iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 8h

Okay I guess I’m just a Big Sleep poster now (though next week I’ll be moving on to Double Indemnity) but my class is having its final discussion about the book tomorrow & man the second to last paragraph is just so fucking fantastic. Pardon my almost-correct Hamlet annotations.

Outside the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in its light. I got into my car and drove off down the hill.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead?
In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you greet were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were
the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big
sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed
with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting.

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Here to tell you that the chemistry and tension in this scene still hits for 2026 teenagers, as evidenced by the very vocal reactions of my students today

Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in the bookstore scene in 1946’s The Big Sleep

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Truly fantastic sky tonight. Better than yesterday’s perfect orange sunset, maybe?

Gray and white clouds over a pink and blue sky, rotated vertically

A different angle of gray and white clouds over a pink and blue sky

Basically I love it when there are clouds in the LA sky.

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I know I feel this way every time I teach a book for the first time, but teaching The Big Sleep for the first time has me fully convinced that it's the best book ever written

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

it's college rec letter writing season, and I once again am committed to writing all of my letters MYSELF, despite more and more of my colleagues falling to the "this seems like a task for AI" trap. If you love your students, write your own sentences about them!

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

“And he needs to be eating worms” … perfection

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I don’t want to be baited into commenting on the TV list but, I’m sorry, having Better Call Saul not even in the top 20 and putting Breaking Bad where it is is some bonkers shit.

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I need to know if every kid at every school is pantsing each other right now—and if so, what is behind the rise in pantsing cases (a turn to analog mischief and away from online bullying thanks to phone bans??)—or if it’s just my school. Is pantsing back in a major way? Who is on this beat?

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

today’s teaching tip is: sometimes you need to read the room, hit pause, cancel the reading homework, let kids who are behind catch up, let kids who are dwelling in drafts just dwell, and help everyone celebrate something they’ve done well recently

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

if you’re not putting True Detective Season 2 on your best 10 shows of the 21st century ballot I feel sorry for your brain

Rachel McAdams and Colin Farrell in a Twin Peaks ass bar under green and red lighting

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is where I sigh and have to go look at the top 20 to see which one of those show’s slots this one should have taken.

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Jason Bailey @jasondashbailey.com · 21/09/2026

I feel like one of the few genuine takeaways of the past decade is that there are apparently no circumstances that would actually warrant the invocation of the 25th amendment

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

one of the kids is getting into taking photos and now I have a new mild worry about physical safety

kid perched on a ledge under a bridge taking a photo

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

there's lots to feel bad about right now but also Spirit Halloweens are everywhere

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I enjoyed this conversation and loved rewatching this movie!

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Chris Cantwell @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The FINAL arc of BRIAR hit stands this last Wednesday, wrapping up our years-long fantasy epic. I am so proud of this book, how so unabashedly queer it is, and how we ended it. It became an anthem for folks that still show up in cosplay at cons. Grab the final chapter. I’ll miss these misfits.

Comic book trade cover of briar which shows briar and her cohorts ready to fight with swords and everything else they have against the forces of darkness art by Alex Lins

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987)

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I am so there. And not just creative writing, but personal narrative writing, or anything that asks students to connect with themselves and with voice. Instead of doing standard close reading paragraphs on Shakespeare, I’ve been having my 10th graders write him letters …

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

After teaching The Tempest for the first time I have become convinced that it is Shakespeare’s most optimistic play with the highest belief that humans can be good

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

sometimes people are shocked to see me drinking coffee at 4 pm but then I remind them I’m a high school teacher with three pretty high-needs kids … I could drink coffee at 8 pm and be ok …

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You should always read a @frankfalisi.bsky.social essay when there’s one to read!!

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Chris Cantwell @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This premieres in one week. One week. Give yourself a Halloween treat, one with a great cast of characters based on the iconic vision of one @victorlavalle.bsky.social. And… ultimately… something a note of tentative hope in these tough times.

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

We finished reading our first book in my class (in two weeks! I pushed them! kids can read full books quickly!) so now we're watching our first movie & I'm spending WAY too much time coming up with alliterative tips for film viewing.

How To Watch A Film

We have talked about this but … watching a film should be a single-screen experience. No laptop, no phone (if you’re at home). Allow yourself to become absorbed by just one screen.

