MOVIES
Cogan's Trade, a film based on the 1974 novel by George V. Higgins, starts filming next month in New Orleans. The novel by Higgins, called the best from "the Balzac of the Boston underworld" by the New Yorker, focuses on a private investigator contacted to investigate when a mobster high-stakes game is robbed.
It's looking more likely that Bond will be back in 2012, with Daniel Craig returning in the 23rd installment of the movie franchise. It's been such an on-again, off-again affair due to the uncertainties of MGM's finances, that it's hard to believe it's "on" again. As of now, the release date is set for November 9th. For more on the details, the Rap Sheet has the scoop.
James Franco has signed on to both play the Night Stalker serial killer Richard Ramirez and to direct the film based on Philip Carlo's book about the mid-80's serial killer.
TV
Wednesday night, January 19, on Investigation Discovery, author James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential, Blood's A Rover) takes a fresh look at some of Hollywood's most notorious crimes in the program James Ellroy's LA: City of Demons. The show includes in-depth interviews "with witless witnesses, preening prosecutors, insipid investigators and jaded jurors." Oh, and there's also an animated talking police dog named Barko. Here's a show teaser.
Hallie Ephron's book Never Tell a Lie has been made into a Lifetime TV Movie, re-titled And Baby Will Fall, which premieres this Sunday, January 23rd 8 EST. It's about a young husband and wife expecting a child whose lives are turned upside down when a former flame of the husband's turns up dead and he becomes a suspect. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
Law & Order: Los Angeles is only into its first season, and it's already in the middle of a cast shakeup. Skeet Ulrich, Regina Hall and Megan Boone have all been axed. The move is rather puzzling, in light of the fact that the show is the strongest of NBC's new series in the 18-49 demographic.
Meanwhile, ABC has announced it's renewing Castle for the 2011-2012 season.
Across the Pond, the BBC and ITV have some crime dramas in the works, including:
- The Body Farm, a spin-off from Waking the Dead, with Tara Fitzgerald reprising her Eve Lockhart character from the series;
- the modern-day espionage drama Page Eight from writer David Hare;
- The Field of Blood based on the Denise Mina novel about a would-be journalist who becomes entangled in a dark murder case;
- Case Histories, a six-part BBC series from award-winning novelist Kate Atkinson, featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie;
- Vera, based on the novels of Ann Cleeves and her fat detective inspector Vera Stanhope;
- The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher based on the true-crime book by Kate Summerscale about an infamous murder in a Victorian country house.
Across the Pond, part two: eight one-hour episodes of a potential TV detective series set in Bath during Jane Austen's time have been written and will be filmed next year. Titled The Regency Detective, the series was created by scriptwriters David Lassman and Terence James and is billed as showing the darker side of the period. (What, no zombies?)
PODCASTS/RADIO
I came across the site Don't Touch That Dial that features old-time radio programs. Check out the Mystery Monday and Terror Tuesday lineups.
Here's another fun historical tidbit, a chat between Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming from 1958.
If you haven't checked out The Guardian's author interviews yet, here's a link to such features as Michael Dibdin, talking about his literary creation Aurelio Zen, as well as Alexander McCall Smith, PD James and Val McDermid.
GAMES
If you're into online video games and have some time to kill, game developer Hiding Buffalo has just released Something in the Water, part of their Gumshoe Online detective game series. It's a film noir adventure set in the 1930s about a plan to contaminate a city's supply.
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