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In 1985, the year First Lady Nancy Reagan dropped a hyperactive “Just Say No” music video with Casey Kasem and Latoya Jackson, the DEA criminalized a new drug: ecstasy. “Mdma,” Angie Wang’s semi-autobiographical drama about her whirlwind freshman semester as the drug queen of a private college she couldn’t otherwise afford, plunges us into the crazy days of those last legal months when the chemistry student’s handmade purple pills were potent enough to derail her life. Wang has a silent cameo as a club czarina who gives her younger self (Annie Q.) a portentous look. Otherwise, “Mdma” is all excess: giant hair, stacks of silver bangles, dramatic flashbacks, and lots of shouting, though curiously Angie sounds less like an immigrant’s daughter from the Newark tenements than a Valley girl throwing a temper tantrum at the mall.

Voice aside, east coast Angie does not fit in with her west coast classmates,...

In today’s film news roundup, Jane Fonda is set for an award at Michael Moore’s film festival, Shout Factory buys Angie Wang’s crime drama “Mdma,” and the Palm Springs festival sets its opening and closing dates.

Honor

Jane Fonda will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival, which runs from July 31 to Aug. 5.

Fonda has won acting Oscars for “Klute” and “Coming Home” and been nominated for “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” “Julia,” “The China Syndrome,” “On Golden Pond,” and “The Morning After.” She’s also won four Golden Globes, two BAFTAs, and an Emmy.

Moore, who is the founder and president of the Michigan festival, made the announcement Wednesday.

“I can think of no other artist who has given more to her country,” said Moore. “What an honor for our festival audience to welcome and to be...

• Game of Thrones' James Cosmo has signed on for Tomorrow. Martin Scorsese is executive producing the military drama. Cosmo joins previously announced cast members Stephen Fry, Stephanie Leonidas, Sebastian Street, Stuart Brennan, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Paul Kaye, and Joss Stone. Martha Pinson, Scorsese's long-time script supervisor, will make her feature directorial debut with the film, which follows the lives of soldiers trying to re-immerse themselves into society. Street and Brennan wrote the script. They are producing alongside Dean M. Woodford. Emma Tillinger Koskoff is executive producing with Scorsese. [Variety] • Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz, Fisher Stevens, and Clancy Brown have been cast in Hail,...

Eat With Me (2014) Film Review from the 20th Annual Los Angeles Film Festival, a movie directed by David Au, and starring Sharon Omi, Teddy Chen Culver, Nicole Sullivan, George Takei, Aidan Bristow, Ken Narasaki, Scott Keiji Takeda, Burt Grinstead, and Amy Tolsky. Have you ever seen a film that, all things considered, should have earned [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Eat With Me: David Au’s Debut Is Bland [Laff 2014]...