TV/Movies Megathread

[CountDeMoney]

I was going to post that when I saw it today, and I forgot.

Now it's fucking tainting to fuck all.  Thanks, asshole.

[Liep]

The Death of Stalin

Iannucci is still fun and the cast is great in what feels like could be an accurate retelling of the historic event.

8 kisses on Malenkov's russian ass out of 10.

[Ed Anger]

Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Actually enjoyed it.

I HAVE FAMOUSLY HUGE TURDS

[Admiral Yi]

Rewatched Mystic River last night.  Great movie, still seeing new things after the sixth viewing.

[CountDeMoney]

Hiep Thi Le, who escaped Vietnam on a fishing boat when she was about 9 and a dozen years later became an unlikely movie star when she was cast as the central figure in "Heaven and Earth," Oliver Stone's 1993 film, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 46.

The cause was stomach cancer, her friend Quentin Lee said.

Ms. Le was born in Da Nang, in central Vietnam, on Feb. 18, 1971, while the Vietnam War was still raging. Turmoil after the fall of Saigon in 1975 led tens of thousands of Vietnamese to flee the country toward the end of that decade. The boat people, they were called, and Ms. Le was one of them. Her father had already left the country, and her mother arranged for her and a younger sister to steal away aboard a fishing boat.

"We were just told by my mom that we had to go look for Dad," she once told an interviewer, "and that he had gone to someplace called America, which we interpreted was the city across the river, since it had lights."

She said that she and her sister spent time in several refugee camps in Hong Kong and eventually did find her father, by happenstance. Sponsored by a church, they were brought to the United States, where they were eventually reunited with the rest of the family and settled near Oakland, Calif.

The family faced financial hardships, going on and off welfare, but Ms. Le was able to help out considerably when, quite by accident, she landed the film role.

Mr. Stone had already examined Vietnam and its aftermath in his films "Platoon" (1986) and "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989) when he took up the true story of Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman who in two memoirs recounted her often harrowing story of life in central Vietnam and, later, the United States.

Mr. Stone held open auditions for the part of Le Ly, drawing thousands of hopefuls. Ms. Le, he told The New York Times in 1993, "just had the light."

At the time, she was a student at the University of California at Davis studying physiology and had no acting experience. She had gone to an open casting call in San Jose, she said, merely to accompany friends.

"Everybody was going to this thing," she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1993. "I didn't even know what it was for. I thought it was for TV."

Ms. Le impressed critics when the movie came out.

"You can't not be moved by Hiep Thi Le's amazing performance," Jay Carr said in reviewing the film in The Boston Globe.

In The Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "As played with impressive confidence by Hiep Thi Le, a Vietnamese-born California college student making her film debut, Le Ly certainly does not lack energy."

Ms. Le went on to appear in about a dozen other movies, including "Cruel Intentions" (1999), "Green Dragon" (2001), which was about Vietnam War refugees, and "Return to Pontianak" (2001), which was directed by her husband, the writer and director Djinn. They had two children.

In addition to her acting, Ms. Le was a restaurateur. She opened two restaurants in California, the China Beach Vietnamese Bistro in the Venice section of Los Angeles and Le Cellier in Marina del Rey.

Mr. Lee, a producer and director who had known Ms. Le from an earlier project, recalled the time she let him use Le Cellier to shoot part of a movie he was producing, "Big Gay Love" (2013).

"Not only did Hiep let us shoot at her brand new restaurant, she also offered to cater for us," he said by email. "When we showed up, she had closed the restaurant and cooked up a feast for the cast and crew. There was no way that the indie budget I gave her could have afforded us all that."

He said she told him simply, "Just enjoy and make a good movie."

Ms. Le credited Tommy Lee Jones, who played her abusive husband in "Heaven and Earth," with helping to coach her through her debut, which included a scene involving a rough domestic confrontation.

"For the fight scene, he said, 'Honey, if you can't fake a slap, do it for real,' " she told The Boston Herald. "I slapped his face a thousand times."

[Admiral Yi]

Tried to watching The Office Party, couldn't make it.  First Jason Bateman movie I think I've not liked.

Jennifer Anniston is the heartless boss.  Pothead from Silicon Valley plays more or less the same role he plays in Silicon Valley.  Jason Bateman is the everyman.  Random semi hot chick is the love interest.

Jennifer leaves town and the kids throw an office Christmas party and invite a potential client in hopes it will land them the big sale.

The middle of the movie is the party, which is rap music playing, people waving their arms in the air, taking camera pics.  Every once in a while there's a little vignette.  Jason and Random get locked out on the roof and make out.  Then more music/waving/pics.  The client gets hit with an artificial snow blower that someone dropped cocaine into.  He geeks out.  Music/waving.  Etc.  None of them gets to the level of actually funny.  They're too short for one thing.  Got to hurry the fuck up and get back to the big dancing scene.

Last scene pothead gets grabbed by a pimp and Jason and random organize a rescue expedition.  That's when I gave up.

[Eddie Teach]

Olivia Munn deserves neither the random or semi qualifiers. Yi is developing internet standards.

[garbon]

At the same time, she does ruin everything she is in.

[Eddie Teach]

Does she ruin things or just pick projects that are already crap though?

[Liep]

Does she ruin things or just pick projects that are already crap though?

Checking her IMDb page and would say it's the latter. She hasn't been in anything that could've been saved by replacing her

[celedhring]

Didn't she have like two phrases of spoken dialogue in the X-Men film she was in? She's definitely not being picked up for roles for her thespianism.

[The Brain]

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. I liked it. Let the haters hate, I love Matthew McConaughey.

[Eddie Teach]

Then it should make you sad when he chooses projects that are beneath him.

[The Brain]

Then it should make you sad when he chooses projects that are beneath him.

What kind of project would be beneath Matthew McConaughey?

[Josephus]

Then it should make you sad when he chooses projects that are beneath him.

What kind of project would be beneath Matthew McConaughey?

surely a car commercial