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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 13h

sometimes you have to just go read and think about Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar” for the 100th time

Anecdote of the Jar
BY WALLACE STEVENS

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Posting this great @briannaduggan.bsky.social piece that we own on the occasion of seeing the 4K restoration of Wild at Heart in a theater and crying for the whole last scene like any civilized person with half a heart

Brianna Ashby illustration of Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern in Wild At Heart

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

is this the year we expose the 13-year-old to HALLOWEEN

Michael Myers staring down from the top of a staircase with a knife

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 11/09/2026

could AI do THIS (student names redacted) (usually I take even better notes but I was tracking too much!) (everyone in my class is obsessed with Effie) (we finished the Maltese Falcon tonight and I cannot wait for their reactions)

A Harkness circle drawn on a white board with a mind map of notes from the conversation

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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 · 08/09/2026

A good end to a long weekend ⚾️🌈

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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 · 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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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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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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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

back to work this afternoon for real for real so yes I’m wearing multiple franchise comfort items and I’m not sorry

Spike from Buffy locket + Twin Peaks t shirt

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Will never get over the fact that @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social and I decided early in the pregnancy to name our third (impossible, post-vasectomy) kid Fox, and then that kid was born on David Duchovny’s birthday. Happy birthday to both of my babies.

Fox Mulder in the episode Little Green Men, wearing an iconic gray sleeveless shirt

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

really enjoyed this little vintage Japanese crime journey & I THINK it’s short enough that I can squeeze it onto my syllabus with all the other things I want to teach …

A copy of Seichō Matsumoto’s TOKYO EXPRESS

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

T-12 days until I go back to work, time to lock in on this new course

A stack of books having to do with film noir/crime fiction

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

are aliens trying to communicate with me. is Nebraska not the real world

Strange child drawings with the words “AUSTRALIA” and “REAL WORLD” on one page and “NEBRASKA” and “0011” “OLOLOL” on the other page

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This post reminded me that I wrote a poem in part inspired by D.P.O.

LICHTENBERG SCARRING
When Boris Karloff’s fourth wife
went into labor with his only
daughter he was on set filming Son
of Frankenstein and rushed
to the hospital in
full makeup the pale pale
stitched-on flesh and heavy-
lidded eyes swaying over
the gray but rapidly reddening
form emerging from the
mother just now coming to terms
with the way every love
splits you open with
fear I frequently find myself
lying awake and imagining
all the ways my kids could
die killed in a car crash struck
by a disease too brutal and
invasive for any doctor to
eradicate taken from their
bedrooms at night by an
unseen hand the skull
caved in by the
bat taken down over decades
by the slow yet persistent
erosion of the mind’s will to survive
by chemicals in the brain
you know are there because
you helped encode them
in their tiny strands of
DNA perhaps
when Frankenstein saw

when Frankenstein saw
his monster wake up
it was not the revulsion of the
unnatural image
that he desired immediately
to stamp out but the
instantaneous understanding
that only through the death
of this thing he had created
could he be free of the
anxiety and responsibility
and unflinching love he had
inflicted on himself
with a single stroke of
electrical discharge perhaps he
yearned to be Giovanni Ribisi
in the X-Files episode
whose ability to absorb and
channel lightning leaves him
not electrified but

empty and craving
death a monster with
only himself to
animate in the hospital
room Karloff touches his
wife’s hair tears flow
down the sides of his
caked on face that is also
not his face did the
daughter see her father
as a creature too empathetic
to live successfully
in this world to be able
to smile while lying to her
about how most people
in this world are
good what do we inherit and
what do we
pass on the thirst for
creating something that
scares us and yet when
I think about
my childrens’ faces
of course I want to lie down
in a puddle
in a thunder storm
and welcome the
vaporizing flash

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Watching Ida Lupino’s THE HITCH-HIKER last night, I was struck by how we’ve always used racism as a way to indicate evil—“I don’t speak Mexican,” the murderous hitchhiker growls multiple times as they travel through Mexico. When did people lose sight of the evil embedded in that hatred and fear?

The hitchhiker’s shadow bisected by a soon-to-be victim’s car

Edmond O’Brien, William Talman, and Frank Lovejoy in a car; Talman’s face is in shadow.

