Latest news with #ReservationDogs
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Casting News: Lifetime's Lucifer Reunion, Prison Break Addition and More
Lucifer alumni Lesley-Ann Brandt and Aimee Garcia are set to star with Taye Diggs (Private Practice) in the Lifetime movie Terry McMillan Presents: His, Hers & Ours, due out later this year. The premise: Single father Darius (played by Diggs) discovers his teenage daughter in bed with her boyfriend Chase, and wastes no time kicking him out. However, a knock at the door changes everything — it's Chase's mother, Kelly (Brandt), furious and ready for confrontation. Buuuuut… forced to spend time together due to their children's relationship, Kelly and Darius slowly develop feelings for each other. More from TVLine Shrinking Boss Bill Lawrence Tees Up Reunion With His 'Hero' Michael J. Fox, Shares Favorite Spin City Memory Ncuti Gatwa Bids Doctor Who Farewell as Finale Ends With a Most Surprising Twist - Grade It! Lester Holt Signs Off as NBC Nightly News Anchor - Will You Miss Him? Diggs and Brandt will both also serve as executive producers on the TV-movie, while Garcia will play Sofia, Kelly's best friend who grows suspicious of the budding relationship. In other recent casting news… * Hulu's Prison Break reboot has added Priscilla Delgado (A League of Their Own) as Cheyenne, a prison inmate and the girlfriend of a prisoner in the men's unit just a floor away; Deadline first reported on the casting. * NBC's single-cam comedy pilot set at a Native American community center in Oakland, Calif. has cast Jana Schmieding (Rutherford Falls), Bobby Wilson (Reservation Dogs), Wes Studi (Reservation Dogs) and SNL vet Rachel Dratch, per Variety. * Presenters for this Sunday's Tony Awards, airing live on CBS starting at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT, include Aaron Tveit, Adam Lambert, Alex Winter, Allison Janney, Ariana DeBose, Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Carrie Preston, Charli D'Amelio, Danielle Brooks, Jean Smart, Jesse Eisenberg, Katie Holmes, Keanu Reeves, Kelli O'Hara, Kristin Chenoweth, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Lea Michele, Lea Salonga, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michelle Williams, Oprah, Rachel Bay Jones, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Samuel L. Jackson, Sara Bareilles and Sarah Paulson. * Country stars Cody Johnson and Ashley McBryde will host this year's CMA Fest, airing Thursday, June 26 at 8/7c on ABC (and streaming on Hulu the following day). Hit the comments with your thoughts on the above castings! Best of TVLine Stars Who Almost Played Other TV Roles — on Grey's Anatomy, NCIS, Lost, Gilmore Girls, Friends and Other Shows TV Stars Almost Cast in Other Roles Fall TV Preview: Who's In? Who's Out? Your Guide to Every Casting Move!
Digital Trends
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Buffy reboot has a new slayer: Hulu casts Ryan Kiera Armstrong in lead role
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot has found its lead in Ryan Kiera Armstrong. The Skeleton Crew will star opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar, who will executive produce and reprise her role as the iconic Buffy Summers. On her Instagram, Gellar shared a video where she announced the news to Armstrong. Recommended Videos 'How do you feel about helping me save the world?' Gellar asked Armstrong. 'You want to be my chosen one?' An overjoyed Armstrong broke down in tears and thanked Gellar for 'trusting' her with the role. 'From the moment I saw Ryan's audition, I knew there was only one girl that I wanted by my side,' Gellar wrote in the caption. 'To have that kind of emotional intelligence, and talent, at such a young age is truly gift. The bonus is that her smile lights up even the darkest room.' Armstrong is best known for playing Fern in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Charlie Mcgee in the Firestarter remake. Armstrong will next appear in a guest role in Stick, Owen Wilson's Apple TV+ golf comedy. Later this year, Armstrong stars alongside Ethan Hawke in FX's The Lowdown, a new series from Reservation Dogs' Sterlin Harjo. The Buffy reboot received a pilot order at Hulu in February. Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, the showrunners on Poker Face season 1, will write, showrun, and executive produce the untitled reboot. 'We are so overjoyed to have found this generation's slayer in Ryan Kiera Armstrong, she absolutely blew us away — there is no question in our mind that she is the chosen one,' the Zuckermans said in a statement. Oscar winner Chloé Zhao will executive produce and direct the pilot. Plot details remain under wraps. Armstrong's slayer is expected to be a high-school student. The next chapter in the Buffyverse comes from 20th Television and Searchlight TV. Buffy the Vampire ran for seven seasons from 1997 to 2003. Stream the entire series on Hulu or Disney+.
