BattleBlog

Weinstein Company announces slate at Cannes Film Festival |

The most obvious Oscar bait – at least in the acting category – was a first look at “August: Osage County,” based on the play, starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor and Juliette Lewis. It also includes Abigail Breslin and my how Little Miss Sunshine has grown!

The film delves into the lives of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, starting with Streep, in a frowsy black wig (Weinstein told TheWrap this week that Streep went wandering through Wal-Marts late at night to prepare for the role), Roberts as her daughter returning during a family crisis and Lewis as her sister.

thewrap.com

posted 18 May, 2013
by battleblogs
4 notes for this post
Permalink / Short URL

August: Osage County

posted 03 May, 2013
by battleblogs
Reblogged from popculturebrain
1,675 notes for this post
Permalink / Short URL

imwithkanye | Golden Globes: Amy POEHLER | Meryl Streep in ‘The Flu’ | It’s like the Contagion but with real acting.

mrsstreep

posted 13 January, 2013
by battleblogs
Reblogged from imwithkanye
17,670 notes for this post
Permalink / Short URL

Meryl STREEP | Hillary CLINTON | 2012 Kennedy Center Honors

posted 02 December, 2012
by battleblogs
Reblogged from imwithkanye
1,185 notes for this post
Permalink / Short URL

Meryl STREEP | It’s just…I don’t know…drizzling.

bookjunkie26

posted 29 October, 2012
by battleblogs
Reblogged from accuweather
52,930 notes for this post
Permalink / Short URL

Meryl STREEP | film roles organized in categories

eliotglazer

posted 09 August, 2012
by battleblogs
Reblogged from imwithkanye
953 notes for this post
Permalink / Short URL

MERYL STREEP on NORA EPHRON | Ms Streep called her a “stalwart.”

“You could call on her for anything: doctors, restaurants, recipes, speeches, or just a few jokes, and we all did it, constantly. She was an expert in all the departments of living well.”

posted 26 June, 2012
by battleblogs
Reblogged from bphoto2012
1 note for this post
Permalink / Short URL

IRON LADY | meryl STREEP is terrific as real Margaret Thatcher and fake framing device

Meryl Streep digs deep but The Iron Lady remains shallow
The Iron Lady is a performance in search of a film. The fact that the performer is the esteemed American diva Meryl Streep, and the subje…
Theglobeandmail
The Iron Lady is a performance in search of a film. The fact that the performer is the esteemed American diva Meryl Streep, and the subject is the contentious British icon Margaret Thatcher, adds up to a very good reason to see this picture.

Unfortunately, it’s the only reason.

Hitting the accent hard with note-perfect emphasis, wearing the upswept do with metallic panache, and playing Thatcher over a 40-year span from her rise to the throne of power through her descent into the throes of dementia, La Streep puts on another superb acting clinic.

But, thanks to a script muddled in intention and messy in structure, she’s acting in a vacuum that eventually suffocates not only her but us too. In the end, we learn, and feel, nothing.
The Iron Lady :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
You have to be very talented to work with Meryl Streep. It also helps to know how to use her. “The Iron Lady” fails in both of these cate…
Rogerebert
…I witnessed Thatcher’s extraordinary personal authority once. When Conrad Black numbered the Sun-Times among his holdings, he convened the International Advisory Panel of his Hollinger corporation in Chicago. Seated around a massive table were Lady Thatcher and assorted government officials, officeholders, pundits and academics from around the world. To give you a notion, one of them was Henry Kissinger. (I was back along the wall with other underlings.)

Lady Thatcher was in command. Invisible psychic threads of respect and yearning extended toward her from the men. When she spoke, they fell silent. No one interrupted. No one disagreed. Her pronouncements were issued as recitals of fact. It was the most remarkable display of personal authority I have ever seen.

…If there has ever been a biopic that required an opinion of its subject, that biopic would seem to be “The Iron Lady.” Thatcher held office for an unprecedented three terms, bitterly divided Great Britain, and led her nation during the Falklands War, which seemed to be largely an exercise in hubris on both sides.

…Few people were neutral in their feelings about her, except the makers of this picture. They approach Thatcher as a figure in a time-honored biographical template in which a convenient fictional mechanism allows the heroine to revisit key chapters in her life so that we can understand that it was quite a life, indeed.
“The Iron Lady,” “War Horse,” “Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol” Reviews
ABSTRACT: THE CURRENT CINEMA review of “The Iron Lady,” “War Horse;” and “Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol.” As Margaret Thatcher in he…
Newyorker
As Margaret Thatcher in her old age—confined to her home and afflicted with dementia—Meryl Streep turns senescence into poetry. Despite Streep’s eloquence and wit, however, “The Iron Lady” is seriously misconceived. This bio-pic, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is an oddly unsettling compound of glorification and malice that whirls around and winds up nowhere. In part, the movie celebrates what was remarkable about Thatcher, but Morgan and Lloyd appear to object to everything about Thatcher except her early determination to stand up to men. Directorial flourishes illustrating Thatcher’s predominance come off as glibly sarcastic.

IRON LADY | meryl STREEP is terrific as real Margaret Thatcher and fake framing device

IRON LADY | meryl STREEP is terrific as real Margaret Thatcher and fake framing device

It is easy to understand why the creative people responsible for ‘The Iron Lady’ came up with a vulnerable dementia sufferer as the humanizing factor for one of the steeliest personalities of modern times. Unfortunately, this made-up character takes over about half the movie.

Meryl Streep is wonderful both as the embodiment of the real character participating in real events—and as the old lady fading in and out of dream sequences with her dead husband. Unfortunately, the old lady is made to act as a foil to the annoyingly cute and semi-witty husband played by Jim Broadbent, diminishing both in every scene. Her daughter is caricatured as an aging hippy. The son in South Africa is referred to frequently…without the script ever mentioning that he was a notorious arms dealer to thug governments back in the day.

‘The Iron Lady’ is another in a long line of movies about female power figures such as Queen Elizabeth I who are ‘humanized’ by projected emotions having to do with the ‘price paid’ for bailing on the standard wife-and-mother role. The movie does nothing with the occasional vignettes of, for example, children running after Mrs Thatcher’s car as she heads off to her new career in Parliament (“Mommy, don’t go!”)—as if she should have done something else?

The ‘other hour’ of the movie that is a biopic of a real person is more interesting. It makes a good case for Margaret Thatcher as ground-breaking feminist icon, able to rise to the top by sheer force of personality—through decades of lethal all-male environments. Although too many bombs and riots go off to no dramatic purpose, you are strongly and usefully reminded of the major events in which Margaret Thatcher prevailed—typified by the wonderful little scene in which she rolls the bullying Al Haig on her way to winning the Falklands War.

Meryl Streep nails the character. Her control of voice, gesture, gait, physical and emotional presence is absolute. She deserves every award she gets as the best actress working today. An A-level performance in a C-level film.