The story of the first cultural support team member to be killed in Afghanistan will be brought to the silver screen with the help of an Academy Award-winning actress, Deadline.com reported earlier this week. Fox 2000 teamed with Reese Witherspoon’s Pacific Standard production company to secure film rights for the upcoming book “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield,” according to the entertainment-news website. The title references 1st Lt. Ashley White, who was killed in a roadside bomb blast in Kandahar province’s Zhari district on Oct. 22, 2011. White was part of…
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Gary Faulkner, a Colorado man with no combat training or independent wealth, made at least 11 attempts to find and capture Osama bin Laden — some ending in Pakistan, one ending in Las Vegas, none conducted under the auspices of any government or military agency. How does a nation honor such actions? A medal? Prison time? A movie starring Nicolas Cage with a title lifted from an old recruiting commercial? Turns out, it’s the third thing. Cage will portray a character based on Faulkner in “Army of One,” The Hollywood Reporter reported Wednesday. Larry Charles, the director behind “Borat,” “Bruno” and “The Dictator,” will…
Given all the creative, often disturbing, ways people have found to be impolite to one another over social media, one might think that revisiting old, nonsensical battles like “jocks vs. the marching band” would be unnecessary. One would be wrong. Jim Rome, host of a long-running nationally syndicated sports-talk radio show and “Jim Rome on Showtime,” took to Twitter during the New Year’s Day onslaught of college football to post the following: “Is there anyone not in a marching band who thinks these dorks running around with their instruments are cool?” Reaction was swift, and among the bands and band…
Football fans at Fort Benning, Georgia, will have the chance to be a part of live NFL pregame broadcasts on Sunday from York Field, then stick around to watch the games on a jumbo screen. Fox Sports NFL reporter Jay Glazer tops the list of personalities who’ll broadcast live from Benning as part of the network’s salute to veterans, with segments airing on the “Fox NFL Sunday” broadcast that begins at noon as well as “Fox NFL Kickoff,” which airs earlier on the Fox Sports 1 cable network. Glazer’s no stranger to military outreach, having visited troops in Afghanistan, Qatar…
The team behind the canceled Fox sitcom “Enlisted” will trade in fictional Fort McGee for a super-sized keyboard and a coin-operated fortune teller. Kevin Biegel and Mike Royce will produce and write a TV adaptation of “Big,” the 1988 coming-of-age-in-a-hurry movie starring Tom Hanks, according to reports from Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter. The show reportedly would air as an “event series,” meaning it likely would have a predetermined end date — unlike the commotion that surrounded the pair’s previous project. The move comes after extensive, but ultimately unsuccessful, negotiations between 20th Century Fox Television and Yahoo to bring…
Service members who joined up when the first full-length episode of “The Simpsons” hit the air have been eligible to retire for about five years. And while the long-running animated series rarely dabbles in military-themed humor, it’s tough for any scripted television to go a quarter-century without somebody stealing a tank, somebody else entering into a blood pact over World War II plunder, and somebody else becoming a red-team leader in an Army war game through a series of inexplicable circumstances. It’s simple math. FXX recently secured the rights to the show’s massive back catalog, and it’s celebrating by airing…
Earlier this year, while visiting family in Florida and pretty much killing time, Pfc. Paul Ieti won $150 at a Florida fair’s karaoke contest by belting out “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts. His latest rendition of that hit came with a bit more pressure. And earned him a chance at bit more cash. The 21-year-old petroleum supply specialist from American Samoa was the last of six male singers featured during Wednesday night’s two-hour episode of “America’s Got Talent,” part of the NBC show’s “Judgment Week” festivities that determined which 48 acts will move on to perform live at…
A recent USA Today appreciation for James Garner, the iconic actor who died Saturday at age 86, called him “the epitome of the reluctant hero.” The examples cited involve Garner’s on-screen choices and characters as well as his off-screen battles with studios. But before all that — before a career that spanned from Maverick to The Rockford Files to … well, to Maverick, and plenty of stops in between — Garner was in Korea, quite literally trying to avoid getting his ass shot to pieces. Then-Pvt. James Bumgarner received his second wound during his time in Korea (multiple obituaries say he…
It’s something the Army has known for years but the entertainment community is just finding out: It’s tough to close a base. Even a fictional one. When Fox officially shut down Fort McGee, Florida — home to the freshman comedy “Enlisted” — this spring, fans mounted a push to convince the network the show was worth saving. They pointed to an awful time slot, a lack of promotion and an underappreciation for a growing social media following, which led to the show trending on Twitter frequently — sometimes when it wasn’t even on. Mainstream media — give or take –…
Video-game conference-goers got a sneak peek Tuesday at “Fury” — a tank-based World War II drama starring Brad Pitt that hits theaters in November. The Wargaming.net panel at the E3 megaconference in Los Angeles debuted the short clip, which was posted on YouTube by IGN and reported on by Vanity Fair. And now that the attribution’s out of the way, take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahFWvk1NgfY What we learn in 95 or so seconds: Fans of CGI and “Transformers”-level battle sequences probably should stay home come November: Fury was shot on film, with traditional special effects. This would explain why the production…