Atlantic
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Catharsis in Re-Creating One of the Worst Days of Your Life
This article includes spoilers for the film Warfare. Since 2012, Ray Mendoza has been building a hefty Hollywood résumé: performing stunts, choreographing gunfights, and teaching movie stars how to act like soldiers in films such as Act of Valor and Lone Survivor. He also helped design the battle sequences in last year's Civil War, the writer-director Alex Garland's speculative thriller imagining America as an endless combat zone. These projects have been a particularly good fit for him. Mendoza is a former Navy SEAL; two decades ago, during the Iraq War, he was part of a platoon scouting a residential area in Ramadi. One day in November 2006, al-Qaeda forces injured two of his teammates and then exploded an IED while American soldiers attempted to extract the pair. Trapped in a single building, the group waited for a new convoy of rescue tanks that wouldn't arrive for hours. The events are depicted in the film Warfare, now streaming, which Mendoza wrote and directed with Garland. Over the course of a brisk 95 minutes, the viewer watches as the platoon goes from carrying out a typical surveillance exercise to trying to evacuate without harming anyone else. (The skirmish was part of the Battle of Ramadi, an eight-month conflict that left more than 1,000 soldiers, insurgents, and civilians dead.) Yet, for all the combat Warfare depicts, the film doesn't resemble most military movies. Members of the platoon—played by an ensemble of rising stars, including Will Poulter, Charles Melton, and Reservation Dogs ' D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza—exchange little dialogue, rarely trading first names let alone backstories. Up until the al-Qaeda forces discover their hideout, the action is contained to mundane activities: confirming operations, tracking other platoons' movements. There are no extraneous set pieces to keep the audience's attention, no rousing speeches from world leaders, no context provided about why Ramadi was important to American interests during the Iraq War. The result is a war movie that's mostly a war movie in name only—which is how Mendoza told me he wanted it. In real life, one of the wounded SEALs, Elliott Miller (played by Shōgun 's Cosmo Jarvis), never recovered his memory after getting caught in the IED blast. Miller's inability to recall the day's events inspired Mendoza to reconstruct them meticulously. When Mendoza and Garland began developing Warfare, they interviewed as many members of the platoon as they could, corroborating details until they had a version of the experience that they hoped would feel authentic to the people involved. The film makes clear that, to the co-directors, war is a hell made of never-ending protocols, of compartmentalized emotions, of intense bonds built among people taught to move as one indistinguishable unit. As Mendoza put it to me, 'I just wanted to do an accurate representation of what combat was.' And, he added, 'I wanted to re-create it because my friend doesn't remember it.' After the IED explodes, Elliott isn't the only one horrifically injured. Sam (played by Joseph Quinn) wakes to find himself on fire, his legs mangled. For what feels like hours on end to the viewer, Sam howls in pain as his teammates drag him to safety. Warfare is largely devoid of the hallmarks of a Hollywood film—there's no musical score, for instance—and Sam's cries highlight the film's naturalism; they are screams that the movie suggests were as nerve-shredding for Sam's teammates to hear in real life as they are for audience members to hear at home. But Joe Hildebrand, the SEAL on whom Sam is based, told me that he was unaffected by Quinn's performance when he watched it during a visit to the set. 'Everybody kept asking me, 'You okay?'' he recalled. 'I said, 'I'm fine.' I know the outcome. I know how it's gonna turn out.' Hildebrand found the set itself, which was built on a former World War II airfield turned film studio outside London, more visceral. Warfare 's crew had meticulously reconstructed the house in which the SEALs hid; looking around, Hildebrand explained, brought back 'little memories'—a conversation he had here, the way a teammate stood there. Together with the real Elliott, who had also stopped by the set, Hildebrand described experiencing a surprising mix of emotions as they exited the house. 'The feeling of going out that gate again, into the street—the last time we did, it did not turn out well at all,' he said. 'It was an odd feeling, but it was a glorious feeling at the same time, because you knew nothing was going to happen on the other side.' As such, despite its intensity, Warfare offers some semblance of satisfaction—and not just for the SEALs whose memories have been rendered on-screen. Many movies, Mendoza said, have contributed to perpetuating distressing stereotypes about veterans—that they're all suffering from PTSD, too tortured and traumatized to function. He wanted Warfare to push back against generalizations by keeping the audience at an emotional remove. The movie's portrayal of the front lines stays focused on the action. 'Is it disturbing? Yeah,' Mendoza told me of the film's observational nature. 'But it's truthful.' For Hildebrand, being able to revisit the incident and talk with Mendoza about it was therapeutic. After everyone returned home, he told me, their platoon 'kind of just coexisted. Everybody was still friends, but we didn't have parties and get-togethers and even just time to sit down and talk and get those stories out.' Hildebrand said that Warfare enabled him to corroborate his memories with the other men who were there. (He made it clear that he couldn't speak for everyone; some of the SEALs couldn't be reached, and the names of 14 of the 20 men involved have been changed in the film to protect their identity.) For Mendoza, the process of talking about the incident with other members of the platoon, and with Garland, meant having someone 'explaining it back to you probably even in a better way than you described it to them in the first place. And then you feel heard, you feel understood. You're