about meditation techniques and spiritual practices. So artfully does Sluyter handle plot, it makes little difference whether one has seen the films or not.

The book is witty, grabbingly vivid, deftly eclectic. In the words of Lama Surya Das, "Dean Sluyter has one of the freshest voices in spiritual writing today. From the common ore of pop culture he extracts the gleaming diamonds of Dharma-wisdom. Take this jolly ride with him and you'll never see movies-or your own life-in the same way again."

Readers may find a few of Sluyter's interpretations overly ingenious. As the author admits, he occasionally indulges in what Tibetans call "squeezing the legs out of the snake."But to carp about that is to miss the point. Sluyter's purpose is to use famous movies as a pleasurable teaching tool, and he does this almost miraculously well.

It therefore seems unwise to sell short the vehicle selected to convey dharma. If Buddhist teachings are effectively to reach the West, why not via the appeal of our own popular media? As presented by Sluyter, movies become a sort of spiritual Trojan horse, unexpectedly inspiring devotion and surrender.