Canon Watch: Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Watched:  03/21/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  John Carpenter

I'm glad they kept making movies after Big Trouble in Little China (1986), but what, really, has been the point?

Sci-Fi Watch: Project Hail Mary (2026)

Watched:  03/21/2026

Format:  Regal

Viewing:  First

Director:  Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

Not so long ago, we read the novel of Project Hail Mary, which we discussed here at the ol' interweb log.

I enjoyed the book a great deal - just as I'd enjoyed Weir's first book, The Martian.  And like that book, it received the big screen treatment, which I thoroughly enjoyed and have rewatched in part and in whole.

First:  Go see this in the theater.  It will be fine on your TV or laptop, it is - however - a movie designed for the big screen and benefits from the image size and quality, plus the audio experience.  And maybe even the audience reaction.

Like the novel, the book is told in the present as an amnesiac awakens in a spacecraft with the other two crewmates deceased and, as he discovers, light years from Earth as the craft he's in approaches a nearby star.  Grace recovers his memories in flashbacks that fill in the gaps for himself and the viewer as he progresses, eventually realizing things about himself.

The impetus for the trip is that the sun has seen something called The Petrova Line form between Earth and Venus, and something about that effect means the sun is starting to dim - the predictable effects meaning Earth will become a frozen wasteland within 3 decades.  The star he's heading toward is not fading, and Earth needs to know why.

Sam Kieth Merges With the Infinite

We're sad to report that comic artist and story-teller Sam Kieth has passed.  

Kieth was the original artist on The Sandman, one of the greats of post Watchmen comics - basically originating the look and feel of the series before the comic strategically changed artists each storyline.

He moved on to join the Image explosion of the early 90's, launching The Maxx - a series that's been sadly mostly forgotten but was one of the best artist/writer creations of the era, deconstructing superheroes and their environment while telling a complex story about, essentially, what we'd now call mental illness on the fringes of society.

To give the kids an idea of how different things were in the 1990's, MTV turned it into a cartoon using Kieth's actual artwork and dialog.

Kieth has done work the past two decades, though not at the same rate or with the same acclaim as his 90's output.  But it was always a pleasure to see what he'd take on.  

In an era where what "good" comic art was being redefined on a weekly basis - The Maxx was hitting the stands alongside Liefeld, Jim Lee, Alex Ross and others who refused to work in a house style - he managed to bring a kind of soul to comics that much of the hyper-masculine and sexualized artists of the era favored, imbuing characters with quirks and personality via cartooning and allowing characters to - ironically - feel more real than photocopies of humans with different pockets on their uniforms.

But, also, man, Sam.  I'm sorry to hear about the legal issues around The Maxx.  That seems grossly unfair.  

Noir Watch: Crime of Passion (1956)

Watched:  03/20/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gerd Oswald

I was a bit shocked to learn I'd never seen or heard of a movie co-starring Barbara Stanwyck and Sterling Hayden, with Raymond Burr.  And a noir, nonetheless.  

Look, over the years I've really come to think of Stanwyck as *the best at what she does*, something Eddie Muller discusses in his pre-amble to the movie.  She's just incredible in versatility, range, and believability in everything she does.  And this movie is no exception.  I love Hayden, but Sterling Hayden shows up and is Sterling Hayden in everything he does.  Raymond Burr has three modes I've seen - big brute with a brain, Perry Mason and yelling about Godzilla.  And that's okay.  But Stanwyck is the focus here, and she's fantastic.  

She plays a career-gal reporter - no longer a young woman - stuck doing a sob sister column and asked to get "the woman's angle" on stories.  During a murder investigation she first gets her big break and national attention, and meets a detective played by Sterling Hayden.  

Wise Noir Watch: The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

Watched: 03/20/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Robert Wise

I saw this one initially with JeniferSF at Noir City at the Castro.  And then gave it another spin just two years ago.  

Based on a stage play (someone should do this one) it's an interesting film that feels like, emotionally, it pulls a bit from Rebecca and a bit from Laura, what with the huge portrait hanging over the hearth that seems to stare back at the cast, a ghost judging everyone.

A Polish refugee (Valentina Cortesa) from a concentration camp steals the identity of her friend - hoping to have a life on the other side of losing everything in the war.  The friend had a rich aunt to whom she'd sent her infant son, but as no one knows what the friend looks like - she figures she could pass.  

However, by the time she makes it to the US to find the relation, the aunt has died and left everything to the boy.  A relation (Richard Basehart) has adopted the boy, and when Cortesa meets Basehart in New York, he decides she's the one for him, and marries her.