like, Okay, finally I think I'm able to let this go.' Still, Mendoza said, 'Just because the movie's done doesn't mean we're healed.' Every blunder seems to have lingered in their minds: In one scene, Lieutenant Macdonald (Michael Gandolfini) accidentally injects morphine into his own hand while trying to ease Elliott's pain. In another, Erik (Poulter), a captain who had largely ensured that everyone remained calm, suddenly chokes while instructing the platoon on what to do. Some men even kick Sam's legs as they pass by him, a misguided display of bravado that fails to raise spirits and only injures him further. Warfare opens with a scene set the night before the incident; in it, the platoon members hype themselves up by watching the notoriously racy music video for Eric Prydz's ' Call on Me,' swaying together as one big, sweaty, testosterone-fueled mass. The movie ends on a shot of the silent Ramadi street after the gunfire has faded. In between, the film, like Civil War, never delves into the politics of the conflict; it neither commends nor condemns the fighting. It just leaves the audience with the sense that the hours the group spent trapped irrevocably changed them. For Mendoza, the explosion that incapacitated his teammates 'rewired' his brain; he told me he's been dreaming about what happened for 20 years. Some of his dreams echo reality. Others, including one in which Elliott gets back up after the explosion and is completely unharmed, are so fantastical and disorienting that Mendoza wishes he won't ever wake up. Working on the film has helped him dissipate some of that confusion. 'I don't know what's real and what's not real sometimes,' he said. But making Warfare 'helped organize those memories and cancel out which ones weren't real,' he told me. 'It just kind of keeps these memories in line.'
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Warfare star hails honest portrayal of war and calls other movies 'a lie'
Warfare has never quite been depicted in the way it is in Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza's film of the same name, with a level of authenticity that doesn't glorify or shy away from the brutality of it, which is something star D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai tells Yahoo UK he hopes will make the film a warning. The film recounts the experiences that Iraq veteran Mendoza and his fellow Navy Seals faced in real life in 2006, when they had to fight their way out of a hideout when attacked by enemy combatants. Not only is it an unflinching depiction of what they experienced it also features a cast who are the age they actually were when they were sent to fight — something not often seen in Hollywood. It's because of this that Woon-A-Tai, who plays Mendoza, hopes the film will encourage lawmakers and leaders to rethink their actions: "If I may speak personally, I just hope that whomever decides to start wars, or to send people to wars, I hope they watch this film and see how young the people that they're sending out to the front lines are. I feel like in other Hollywood films, the depiction of how young the soldiers are is a lie. "I feel like we see them a lot older than they really are, and that's one of the great accomplishments of this film that I'm proud of is the fact of how young we are depicted, because a lot of the men that we played were in their early 20s, basically kids. So for the people to see kids on the front lines instead of your 30 year old buff guy, and just see a kid there it's a different experience and I hope people who do make those decisions, or who do vote for wars or whatever the case may be, really acknowledges who they're sending to these front lines. This film really does show the consequences of those decisions." The actor who made his name in Reservation Dogs is part of an incredible ensemble which includes the likes of Kit Connor, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, Michael Gandolfini, and Joseph Quinn amongst many others. It is a story of brotherhood in an impossibly difficult situation. Gandolfini, who plays Lt. Macdonald, hailed Mendoza and Garland's approach to the narrative, sharing: "The point is to tell the most honest depiction of what happened that day and through that honesty came a lot of consequences of that day, and a lot of very painful things came out of that day and that's just the facts. "Alex and Ray, as men, are two of the most honest people I've ever met and it's touching and inspiring and incredible, and they were there every day to ensure that the most honest depiction of humanity in this situation of these men were being accurately depicted, and they did that with such class and excitement. "There would be moments that someone may have an idea that would be great in the film, but if it didn't happen it didn't happen, can't be added, and so they were our leaders completely in this whole thing." Connor remarked that it "was a lot" for the cast but it was also an important thing for them to do in order to achieve Mendoza's vision. "There was definitely an undertaking for sure," he explains. "I think we all worked very hard, but we wanted to work very hard. It was a product of a lot of things, honesty was the main priority. We wanted to make sure that everything was truthful and that every action was everything that happened to them. "The film is based on these people's memories and everything's been corroborated through these memories. So filling in the gaps and trying to work our characters would do —if we were waiting for five minutes for attack or for Bradley to come up— and we wanted that to feel truthful and authentic." "It was definitely difficult at times," the Heartstopper actor went on. "It had its challenges, but the fact that we all had this bond and this supportive nurturing environment [helped]. "It was a very, very loving and supportive environment to come to work to every day. It was like every I wanted to come to work, everyday I was really happy to be there and happy to be with all of these people. I feel the same now promoting the movie, I'm happy to be here with everyone and to talk about this film because I think it's really important." Warfare premieres in cinemas on Friday, 18 April.
