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Nobody loves Rory anymore. All she has is her pile of clean laundry and her undying rage.


This story:

The former surgeon had to be persuaded to take the role, which required him to leave Sophia with a guardian while he shot on location in Thailand. There, Ngor revisited past traumas, such as when he had to watch his wife die in childbirth at a camp (exposing himself as a doctor would have gotten them both executed). Ngor wasn’t afraid to channel that pain: “He was very brave,” says the film’s director, Roland Joffe. “Acting means you have to give of your soul, and he did that.”

Ngor, who continued to act and appeared in more than a dozen movies and TV shows over the next decade, regularly “borrowed” the statuette for speaking engagements and return trips to Cambodia, spreading awareness about and delivering aid to a country that lost approximately 2 million lives under the communist Khmer Rouge regime. The local and overseas Cambodian community nearly unanimously believes that Ngor’s outspoken advocacy is why he was fatally shot at the age of 55 outside his Chinatown apartment in downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 25, 1996. But investigators did not uncover evidence of a political hit, and three local gang members eventually were convicted of murder in a robbery gone awry — according to the prosecution, Ngor resisted surrendering his prized possession, a locket bearing his only photo of his late wife. “I want to believe that our judicial system worked,” says Ngor’s best friend, Jack Ong, the executive director of his namesake foundation. “That way it’s easier to move on.”


I loved this wider look at the context in which queer activists protested Silence of the Lambs and the 1992 Academy Awards:

Hollywood’s antigay tendencies were still thriving in the early 1990s, and 1991 was a prime example. “That was the year of ‘The gays killed JFK’ and ‘Trans people are serial killers who will make you into a coat,’” jokes Gaudino, referring to the villains in JFK (with its highly fictionalized gay cabal of assassination conspirators) and Silence of the Lambs (with its serial killer who murders women to wear their skin), respectively. It was also the year of Fried Green Tomatoes, a film based on a bestselling novel about a female friendship turned romance, in which the protagonists’ lesbian relationship was eliminated; Prince of Tides,featuring one character traumatized by a gay rape and another who was a wise-cracking, flamboyant gay stereotype; and L.A. Story, in which all references to a lesbian character’s love life were cut before release. A few independent movies offered more balanced portrayals, including Gus Van Sant’s lauded indie drama My Own Private Idaho and the drag-ball documentary Paris is Burning — neither of which, despite making multiple critics’ best-of-the-year lists, were nominated for Oscars. (“So when our stories were getting out there, they were being completely ignored [by the Academy],” notes Gaudino.)

All of those films — particularly JFK (considered a Best Picture frontrunner) and Silence of the Lambs (the eventual winner) — would be singled out by the media in the months leading up to the Oscar protests in early 1992. But the protesters’ efforts began with another film entirely, one that was decidedly not an Academy Awards contender: Basic Instinct.


Oh, you guys, remember the engineer who’s been walking around for thirty years burdened with guilt that he wasn’t able to stop the Challenger launch? Well, apparently after he spoke to NPR about it on the anniversary of the disaster (I WEPT), the outpouring of support and sympathy from readers has actually brought him a lot of healing, and that makes me so so happy:

The note from Hardy and the phone call from McDonald seemed to be a turning point. It was two weeks now after the Challenger story, and Kathy had been reading letter after letter every day. Sitting in his big easy chair in his living room, Ebeling’s eyes and mood seemed brighter.

“I’ve seen a real change,” his daughter explained. “He doesn’t have a heavy heart like he did.”

Ebeling then jumped in.

“I know that is the truth that my burden has been reduced,” he said. “I can’t say it’s totally gone, but I can certainly say it’s reduced.”


The BBC’s report on the abuses of Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall is out, and it’s appalling, of course:

The Dame Janet Smith review identified 72 victims of Savile – including eight who were raped – and 21 victims of Hall, over four decades from the 1960s.

She said BBC culture “was deeply deferential” and staff were reluctant to speak to managers about complaints.

Director general Lord Hall said the BBC had failed to protect the victims.

The review found that senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of a culture of fear that still exists in the BBC.


I can’t imagine how awful this sort of nonsense is for grieving families (this is just an update to the original Buzzfeed piece we discussed earlier):

On Tuesday, authorities charged a suspect with the grisly murder of Jessica Chambers, the 19-year-old Mississippian who was mysteriously burned alive in December 2014.

But the internet sleuths who have obsessed over Chambers’ case since her death — at times harassing her family members, friends, and anyone else they considered “suspicious” in Chambers’ hometown of Courtland, population 512 — still aren’t satisfied.


I can’t believe Stephanie Beatriz doesn’t sound like Rosa Diaz, it’s like she’s an actress or something:

< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REicqqqbC-c >

However, Andre Braugher sounds EXACTLY like Ray Holt:

< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98W4NoicjXQ >


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