‘Americana’ is a Dark Comedy About Cultural and Literal Theft, For Our Times

August 12, 2025August 12, 2025 Dominic Mah

I got to chat with director Tony Tost and star Paul Walter Hauser about Americana, the new Western/heist/comedy opening this week from Lionsgate Films. The interviews and my review of this thoroughly enjoyable genre-mashing romp, featured below. Americana also stars Halsey (yeaaah, “Without Me,” “Closer,” “Boy With Luv,” that Halsey!), Sydney Sweeney, Zahn McClarnon, Eric Dane, and Simon Rex.

Interview, Streaming, Television

Jack Schumacher Talks Love, Cliffhangers, and Character Growth in ‘Ransom Canyon’

April 18, 2025 Sophia Soto

Jack Schumacher plays Yancy Grey in Netflix’s Ransom Canyon. All episodes of the first season are now streaming, and this conversation will contain major spoilers.

Interview, Streaming, Television

Josh Duhamel and Minka Kelly on Their ‘Ransom Canyon’ Love Story

April 17, 2025April 17, 2025 Sophia Soto

Josh Duhamel and Minka Kelly star as Staten Kirkland and Quinn O’Grady in Netflix’s Ransom Canyon. All episodes are now streaming, and this interview will contain spoilers for the first season.

Interview, Television

Tom Blyth on Westerns and Connecting with His Character in ‘Billy the Kid’

May 31, 2024June 2, 2024 Sophia Soto

Tom Blyth stars as Billy in Billy the Kid. Season Two: Part Two of the series premieres Sunday, June 2 at 9 PM ET/PT on MGM+.

Sci Fi, Television

Heading Back to ‘Westworld’ with the Stars and Showrunners of Season 4

June 24, 2022June 20, 2022 Mike Manalo

Black hats and white hats assemble. It’s time to return to the Westworld. Westworld Season 4 is coming. And to celebrate our latest trip to the new world, we were given the opportunity to join the hosts and guests of the famed Delos park to discuss what’s in store for their characters and what new mysteries will be unlocked for the show’s return this coming Sunday, June 26 on HBO and HBO Max.

Interview, Television4 Comments

Katherine McNamara and Matt Barr Preview The CW’s ‘Walker Independence’

June 2, 2022June 3, 2022 Sophia Soto

While covering The CW’s Upfront 2022 Red Carpet, I had the pleasure of chatting with Katherine McNamara and Matt Barr about Walker Independence. The new show is set in the late 1800s and will serve as an origin story of The CW’s current hit series Walker.

Interview, Television

Geraldine Viswanathan and Karan Soni on ‘Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail’

July 13, 2021 Sophia Soto

Geraldine Viswanathan and Karan Soni star in Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail on TBS. The third season of the comedy will take the audience and cast on a new adventure, this time set in 1844. Soni plays The Gunslinger and Viswanathan portrays Prudence. Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail premieres on Tuesday, July 13 at 10:30 PM ET/PT. Recently, both actors can be seen together in 7 Days, which was shown at Tribeca Film Festival this year.

Interview, Television

Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi Discuss ‘Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail’

July 12, 2021July 12, 2021 Sophia Soto

Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi star in TBS’ hit series Miracle Workers, which is heading into its third season. This season of the comedy will be taking audiences as well as the cast back to 1844. Radcliffe will play a small town preacher and Buscemi is a wanted outlaw; the two of them together definitely make an entertaining pair. Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail premieres on Tuesday, July 13 at 10:30 PM ET/PT.

Movies, Streaming

Regina King and LaKeith Stanfield Lead Dynamite Cast in ‘The Harder They Fall’

July 8, 2021July 8, 2021 Jamal Michel

Between Westworld, Red Dead Online, and Lil Nas X, there has never been a better time to be a Black cowboy than now, and with the upcoming release of The Harder They Fall on Netflix, I’m going to need to get fitted for my frock coat immediately. Regina King, LaKeith Stanfield, and Idris Elba lead a brilliant cast of some of Hollywood’s most dynamic actors in this Jeymes Samuel (They Die by Dawn and JAY-Z: Legacy) epic, new-school Western.

Hard N.O.C. Life, Star Wars, Streaming

Hard NOC Life: Is ‘The Mandalorian’ Maclunky?

November 18, 2019May 15, 2021 Hard NOC Media

Dominic and Keith weigh the pros and cons of Disney+ and review The Mandalorian on this week’s Hard NOC Life.

Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: Is ‘The Mandalorian’ Maclunky?”

Sci Fi, Television5 Comments

What’s the Big Idea? A Review of HBO’s Westworld

October 1, 2016September 9, 2022 Zhouweiwen

Westworld, HBO’s new science fiction drama that will premiere Sunday, wants to be the big idea. Trade in your zombies and dragons for life-like robots. Tackling notions of morality, artificial intelligence, and entertainment in the premiere alone, Westworld wants to be a show that makes you think. Or perhaps it wants to make you despair.

Comics, Fantasy1 Comment

Today is the Last Day to Pre-Order Greg Pak’s Kingsway West #1

August 1, 2016 Keith Chow

Today, August 1, is the final order cut-off date for comic shops to order Kingsway West, the new creator-owned series by Greg Pak and Mirko Colak. The Dark Horse book officially hits stores on August 24, but the more retailers order the book, the better chances you’ll be able to secure your own copy — and ensure more books like this get made.

Continue reading “Today is the Last Day to Pre-Order Greg Pak’s Kingsway West #1″

Television4 Comments

Hell on Wheels: Chinamen, The Final Frontier

August 25, 2015August 25, 2015 Ren Hsieh

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched through Episode 6 this season, there are some character revelations and minor plot twists revealed, but ostensibly nothing that would alter anyone’s viewing of the show.

AMC’s Hell on Wheels entered its fifth and final season this summer with seven episodes scheduled to finish in 2015 and seven more in 2016 to close it out. The show follows a former Confederate solider, Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount), as he reconciles his dark past while becoming a key player in the race to build the Transcontinental Railroad.

Admittedly, I have never been a regular viewer of the show. I only tuned in for this season after hearing that Hell would finally include Chinese railroad workers as part of its story; and not without some healthy skepticism. Chinese workers have been mostly glossed over in mainstream media depictions of the western frontier and they got the same treatment through Hell‘s first four seasons. While the show’s creators Joe and Tony Gayton gave practical reasons as to why this happened, the chances of whether the Chinese would ever be included on the show seemed less promising with each passing season.

Season Five, however, has been worth the wait.

Continue reading “Hell on Wheels: Chinamen, The Final Frontier”

Star Trek, Television8 Comments

The Sisko, Part One: Our Living Black Manhood

September 11, 2013June 17, 2021 J. Lamb (Snoopy Jenkins)

When I was a teenager, I liked to skip church.

My parents attended different Baptist churches in my hometown, vibrant, bright places of worship where suburban Blacks developed a respectful, life-affirming, joyous relationship with a living God. Each Sunday meant uptempo gospel music, dedicated Bible study, and hour-long sermons on the spiritual uplift offered through Christian precepts. This was the Black church: fine clothing, expensive hats, smiling children, gaunt deacons, relaxed tresses, choir robes, public praise, Negro spirituals, religious supplication, spiritual uplift. For my neighbors, for my mother, church was the emotional recharge, the soul cleansing needed before Monday morning’s journey into corporate White villainy. I don’t pretend the same of my father; I always found his belief an extension of his duty to family and country. Still personal, but reserved, stately, imperial.