Los Angeles Times
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Will Native tribes secure Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument?
On March 25, representatives of six Southwestern tribes announced the formation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Inter-Tribal Coalition. They are following the model of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, the moral force behind the 2016 establishment of Utah's Bears Ears National Monument. This elevation of Indigenous voices in land management signals a cultural shift in America — and it's a transformation worth celebrating in this dark time. These Native people — including the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Zuni Tribe — all have ancestral connections to this vast southern Utah monument designated by President Clinton in 1996. Indigenous groups have unique and authoritative standing to advocate for the conservation of these aboriginal lands and to work with federal agencies as co-stewards, preserving sensitive monument resources. The Grand Staircase Coalition is launching just in time to defend this particular landscape from any attempts by the Trump administration to modify the monument's boundaries or reduce its protections. On Feb. 3, Trump's secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, issued orders 'unleashing American energy' and mandating a 'review' of public lands where energy development is forbidden, such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase. 'Tribes carry an invaluable treasure of traditional knowledge about these lands, meticulously passed down through generations,' Anthony Sanchez Jr., head councilman of the Zuni Tribe, said in a statement announcing the coalition's formation. 'Indigenous perspectives illuminate the intricate interconnectedness of ecosystems…. The rich tapestry of oral histories, cultural narratives, and ceremonial traditions provides essential context, often uncovering insights that written records overlook.' When I worked on book projects in Native America in the 1980s and 1990s, I listened to dozens of such narratives. I interviewed and photographed several hundred Native people in the 50 reservations in the Southwest and encountered stunning generosity and enduring traditions everywhere. I did my best to honor these gifts, to channel the warmth and strength of 'the People' (as so many cultural groups call themselves in their own languages) in my work as messenger, bringing Native stories to general readers. As a white man, I couldn't do those books today, and this shift is both appropriate and thrilling. Native people now speak for themselves, and they insist on the right to do so. Young members of tribal communities are fierce about claiming their voices — in writing, in art, in film, in public policy. FX's streaming series 'Reservation Dogs,' whose writers and directors, and most of its actors and crew, were Indigenous, broke ground for authenticity on television. Tribal members have served as secretary of the Interior (Deb Haaland, from New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo) and director of the National Park Service (Chuck Sams, Cayuse and Walla Walla). The Biden administration appointed more than 80 Native people to federal positions. President Biden also established national monuments in Arizona, Nevada and California that protect Indigenous sacred lands, responding to longstanding tribal initiatives. He issued a formal apology for the federal government's forced assimilation practices and established Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania, acknowledging the painful legacy of the Indian boarding school era and the resilience of Indigenous communities and tribal nations. In those long-ago years of my fieldwork, Peterson Zah, then president of the Navajo Nation, told me, 'Indian life is a roller coaster. When we are at the very top of the roller coaster, we have to do things to allow the survival of the Indian people. That's the only time you can accomplish things, when people are willing to listen.' Lakota historian Vine Deloria Jr. noted that the United States gets interested in Native people in cycles. About every 20 years, there's a brief flurry of attention, and then Indigenous issues disappear again from the national agenda. In 1990, what grabbed headlines was the film 'Dances With Wolves.' At the 1991 Academy Awards, Doris Leader Charge translated acceptance speeches into the Lakota language. In the weeks that followed, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), longtime chair of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, found prominent senators knocking on his door daily, requesting a seat on his usually neglected committee. For the first time ever, he had a designated committee room and a full slate of members. Inouye joked with Zah that the new converts were the 'Dances With Wolves' senators. With increasing co-stewardship and co-management of their ancestral lands, today's Native people are breaking the on-again, off-again cycle of attention. 'Native American' and 'Indigenous people' may be on the list of words scrubbed from government documents and websites, but Trump's lack of respect for tribal sovereignty and disinterest in Indian Country will be a passing blip in the 'rediscovery of America,' as Native historian Ned Blackhawk calls our new regard for Indigenous history. Native peoples who continue to interact with the Grand Staircase-Escalante landscape traditionally and ceremonially can trace their deepest roots in the region back at least 13,000 years. 'We are the living descendants of the ancestors that left their footprints and writings across Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument,' says Autumn Gillard, cultural resources manager with the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. Indigenous people have persisted, miraculously, despite America's efforts to erase them. No matter the volatility of changing political winds, we must continue to honor Native voices, listen to traditional ecological knowledge and insist on respect for our Native neighbors. Empowering and engaging with the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Inter-Tribal Coalition is one way to live up to that responsibility. Stephen Trimble served on the board of Grand Staircase Escalante Partners. His books include 'The People: Indians of the American Southwest' and 'Talking With the Clay: the Art of Pueblo Pottery in the 21st Century.'
