ShaneBlack Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There are Supermen, and there are perfect men. Doc Savage belongs in the latter category. Bronze and buff, with a mastery of everything from martial arts to surgery, he can do anything or be anything you ask him to be. Except a movie icon. For years, Hollywood has been trying to get a Doc Savage movie up and running (there was a disastrous attempt in 1975), but now the strength of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman just might see it through. Ain't It Cool News reports that they're the latest names to become attached, and try to see it through to completion. Even better, they've hired my personal Jesus Shane Black to write a script. The news comes straight from the mouth of Black, who just happened to run into Harry Knowles at an Austin bowling alley.

Let me back up for a little biography on Savage. He's a pulp hero from the 1930s and 40s, an ordinary man who was trained from birth to achieve mastery of everything from medicine to music. Naturally, he uses his awesome abilities to punish wrongdoing, and his travels take him all over the world. He's usually accompanied by "The Fabulous Five": Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny. (Check out Wikipedia for exhaustive descriptions.) He also had a cousin named Patricia Savage who tagged along, but was no pretty little wimp, as she was a pilot and a skilled markswoman.

As Doc Savage scripts have come and gone, the temptation has often been to move him into the modern era. Black revealed that he fully intends to keep him in the 1930s, keep the Fabulous Five, and try to capture all of what made author Lester Dent's storywork so memorable. Thin news, but something to keep Savage pulp fans awake at night, as well as those of us itching to see Black return to the big time.

ETA: Ain't It Cool News has since run a correction that Orci and Kurtzman are not producing. Neal Moritz and Ori Marmur are for Sony Pictures.

There's movies that have more memory and love attached to them for me -- Lord of the Rings and Braveheart spring immediately to mind. But how many more grateful tears can I shed over LOTR? What can I say about Braveheart that my mom didn't?

If you read my posts regularly, you might be under the impression that the only movies that make me truly weak in the knees are Marvel adaptations. But my heart belongs more to rogue cops than it does superheroes, and if I could have my film wish, it would be for a renaissance of the action/thriller. And you know, I think it might be on its way ...

First comes a story from The Hollywood Reporter that Paramount has hired Josh Olson to adapt Lee Child's novel One Shot. It's the ninth in Child's Jack Reacher series -- why they aren't adapting the first, I have no idea. Now, I haven't read the series, but from all accounts Reacher is the kind of man we haven't seen onscreen since Harry Callahan or Wendell "Bud" White. And that's why Olson (who was also behind the adaptation of A History of Violence) took the job: "I had just finished watching the first two Dirty Harry movies on Blu-ray. And I thought, 'No one's making movies like that anymore.' It coincided perfectly. It's just the kind of movie that I haven't seen in a while. It's a tough, smart, action-oriented thriller." (In a really funny twist, I was watching Dirty Harry last weekend and thinking the same thing -- and also how much I want to date Clint Eastwood circa 1971.)

Obviously, One Shot isn't enough to revive the genre, but Entertainment Weekly reports that rumors continue to gather around Lethal Weapon 5, particularly with Shane Black's Cold Warrior catching everyone's interest. Seems he's down for writing and directing the fifth installment, though all waits on the approval of Mel Gibson. I'm intrigued by the new story details, as it introduces a pair of young New York cops. Now, if Lethal Weapon 5 was more of a reboot/origin story for two new characters who could carry some films of their own, well, that would be pretty darn cool.

I would be a huge dork if I began this post with the sentence, "This is the best news ever," but it kind of is. One of my favorite (and yours too) scriptwriters is making a return to the big screen -- and may it be a triumphant one. According to Variety, Shane Black is directing Cold Warrior for Universal Pictures from a script penned by Chuck Mondry. This will be his second outing as a director -- his first was, of course, the fantastic Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And frankly, Warrior sounds like a film from the heyday of 80's action. It centers on a spy from the Cold War era who comes out of retirement and teams up with a younger agent to thwart a Russian domestic terrorism plot. It couldn't be more timely given how icy relations are with our Eastern neighbors. (The Russians didn't get to take much of a break from big-screen villainy, did they? I thought their comeback would just arrive via the Russian Mafia, not as terrorists again.)

This is going to be a blast to watch -- from the description, I want to believe it's old-school Black, but it could just as easily go into dark and serious Breach territory. Obviously, my fondness for macho men, snappy one-liners, and heavy gunfire hope it's the former. That's the kind of movie that can cure all ills and make you forget your economic woes, isn't it?

The franchise reboots may never end. According to ComingSoon.net (who spotted it on TrackingB.com), Shane Black has written a spec script for Lethal Weapon 5 without really telling anyone but Joel Silver.

The story would center around Riggs' impending retirement (and his, undoubtedly, being too old for ... well, you know). But before he leaves the force, he has to tackle one last case, and as there are no other police officers in Los Angeles, he hauls Murtaugh out of retirement to help him. Allegedly, both Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are interested, though no deals have been signed.

Now, I name drop Lethal Weapon enough that you undoubtedly know that the series ranks much higher in my life than it probably should. Watching it in my pre-teens not only taught me a choice vocabulary, it rocked my world with glimpses at a naked Mel Gibson. My problems with men probably stem from the pedestal I have placed Martin Riggs upon.