Now in San Francisco, there's a nanny for the boy who is just creepy and possessive (think Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca).  And, as a shocker, the kind US Army Major who was helping our hero at the concentration camp shows up - he's a friend of the family and an attorney in SF.  And clearly would gladly be on our hero given the chance.

Anyway - things go very sideways.

SPOILERS

Chuck Norris Merges With The Infinite

Chuck Norris - sometime Texan, internet meme, ace martial artist, actor, star of B-movies and the long running Walker: Texas Ranger - has passed.

Anti-Western Watch: McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

for reasons I don't understand, all of the posters for this movie are bangers

Watched:  03/19/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Altman

A much beloved Robert Altman movie that was part of the new Hollywood movement and a "revisionist" Western, I'd long heard this was one to see.  And as a movie that was part of a specific moment in movie history, and a very watchable movie - glad I did.

We're 55 years out from the release of this movie, and the mythology of the expansion of the West carved out in the pulps, dime novels and movies has been exploded endlessly during my lifetime, with very little made to reinforce the supposed white and black hats of the cowboy movies.*

Warren Beatty plays someone who may or may not be named John McCabe, a gambler who is smarter than the dum-dums out at the mining town he stumbles upon, but nowhere near as smart as he believes himself to be.  McCabe sees an opportunity and starts a saloon and brothel.  Out of nowhere, a Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) appears, offering to run the place for McCabe.  

Happy Birthday, Vanessa Williams

Today is the birthday of singer, actor and the reason I've watched several movies I otherwise would not, Vanessa Williams.  

Here's a video that will take people of a certain age back to a very certain time and place.

Turning Heel: Alamo Drafthouse Decides Movie Watchers Are the Worst

seen seated: the people excited for the direction of Alamo Drafthouse

I am unsure when I first went to The Alamo Drafthouse.  I know it was when it was still on Colorado when downtown Austin's skyline wasn't trying to look like Vancouver or San Diego's younger, dumber cousin.

Viewings I took in there included the OG Planet of the Apes, and Jamie came with me to a pasta dinner for the epic Once Upon a Time in the West where we were served some truly terrible red wine.  There were other movies at this locale, but those stick out.

Later, we went to the South Lamar location when it was in an old Fiesta grocery store, and when The Alamo Drafthouse opened The Ritz on Austin's famed 6th Street, I was a regular there as well.  These days I do the Slaughter Lane location as its near my house, and South Lamar if I'm feeling daffy.

I watched the Alamo institute a "select your seat" option online as people were having to show up earlier and earlier before shows to secure the correct seats - well before other theaters bothered.

During a lengthy run, from when we moved back in 2006 to when I watched Shane at Mueller just before COVID lockdown, I was at the Alamo once or twice a week.  There were regulars - I didn't know their names, but you kind of eyeballed each other and knew who people were.  Hope "Grey T-Shirt Guy" is doing okay (he was at every screening of everything).  

As cell phones and manners have never been humanity's strong suit, The Alamo was a front runner in clearly stating - no.  Not here.  No talking or texting, or you'll be asked to leave.  Without a refund.

The video below ran before movies for years.  Because it worked.  It demonstrated you, who talk and text, are an asshole and we will openly mock you.

Safari Watch: Mogambo (1953)

Gable is just gonna take a peek right there on the poster

Watched:  03/15/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Ford

This is a movie where Clark Gable's dilemma is choosing between Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner and I have never felt less sympathy toward any man in a predicament.  

Mogambo (1953) is a lavish spectacle of a picture, shot on location in multiple African countries, and probably John Ford's answer to The African Queen, which was released in 1951 and won all sorts of Oscars.  Clark Gable plays a 1950's Great White Hunter, now catching live animals for zoos, circuses, etc...  He lives in deep bush country and rarely ventures out (he must really stock up on Brylcream during those trips).  He works with an Englishman he calls "Brownie", and a thug of a Russian, as well as a large coterie of local labor.

Ava Gardner is a nice enough girl from the New York club scene who has come to Gable's jungle headquarters to join a maharajah on safari - but her suitor has already left by the time she arrives.  And they're so far out, the next boat isn't due for a week.  

Gardner and Gable spar a little, but it's also obvious they start having sex.  

She's due to leave on the next boat when a British couple arrives, the husband a well-heeled anthropologist, and Grace Kelly his proper wife.  They want to go into the lowlands and find some gorillas and record audio.*