DANA STEVENS

@thehighsign.bsky.social

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Film critic at Slate; co-host of the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast; repped by the Cheney Agency; member NYFCC. Camera Man, my book on Buster Keaton, is out: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Camera-Man/Dana-Stevens/9781501134203

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if it's not from the champagne region of france then it’s just called sparkling fascist tears

Libraries forever, Mayor Eric Adams never

Hooray for the New York Public Library! It's going to be open 7 days a week, thanks to the budget passed by the City Council today—and all the organizers who pushed to make this happen

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This is just wonderful.

‘I can see him now. I will see him forever’: Donald Sutherland remembered by Keira Knightley, Elliott Gould, Ralph Fiennes and morewww.theguardian.com He was a screen icon who could transform a film. Co-stars and directors of the great actor, who died last week aged 88, recall his warmth, erudition – and love of filthy jokes

Completely agree, & I don't even like this adaptation! Keira Knightley lacked the ironic edge of a good Elizabeth Bennet, but Donald Sutherland ruled as her thoroughly over-it-all dad.

Extremely Basic Millennial Woman opinion but Donald Sutherland holds the title of Best Mister Bennet. Just a perfect balance of bemused boredom, apathy, simmering disappointment, good-natured but aloof and resigned detachment.

The first thing I thought of was the sex scene near the beginning of Nicolas Roeg's 1973 horror masterpiece Don't Look Now. One of the great examples of a nude scene that does far more than just provide a hot eye-candy interlude, even if Sutherland & Julie Christie were both plenty easy on the eyes.

Sexually Suggestive

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Hi! The Onion is bringing back our Writing Fellowship. The fellowship has produced some of the biggest names in comedy, at The Onion and elsewhere. It was a casualty private equity. We are reviving it. The program is six months long and includes health insurance. jobs.gusto.com/postings/the...

The Onion Fellowship at The Onion jobs.gusto.com

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Everyone rightfully excited about the #Elephant "name" news, but the elephant news that really got me this week was over at Sheldrick. Recent orphan Toto was brought to them by PREVIOUSLY RESCUED ELEPHANTS who found him and knew just where to take him. ❤️ www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/orphans/toto

Totowww.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org With half a century of elephant conservation to our name, it can sometimes feel like we have seen it all. But even among the hundreds of orphan rescues that have unfolded over the years, Toto’s story ...

After you watch Hit Man (which is now streaming on Netflix, & also still in theaters in many cities), read the Texas Monthly profile that served as its inspiration. By the same writer, Skip Hollandsworth, whose true-crime journalism inspired the way-underseen Richard Linklater movie Bernie.

Recommended weekend longread: The world’s most convincing fake hit man (from 2001)

Hit Manwww.texasmonthly.com Gary Johnson is the number one hired killer in Houston—or so his prospective clients think. Unfortunately for them, he works for the cops.

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However good you thought this was when it popped up, it's better. History lesson, music criticism, encomium, polemic, A+ on every score.

The Song of the Summer Is Actually the Song of 1982slate.com Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” is one of several recent hits bringing back the genre that never got a name.

On the new Slate Culture Gabfest, we talk about the weird longevity (coming up on 50 years?!) of comic-strip cat Garfield; an essay on suspense in fiction & real life by the New Yorker's Kathryn Schulz; & A Place of Our Own, June Thomas' new book about queer women's spaces: slate.com/podcasts/cul...

All Hail Garfield, I Guess?slate.com Why are we all obsessed with this nasty little cat?

Tonight at 7:30 Cobble Hill Cinema in Brooklyn is showing Clara Bow in the scandal-provoking 1927 hit "It," w/ live piano accompaniment & an intro by silent-film scholar Steve Massa. The lead-in is a 2-reel short starring the unjustly forgotten Wanda Wiley. www.cobblehilltheatre.com/locations/co...

Showtimes - Cobble Hill Cinemaswww.cobblehilltheatre.com Visit Cobble Hill Cinemas > movie showtimes in Brooklyn, NY at Cobble Hill Cinemas — catch the latest movies and Hollywood hits

Danny Lavery on anything Brontë-related is my happy place. (Also the book he's breaking down here, Juliet Barker's Wild Genius on the Moors, is the most addictively page-turnable 1,184-page brick I've ever read.)

“There was no need for Charlotte to remain at home. Her father’s ill health was simply a convenient excuse.” "Miss Brontë often went to bed all day." "It is curious that Emily ever gained the reputation for being sympathetic." www.thechatner.com/p/every-time...

