Signal Watch Reads: Project Hail Mary

Author:  Andy Weir

Audiobook read by:  Ray Porter

I read The Martian by Andy Weir a bit before the movie was released, and thoroughly enjoyed the Ridley Scott/ Matt Damon film that followed.  I skipped Artemis, and somehow just sort of missed that Project Hail Mary had been released until the movie trailer dropped and saw that the film was based on a book by Andy Weir.  

Jamie, who loved the The Martian, picked up Project Hail Mary, and plowed through it in a couple of days, recommending the novel.  Also, I am now listening to audiobooks in one ear while I walk Emmylou in the mornings before work, and this seemed like a good one to listen to after The Godfather.

There's a certain sameness to Project Hail Mary that you'll feel if you read The Martian, and while that's certainly the author's voice coming in strong, it almost feels like the same character from The Martian at times.  And I suspect that was a return to form after Artemis, which had a female lead and was a bit more space-adventurey from what I heard, didn't get the same good notices as Weir's freshman effort.  

But, like a band whose first record you liked, it's not all bad to get that third album and hear that the band was just finding their way on the sophomore effort, and now they're back in their groove.  

An astronaut awakens on a craft headed to a nearby star - his memory is wiped and the other two crew members are dead.  As he stumbles about, pieces of memory come back to him.

Earth had a problem - the sun was fading.  If a solution isn't found, the planet will drop into an ice age that will kill a whole lot of life on Earth.  

SPOILERS

I really liked Project Hail Mary.  I don't know that it will be taken for great literature, but it certainly makes for an interesting page turner of a read.  Slowly revealing what happened on Earth, how middle-school science teacher Ryland Grace winds up as one of three astronauts sent to save the Sun/ our Solar System is a great engine to propel the story, pushing forward the sturdy chassis of the story of the actual work done to save the planet and teamwork needed to get there.

Horror Watch: Alucarda (1977)

Watched:  09/08/2025

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Juan Lopez Moctezuma

Now that's how you make a horror movie.

Start with a base of Carmilla, the pre-Dracula vampire story about sapphic vampires (or 1970's The Vampire Lovers), sprinkle in some Dracula, add in some The Exorcist, probably three or four movies I'm not thinking of or aware of, and then a dollop of Carrie for the finale.  

A Mexican-produced film, Alucarda (1977) is just batshit from the first scene and then cranks it up to 11.  I'm not sure it's in any way scary - any more than a Hammer film ever feels frightening - but it's a crazy spectacle - and never fails to be *interesting*.

80's Art-Sploitation Film Watch: Ms.45 (1981)

Watched:  09/06/2025

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Abel Ferrara

Criterion Channel currently has a collection of "Nunsploitation" movies, and of their 7 offerings or so, I'd already seen three in my life (Haxan, Benedetta, The Devils) and I'd been meaning to catch Ms. 45 (1981) since seeing something about it a few years ago.  So here we are.  

And, yes, if I can watch 70+ Lacey Chabert movies, I can watch the remaining Nunsploitation movies.

Director Abel Ferrara was kind of a big deal when I was in film school, coming off of The Bad Lieutenant (worth seeing once, at least) and following up with The Addiction, with the Body Snatchers remake in between.  Unfortunately, I kinda stopped tracking indie film a while ago and lost sight of him, but he's been out there making movies all along.  He was not afraid of what was too much for an audience, and seemed not just to push margins but lived there.  

So this early film is a pretty good indicator of what he was capable of.  

Superman 2027 Announced - "Man of Tomorrow"

Well. 

Seems James Gunn, director of this summer's fun-fest Superman,  has not just finished the script for the sequel, he's announced the release date of the next installment in the Superman saga over at DC Studios.

Coming July 9, 2027, we can expect The Man of Tomorrow.   

TL;DR - Pop Culture Fade-Out: What Happens When No One Remembers Lassie?

Liz is also easily distracted by squirrels

A while back I read the book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend by Susan Orlean (recommended).  The book is a biography/ history of how one American soldier on the front lines of World War I found a stray dog, and how that dog became, literally, the biggest movie star in the world.  

There's a possibly apocryphal story that at the first Academy Awards they had to re-do nominations and/ or voting because Rin Tin Tin, a skinny German Shepherd, came up as "Best Actor" (everyone kinda thought the awards were a bit absurd at the time).  But what is true is that dog was also one of the biggest box office draws in Hollywood for a few years there before the movies learned how to talk.