It’s normal to want to hear all the dialogue, and I know that many of you are used to having subtitles on so that you feel confident you’re catching every word. However, it’s really easy, when subtitles are on, to pay the most attention to the words on the screen and track the plot while losing track of more artistic aspects of the film: the actors’ facial expressions, the camera movements, the lighting, the sound design. So: let yourself listen and remember that you’re very capable of understanding the words people say without subtitles.

Focus on framing.
What are you looking at, at what angle, through what perspective, and why? The frame is the director’s key method of showing you what to pay attention to. Are we close in on a main character, the lens forcing us to take in their every blink, every breath? Are we looking at an establishing shot from a distance, helping us locate ourselves in time and space? Are we peering in at the characters from a window, positioning ourselves as voyeurs? Does the shot seem to be from the POV of a particular character? Are there multiple characters in the frame, and if so, how are they positioned in relationship to each other? What did the director choose to locate in the background of the shot, and what information does that give us about the scene?

Pay attention to performance.
How are the actors embodying their characters? This goes beyond just facial expressions and extends to voice, posture, and movement. Think of Alan Ruck’s performance in the car scene in Ferris Bueller, small eruptions of violence from a body that has tried to restrain that violence all film, eyes down, voice furious but still contained, shoulders hunched … there’s a lot going on there, more than just “he was angry at his dad”!

Look at lighting a…

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

in a Halloween planning mode today, and, fuck it, I think this is the year I just do a Buffy costume

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Related to me finishing The Maltese Falcon with my class … any teachers out there have a good Derrida excerpt that gets to the heart of his thoughts about symbols? As much as one can get to the heart of anything Derrida?

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

the kids are all right (and they can indeed read)

Email text reading: "Omg Elizabeth. Tonights reading was genuinely so awesome im so excited for the harkness there is so much to discuss!!!!!!!"

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

help we just started week 3 of classes & my students already know that the only thing they need to do to derail my lesson plans is bring up Robert Pattinson or Talking Heads or 80s slashers

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A good end to a long weekend ⚾️🌈

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I had a real blast representing Stop Making Sense in this rollicking debate. Listen to see if I did it justice?

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

not my youngest kid’s Paw Patrol electronic toy asking him to spell “ICE” … ACAB includes Chase …

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

it’s a good day to check out and build Legos

A kid’s hand building part of a Lego set

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I just walked my advanced studies class through this! They were skeptical. But you literally can’t close read every academic essay that might help you on a specific topic!

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

A lovely little piece on the emotional core of MIAMI VICE … @aheartofgould.bsky.social never misses

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

the fun thing about teaching two very different classes simultaneously is that tomorrow I will go from Petrarch to Dashiell Hammett

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

If American society is failing can we at least bring back this look

Warren Beatty in SHAMPOO with gigantic beautiful hair, rings, bracelets, a watch, a killer brown leather jacket, a tie, great jeans, great boots

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WuTangIsForTheChildren @wutangforchildren.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Just when you think you couldn’t love David Byrne more he goes to the Hollywood Bowl playing "Life During Wartime" projecting ICE raids 🔥

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

vibes all over are so bad I feel like a rewatch of Friday Night Lights is in order

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Thanks to the Days of Thunder 2 announcement, I see your Cocktail 2 jokes on the timeline and I approve of them but also I actually would kill for a Cocktail 2

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

made it through the first week of classes and back to school night and parent meetings and roster shifts and @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social is out of town so I think it's ZODIAC time

a firework going off in a driveway seen through a car window in the opening sequence of David Fincher's ZODIAC

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Joel @itsjoels.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

This is the letter kids got at the end of Dolly’s Imagination Library. I defy you to read this and not cry.

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Every fall I realize I’ve somehow forgotten over the summer what it feels like to speak loudly at and with and over teenagers all day long

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

tomorrow is the first day of classes so of course I'm spending way too much time designing a murder mystery icebreaker activity for my detective/noir class

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

back from a week with teenagers in the wilderness. there’s nothing like an alpine lake for a timeline cleanse

The setting sun hits rocks and trees across a lake, lighting everything up like gold

A one-person tent set up next to the lake shore

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