Dana Stevens
@thehighsign
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:
This event was a dazzler. The house, a sumptuous 1928 movie palace, was packed, there was not only great live organ accompaniment but a Foley artist providing sound effects, & the movie played, as always, like gangbusters. Thanks to Seattle for showing up & to to the Paramount Theatre for having me!
Thanks for being such a longtime listener. Did you know your dog shares a name with Roscoe Arbuckle's?
Buster Keaton didn't stand still while a two-ton housefront collapsed on top of him with a window cut out to barely clear his shoulders on each side so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."
Me right now: literally in the basement thinking about the government.
Did a quick Google to check if my Mother Mary review had posted to Slate yet & got this amusingly dumb AI result. (Also the part about me writing on MJ Hegar is completely wrong.)
Emily Dickinson Museum nailing it with their poem choice for Tax Day:
Fascinating writeup on how the German press has been covering Greg Bovino's, er, fash-ion sense. It's not just the SS-style greatcoat--the accessories are all vintage Nazi gear too! www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Béla Tarr, 1955-2026: the great cinematic poet of despair, whose movies were as rigorously bleak as they were paradoxically invested in the infinite value of every human life. The Kafka of motion pictures. Thread of images from his masterpiece Damnation (1988).
Here's a quick suggestion: why don't you shut your flapping face-hole and go do the thing everyone is longing for you to do. The thing the entire world will not mourn but celebrate.
The opening of this email from Netflix about their acquisition of Warner Brothers does not have me feeling super-confident about how they will treat the classic film archive now in their care. "Franchises" like ... Casablanca? Which is the single classic movie mentioned in a list of TV shows & IP?
Refuting any statement made on Bret Easton Ellis' podcast is so many leagues below Tony, but that was satisfying to read.
I looked at my "Bluesky Harvest" & was pretty happy w/ the results--the word cloud suggests my time here is not as crabby & politics-focused as it sometimes feels. Also I was further toward the "offline" than "online" end of their "touch grass" spectrum, so that's good. Still: more culture in 2026!
That did not render as a gif for some reason, which is sad because Pee Wee's flail is a crucial element! So: a movie that takes place where I'm from:
