Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre will once again offer up its Noir City Xmas movie festival on December 16th. This year's event will screen Max Ophüls' The Reckless Moment (1949) at 7:30 and Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947) at 9:30, both in 35mm.  (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph.)

After successfully helming the latest Mission Impossible installment, Rogue Nation, Christopher McQuarrie has signed on to again direct the follow-up, M:I 6. The story line and casting, however (other than Tom Cruise as star), have yet to be announced.

Warner Bros. released the first trailer for Shane Black‘s detective movie The Nice Guys, starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. Set in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Gosling plays a private eye who teams up with a bruiser played by Crowe to investigate a porn star’s suicide, ultimately uncovering a conspiracy involving air pollution and the auto industry.

TELEVISION

Fox has closed a script deal for the TV franchise Rambo: New Blood, based on the feature films starring Sylvester Stallone, although the new series will explore the complex relationship between Rambo and his son, J.R., an ex-Navy SEAL. Stallone has an option to reprise his famous titular character in the TV version, although no official word has been released.

Former Smallville star Tom Welling is returning to television to star in the CBS drama Section 13, written by Bones alumna Carla Kettner. Section 13 centers on a CIA black ops officer-turned-private contractor (Welling) who, after a personal tragedy, joins a covert organization devoted to carrying out the most difficult and dangerous high-stakes assignments.

BBC One has ordered the six-part, pre-apocalyptic drama Hard Sun from Luther's Neil Cross. Set in contemporary London, it will feature detective partners and enemies who seek to enforce the law and protect their loved ones in a world that every day slips closer to certain destruction.

Amazon Video is set to produce the legal drama Trial, its straight-to-series drama starring Oscar winners Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt, Olivia Thirlby, Maria Bello, Molly Parker, and Sarah Wynter. Trial, which has a 10-episode order, was written by David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal) and Jonathan Shapiro (The Practice)

Quentin Tarantino wants to bring Elmore Leonard's Forty Lashes Less One to the small screen. The title refers to the biblical concept that forty lashes would kill a man, so the maximum punishment you might give before death would be 39. In Leonard's book, a black man and a Chiricahua Apache man have been sentenced to death but are given a second lease on life if they can track down five of Arizona’s most dangerous criminals.  

Fargo is going back to the future in its third season that takes place a couple of years after the events of Season 1, set in 2006 (the in-progress second season is set in 1979). Characters from Season 1 or even older versions of characters from Season 2 could potentially return, just as there have already been connections between the first and second seasons: the character of Lou Solverson appeared in both seasons, played by Keith Carradine in Season 1 and Patrick Wilson in Season 2.

Discovery has put in development the scripted anthology drama series Manifesto, from Black List writer Andrew Sodroski and Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti’s Trigger Street. The show will explore how the FBI caught infamous criminal masterminds, with each season following a different case. The first season will focus on the FBI agent, a highly specialized linguist, who used unconventional means to bring Ted Kaczynski, aka the “Unabomber,” to justice after nearly a 20-year manhunt.  

Fans of Rizzoli and Isles and Major Crimes will be happy to hear that TNT announced the return dates of the two popular crime dramas. Major Crimes will resume the rest of its fourth season on Monday, Feb. 15, and the following day, Rizzoli & Isles will kick off the remaining six episodes of its sixth season with back-to-back episodes.

FX released the first full trailer for its miniseries American Crime Story: The People Vs. O.J. Simpson based on Jeffrey Toobin's book The Run of His Life. Premiering February 2, the project's cast includes Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson, Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran, John Travolta as Robert Shapiro, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian and Connie Britton as Faye Resnick.

Ripper Street fans will rejoice at the return of Victorian police procedural for its fourth season in January, but in the meantime, you can watch the 90-second trailer that includes new cast members David Threlfall (Shameless) and Matthew Lewis (Harry Potter).

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

The latest Crime & Science Radio podcast, "Bones Tell the Tale," featured forensic anthropologist turned best-selling author Kathy Reichs.

Debbi Mack's Crime Cafe welcomed author Austin Camacho to chat about his Hannibal Jones mystery series and other novels.

On Crime Fiction FM, author and emergency room physician, Melissa Yi, discussed the fourth book in the Hope Sze series, Stockholm Syndrome.

Percival Constantine was the most recent guest on Thrilling Reads. The author was born and raised in the Chicagoland area and now lives in Japan, where he's worked as editor, formatter, letterer, and author of comics, short stories, novellas and novels.

Joe Clifford talked about his debut novel Lamentation on Speaking of Mysteries.