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I have not watched the epic 0-0 soccer game because I was at the Academy Museum seeing the JAWS exhibit before it closes next week, 10/10 no notes

Best ever shot of Quint on the boat with script and notes and sketches below

John Williams’ hand-drawn notation for the main title of Jaws

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Only two of these were this week (I have been stupidly busy) … but this was a good run of movies

Letterboxd recent activity: American Psycho, Tightrope, The Order, Anatomy of a Murder

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

there are way too few TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA mentions in these replies and quote tweets

John Pankow and William Peterson in TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA standing on a porch of a house by the ocean looking only half as fucked up as their characters actually are

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

just trying to fall asleep while also breaking down in my head the way Leatherface’s skin mask and chaotic energy from Texas Chain Saw Massacre morphed presciently into the non-mask “mask”/absurd facade of the perfected male body and compulsively sanitized “aesthetic” order in American Psycho

Patrick Bateman’s chillingly perfect body covered in blood holding a chainsaw in American Psycho

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

This is the only real way to listen to the national anthem

One of the Hanson brothers from Slap Shot with blood flowing from his ears and a broken glasses lens, at attention during the national anthem, about to scream “IM LISTENING TO THE FUCKING SONG”

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

went to an art exhibit & now I’m accidentally obsessed with Northwestern modernists and mysticists

“Northwest Landscape” by Kenneth Callahan

“Colors and Patterns from Heian Period” by
Paul Horiuchi

Left: Lunar Landscape by Malcolm M. Roberts. Right: Drift No.2 by Malcolm M. Roberts

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(“my people” being other people who felt like there was no one else like them in the world until they watched something David Lynch made)

Me with a damn fine cup of coffee in Twede’s Diner

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

On a day that started with an unconscionable SCOTUS ruling, it has felt beautiful and moving and right to be here in Snoqualmie among the graffiti and landmarks of my people

Graffiti on Ronette’s bridge reading FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE

A view of Snoqualmie Falls and the Salish Lodge (aka The Great Northern)

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

finally saw ANATOMY OF A MURDER for the first time (I know, I know!) and boy, everyone in that movie is acting their ASSES off!! And remember when movie scripts trusted the viewer to handle ambiguity?

George C Scott and Lee Remick in ANATOMY OF A MURDER

Lee Remick and Jimmy Stewart in ANATOMY OF A MURDER

Arthur O'Connell and Jimmy Stewart with eggs and beer in ANATOMY OF A MURDER

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

three-year-old came to lie down with me, made this shape, turned to me, and said “doesn’t this look like the Alien egg?” I am so proud

A child’s neon green toy in the shape of an egg with our old dog in the background

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

It was a very eclectic viewing week for me

Recent Activity on Letterboxd: Rush, Backrooms, Disclosure Day, Sorry, Wrong Number

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I often kick things off with a see/think/wonder about a painting related to what we’re working on. On a poetry day you KNOW I’m doing Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus leading into the William Carlos Williams poem!

Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS
According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring
a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry
of the year was awake tingling near
the edge of the sea concerned with itself
sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax
unsignificantly off the coast there was
a splash quite unnoticed this was
Icarus drowning

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Sometimes it takes a rewatch of a movie for me to fully grasp how much of a stone-cold masterpiece it is even if I already knew it was good

Daniel Plainview covered in oil with his back to the camera watching a derrick burn in THERE WILL BE BLOOD

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

On Father’s Day, an @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social appreciation post for a dad who has mastered the family-of-5 grocery run, who will always put a kid on his shoulders even if that kid is too big to be on shoulders, who will wake up early to make lunches, who will clean everyone’s room. We love you!!

Chris standing in a sandy, rocky alcove in Utah looking like a dad who can do anything

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

air at our house was literally toxic this morning so we had to escape to the beach. just the kind of thing a dystopia makes you think is fun before you’re like “oh yeah tomorrow I’ll be breathing that sweet chemical smoke again”

Me in a Dodgers hat in front of the ocean

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

turns out @jordanharper.bsky.social’s latest book is a stellar beach read if you’re at an LA beach and feel like examining the six-packed, bikini-waxed people surrounding you, idly speculating about how many of them are super fucked up

A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper on a beach towel/sand

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

we are doing a summer reading challenge (number of pages read per week) and this past week I beat my 12 year old by ONE PAGE and I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me

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Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I really only needed a week off from teaching to refresh my intellectual energy enough to be excited about planning a new course

An old dog lies down next to an open book about noir film

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