While the original Rin Tin Tin passed and was buried in France, various other dogs took on the name and role, and through the 1950's, Rin Tin Tin was still a major pop culture fixture - a sort of family-friendly action star, now re-imagined for television as living on the frontier and starring in his own cavalry-themed Western.

Now...  I'm not sure even my peers could tell you what breed Rin Tin Tin was with any certainty.

Noir Watch: Force of Evil (1948)

Watched:  09/01/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Abraham Polonsky

So, what I remembered about this movie from my prior viewings:

• it's super dark
• it's a bit confusing/ complex
• John Garfield and Thomas Gomez are in it
• Marie Windsor is in it and clearly taller than Garfield and it impacts the blocking
• Windsor, as always, looked smashing

35th Anniversary Watch: Pump Up the Volume (1990)

Watched:  09/01/2025

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Allan Moyle

Well.  It turns out I'm old.  

Pump Up the Volume (1990) was released August 22nd, 1990.  I'd intended to watch it for the anniversary a week and a half ago, and forgot.  So here we are.

It's funny - I watched 1955's Rebel Without a Cause in 1989, which was *less time* between release and viewing than when I saw Pump Up the Volume opening day in the theater in August of 1990 and today.  

Time is a slippery mistress.

I will never get over the fact this movie is named "Pump Up the Volume" which was the name of the wildly popular dance tune from 1987.  And, of course, 1989 brought us Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam".  In this era, anything could be pumped up.  

A quick recap so you don't need to re-read my post from 2008 or listen to podcasts on the topic:

In 1990, my folks moved from North Austin to North Houston/ Spring/ Klein.  Within days of moving, I watched a movie about a similarly grumpy teen moved from, in his case, "the East Coast" to a Phoenix suburban analog.  The teen starts a pirate radio station where he performs crude and shocking bits - largely around masturbation - while also waxing philosophic about the state of the world, how the parents of Gen-X'ers (this is a movie about the last wave of Gen-X'ers) failed their own youth movement by "selling out", the world ain't what it should be/ used to be, and that conformity is bad.

If Gen-X sought anything, it was "authenticity", and when you live in the suburbs and can't drive, this means "I reject the notion that Bobby Brown is the best musician or our era, and girls should be allowed to have brown hair".  And this movie is about that.

But, also... if there is a movie that has caused a generation collective Space Jam Fallacy, it's Pump Up The Volume. 

Fish Watch: Jaws (1975)

Watched:  08/29/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Steve something

So, I already watched this movie once this summer, but The Drafthouse was showing Jaws (1975) in 4K with an intro by Spielberg in honor of the movie's 50th Anniversary, so Si and I went.  

I won't belabor discussing the movie itself, but the 4K presentation was fantastic on the big screen.  It's a true preservation job, not AI slop, somehow really sharpening the picture.  And, despite the fact I was well, well aware that the head of Ben Gardner was about to make an appearance, the music sting in the theater was so well placed, I *still* jumped.  

It's also still fun to watch a movie like that in a room with people who are seeing it for the first time.

Catch it in the theater!

Happy Birthday, King Kirby

Today marks the birth date of Jack Kirby, the mind and pencil that brought us many of our modern myths and legends.  

We're big Jack Kirby fans here at The Signal Watch, and wish to salute him.

Let's take a look at some of his "I'm Jack Kirby, dammit" art that started with the pop-art movement, moved into psychedelia, and just kept on going til he hung up his pencil.

JLC Watch: Freakier Friday (2025)

Watched:  08/27/2025

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Nisha Ganatra

We all know I went to see this because it stars JLC, and that's fine.  I'd also finally recently watched the 2003 version of Freaky Friday for the first time, liked it much more than expected, and - now that I have the Alamo Pass, popping off to go watch a movie is not such an ordeal.  In fact, I feel pretty incentivized to use the heck out of the pass.

I am not sure if I hadn't seen the 2003 movie, though, if I wouldn't have missed a lot or even been lost.  So, watch that first.  

Here in 2025, I think we finally kind of figured out how to do these late-entry sequels no one was asking for and make it worth it.  As evidence, I'll enter in Freakier Friday (2025) which manages to expand on the set-up of the general Freaky Friday concept, do new things with it, be very funny, and feel like it has some emotional resonance at the end that I'm not sure any of the prior entries, or most body swap movies in general, tend to earn.