But, that doesn't mean I want a fifth movie -- I already sat through the fourth installment, and it wasn't that good. Black has penned some fantastic scripts in his time -- and I firmly believe A Long Kiss Goodnight is insanely underrated -- and I'd love to see him churning out action-comedies again. But not ones with Riggs and Murtaugh. Let Lethal Weapon lie, and write a franchise that can give us a new badass or two. Check out the video below of Seth Rogen and James Franco discussing Shane Black's movies from Moviefone's latest Unscripted chat...

Starting tonight and running through December 17th, Edgar Wright is taking control of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is programming a festival of his favorite movies, and it's a wonderful and eclectic bunch. He's calling the fest "The Wright Stuff," (also the name of a universally beloved screenwriting column on this very site), and he will be on hand to introduce several screenings with special guests. As always at the New Beverly, one of Los Angeles' absolute treasures, every screening is a double feature.

I'll just tell you about the screenings with special guests, all of which start at 7:30. But don't forget to check the website for all show dates and times. Tonight, Edgar and songwriter Paul Williams will kick off the event with two musicals -- Bugsy Malone and Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise. December 5th, the first feature is Flash Gordon, with special guest (and ex-Bond) Timothy Dalton. The second feature is Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik, introduced by Edgar and the great Joe Dante. On December 7th, Edgar will introduce The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with one of the finest action screenplay writers of our time -- Shane Black. December 10 is John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Tremors (which I spouted my love for here). Landis will help Wright introduce his film. December 12th is Top Secret! (almost as funny as Airplane and The Naked Gun, in my opinion) and Woody Allen's Bananas, with David Zucker on hand. December 14th is the Roger Ebert - penned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and Head, hosted by Wright and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. And on December 16th, Wright will introduce Evil Dead 2 and an all time favorite of mine -- the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona.

Here is a press release from Edgar with his thoughts on the included films. If you live in the Los Angeles area, there's really no excuse to miss this. See you there!

I was working at a movie theater in the summer of 1998, the summer Lethal Weapon 4 was released. One of my job responsibilities was to stand and wave goodbye to people as they'd leave their movies. (Armageddon came out the week before LW4, and I got a lot of mileage out of the line, "With all this waving, my Armageddon tired!"). I was excited about Lethal Weapon 4. I hadn't loved the previous installment, but Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were back, I had come to terms with the fact that Joe Pesci wasn't going anywhere, Rene Russo is about as solid a love interest as an action movie can get, I think Chris Rock is hilarious and I had heard amazing things about Jet Li. Plus, this would be the first Lethal I saw on the big screen. How could it go wrong?

Answer: In just about every conceivable way.

Lethal Weapon 3 was a mess, but it was a fun mess. LW4 isn't fun at all. It's downright boring. Everyone looks tired and uninspired (rhyme). The laughs aren't there. The action, aside from a great highway chase, is run-of-the-mill and confusingly shot. And there's a downright icky sentimental streak running through it -- a sappy side that is light years away from screenwriter Shane Black's original vision for these characters.

I was technically not allowed by my parents to see R-rated movies until I was seventeen. Luckily, I had friends whose parents weren't as concerned about maintaining the innocence of their children. My best friend had an enormous collection of the action extravaganzas I craved as a boy, and many a Saturday night was spent in the company of forbidden friends like John McClane, John Rambo, and John Connor (lotta Johns). And I'll never forget the night I met Sergeants Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh.

I knew right away Lethal Weapon was special when it opened with nudity! (Keep in mind, I was about eleven). It kicks off with a half-naked girl jumping to her death and just doesn't let up from there. Lethal Weapon didn't create the "buddy movie," but, for better or worse, it helped make the genre what it is today. Lethal more than earns its place alongside the glorious Midnight Run on a very short list of the eighties' finest blends of action, character, and comedy. It's been endlessly ripped off, (and did some minor ripping off of its own -- see William Friedkin's fantastic To Live and Die in LA, released two years earlier. Even Murtaugh's immortal line -- "I'm getting too old for this shit," was used there first), but, as is the case with all rip-offs, the heart and soul tend to get forgotten. Hell, the heart and soul were forgotten as the Lethal Weapon movies went along -- but I'll get to that later in the week.

This might seem like a trivial little news-niblet to most of you, but to a small-yet-rabid group of genre junkies, it's a huge piece of information: Fred Dekker's 1987's cult classic The Monster Squad appears to be headed toward a DVD release. And no it's not Anchor Bay who's hooking us up this time; Lionsgate is the rumored distributor, although they did not respond to our attempts to get a comment. For those who've never experienced the cinematic bliss that is The Monster Squad, it's about a scrappy group of kids who team up to foil the nefarious plot of Dracula and his evil minions -- namely, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy and The Gillman!

Written by Dekker and action expert Shane Black, the flick might not have set the world on fire upon its theatrical release ... but damn if it hasn't enjoyed an underground resurgence over the past ten years. According to HorrorHound.com, which claims to have the inside track on a Lionsgate plan to release the DVD, the company has not divulged anything as specific as a release date or a specs list just yet, but just knowing that the Squad may be on the way, well, it makes me all nostalgic for the late '80s. Now if we can only get Dekker's Night of the Creeps on DVD, I'll be one happy horror geek.

[Via Bloody-Disgusting.com]