Every Time This Biographer of the Brontë Family Calls Them Unemployablewww.thechatner.com We’ve landed in Michigan and my childhood Midwestern accent is coming back in full folksy force. Also, the Chatner is offering a special 20% off deal for the next year to anyone who becomes a paying s...

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I wrote about foxy Anne Carson. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

The Myths of Anne Carsonwww.thenation.com Throughout her long and prolific career, Carson has specialized in unexpected juxtapositions between modern life and ancient times, contemporary art and the literature of the past.

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I'm moderating at a very cool event this Monday, June 3: A showing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari w/ a live orchestra & choir playing a new score by composer Jeff Beal. Afterward I will chat w/ the composer & German cinema prof Reinhild Steingröver. Tickets here: www.carnegiehall.org/calendar/202...

www.carnegiehall.org

Rose of the day: realizing that Jocelyn Anderson, bird photographer for the ages, is on this site now! When I first got started here I remember searching longingly for her feed.

A Cedar Waxwing dining on berries in the rain

The 2024 campaign strategy needs to be “much more pointing & laughing”

i genuinely think the smart political move is for biden to hold a rally tomorrow where he taunts trump and says america will not have a felon for president.

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Huh, I CAN still feel pleasure.

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sorry, we had to boil the earth to fuel our machines that made wrong answers

Unsurprisingly, rising projections of power demand in the US are resulting in plans to keep coal-fired power stations open longer, and US states are fighting EPA power pollution rules on the grounds fossil fuel is "needed" to power AI. www.ft.com/content/ddaa...

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This movie is a DELIGHT! A modern-day screwball w/ crazy hijinks, multiple identities, & genuinely sizzling chemistry between two incredibly charismatic, hot people. Plus some noir scaffolding & Linklater philosophizing. Dana captures its casual, breezy charm. (Agree w/ her about the ending, though)

Richard Linklater's romantic thriller Hit Man is minor Linklater but major fun, w/ movie-star-in-the-making Glen Powell as a philosophy prof who moonlights as a fake contract killer (based on a real guy!). See it in theaters to show Netflix that, yes, we still like movies. slate.com/culture/2024...

Finally, an Honest-to-Goodness Great New Rom-Comslate.com Hit Man is actually funny, actually sexy, and announces the arrival of a major new movie star.

For real. We’re going to have a media circus every time except when there are actual clowns in town?

right now, the extent of what democrats can do is hounding and shame, which they should do! biden should condemn the insurrectionist members of the court, durbin and whitehouse should hold hearings and demand that alito and thomas both answer questions before congress. make it a spectacle, basically

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"Ms. Baden said that she...used a lewd expression that is popularly known to evoke the arrangement of a friendly social engagement shortly after the weekend, but not on Monday."

This woman is truly living our collective dream. How many times in the past eight years have you fantasized about being face-to-face with one of these anti-democratic ghouls & just plainly speaking your mind? (Also: "I will fully cop to" calling her a c**t? Respect & lol forever.)

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Another Vincent Price collaboration with Sears was a series of movie making kits. These included make-up, movie signs, clapboard, invitations, tickets, directions, dressing room stars, title cards and a script

Since we're still talking about flags: I can't stop perseverating on the name "Dutch Sheets", a right-wing author & activist who was going around pushing for the display of that pine-tree flag Alito flew to show his support for Christian theocracy. A flag enthusiast ... named ... Dutch Sheets!?

That's a solid day at the movies. Though I love I Saw the TV Glow less than some (especially the ending), it's an original & important film & like Hit Man, it needs warm bodies in a theater for films of its kind to keep existing. & Princess Mononoke in rep? Damn, now I want to go to the Fox Theatre!

The Fox Theatre’s schedule tomorrow here in Toronto :)

Finally, an Honest-to-Goodness Great New Rom-Comslate.com Hit Man is actually funny, actually sexy, and announces the arrival of a major new movie star.

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Excited that this series I co-curated is going up on the criterion channel next month! Lots of good summer fun.

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George Miller's Furiosa doesn't quite have the compact shape and propulsive energy of his 2015 triumph Mad Max: Fury Road, but it still delivers big on two other essential elements you come to a Mad Max movie to see: thrillingly staged action and deranged production design. slate.com/culture/2024...

The New Mad Max Offers a Cure for Prequelitisslate.com Furiosa is a welcome return trip to movie Valhalla.