In Contention

Tag: The Iron Lady

  • Meryl Streep starts the season with a Kennedy Center honor

    Last week Larry King said he had it on good authority that Meryl Streep would be honored by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Today, it turns out he was right.

    Streep will be feted alongside musicians Neil Diamond and Yo-Yo Ma, saxophonist Sonny Rollins and singer/actress Barbara Cook. The announcement is a great way to launch her into the awards season as she looks to be a good bet for Oscar recognition for her role as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” especially seeing as Glenn Close is dominating that conversation this week with “Albert Nobbs” bowing in Telluride before moving on to Toronto.

    The Kennedy Center Honors will take place on December 4, the week the National Board of Review really gets the awards circuit going and just under two weeks before the release of “The Iron Lady.” But the won’t be broadcast on CBS until December 27.

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  • Telluride guessing game

    (UPDATED: 8/29)

    Now that the Toronto and Venice line-ups have been unveiled (though we have a few more Toronto announcements to come), I figured I’d take a few stabs at sussing out the Telluride crop this year. I haven’t been a good journalist and called around or anything. Just spinning my wheels.

    One studio that always has a big presence at Telluride is Sony Pictures Classics, and this year, honchos Michael Barker and Tom Bernard have a full plate once again. Of that stable, David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” is hitting both Venice and Toronto. It’s very possible, then, that it will kick things off in the Rockies.

    Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” meanwhile, was announced as a Venice play this morning. It would be easy enough for the team to bring the film there and not worry about getting the filmmaker in town (seeing as he can’t legally step foot in the country), saving his press run for Venice. (7/28 UPDATE: The film has been set for New York fest, so it seems unlikely we’ll see it in Telluride.)

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  • Clint Mansell scoring ‘The Iron Lady’

    I’ll level with you, folks: there are a lot of prestige titles coming out in late 2011 that I’m itching to see, and “The Iron Lady” isn’t one of them. Putting to one side concerns about Phyllida Lloyd’s filmmaking prowess — I thought her ill at ease with the medium in “Mamma Mia!”, but she’s an accomplished theater director and everyone deserves a second chance — Margaret Thatcher’s story requires ambiguity and incisiveness in the telling (and playing) to avoid predictable rhetoric, and the margin for error is a fine one.

    That teaser trailer released a few weeks ago wasn’t terribly illuminating: the writing is jokey, while the flash of Meryl Streep’s performance hints at “Julie & Julia”-scale broadness, but it’s altogether too brief and context-free to offer a sense of the film’s overall tone.

    Indeed, the most intriguing thing about the trailer is the unexpected use of Clint Mansell’s brooding “Moon” score as accompaniment — and as it turns out, there was more to that particular choice than initially met the eye. A reliable first-hand source informs me that Mansell is on board to score the actual film, which adds some lustre to a respectable but slightly unsexy list of below-the-line contributors.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 57 — SPECIAL EDITION! — Oscar’s rule change, prospects at the mid-way point, Spielberg hitting the zeitgeist, lead actress race already looking contentious

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    A month and a half since the last off-season podcast, we take the temperature one more time this summer, right at the year’s mid-way point. There have been some Academy rule changes and some news and notes in the interim, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • ‘The Iron Lady’ international teaser trailer

    The Weinstein Company has a handful of possibilities in this year’s Oscar season. As usual, we can expect the boys to sit back and wait for a contender to survive Darwin-style before doubling down, but one element of “The Iron Lady” everyone expects to have no trouble finding a nomination is Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher. The recent teaser trailer (launched at The Guardian) builds on the expectation that it’s a transformative turn. Check it out by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump. (And note to The Guardian: You’re a giant corporation. Get an embed code and/or find a more handsome way to publish these exclusive trailers you get. Seriously)

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  • Weinsteins announce release dates for winter bait

    Harvey Weinstein has never been one to put much faith in the length of Academy voters’ memories, so as usual, he’s favoring a late-year release plan for his presumed awards contenders — the prospects of which I was discussing only the other day.

    Thanks to Coming Soon’s Ed Douglas for pointing out the newly announced release dates for his holiday-season prestige slate. You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s November and December down the line: “My Week With Marilyn” is first to go forth on November 4, followed by “The Artist” on November 23, “Coriolanus” on December 2, “W.E.” on December 9 and “The Iron Lady” on December 16.

    You can read as much or as little into this schedule as you like, though it’s worth noting that none of them are bowing as late as last year’s Weinstein Company property “Blue Valentine,” the perilously tardy post-Christmas release of which was widely blamed for a meager awards showing — with more time for glowing critical buzz to build, Ryan Gosling and writer-director Derek Cianfrance could arguably have stood a better chance of joining Michelle Williams in the nominee circle.

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  • Madonna’s ‘W.E.’ joins Weinsteins’ scattered 2011 slate

    Having done all right with the last film to cover the romantic tribulations of King Edward VIII — it was called “The King’s Speech,” it won a few Oscars, you might have heard of it — The Weinstein Company clearly feels there’s an appetite among audiences for more on that chapter of British royal history, with Edward’s story center stage this time.

    So it is that that Harvey and his minions have bought the US distribution rights to Madonna’s sophomore directing effort, “W.E.” — a decades-spanning portrait of the affair between the one-time future King of England and Wallis Simpson, the American divorcée for whom he abdicated the throne, fused with a fictional modern-day story of a young New Yorker inspired by their romance.

    Starring Andrea Riseborough and James D’Arcy as the historical couple, and Abbie Cornish as the woman obsessed with their romance, it all all sounds suspiciously like “Julie & Julia” with crowns replacing the chef’s hats — which, combined with the novelty factor of the film’s celebrity writer-director, leads me to think the Weinsteins may view this more as a light commercial play rather than the hefty awards bait of their last monarchy biopic.

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  • Weinstein acquires ‘The Iron Lady’ for 2011 release

    When I get around to updating Oscar predictions in a couple of weeks, I will, as usual, refrain from including any films that don’t yet have domestic distribution. But one title can be taken off of that list, and may have just thrust Meryl Streep to the top of the lead actress race (though she’ll certainly find competition from Tilda Swinton when “We Need to Talk About Kevin” inevitably finds a home).

    The Weinstein Company has stolen a little thunder from the Cannes whirlwind, announcing today its acquisition of Phyllida Lloyd’s Margaret Thatcher biopic “The Iron Lady.” In the wake of “The King’s Speech,” it seems Harvey is sticking to proven material, and Brit biopics are still a solid play in the awards season. Jim Broadbent could also be someone to watch for in supporting as Thatcher’s husband.

    For a number of years now, the cult of Streep has demanded further awardage for the undeniably prolific actress. Two Oscars over 20 years ago just aren’t enough. In my opinion, nothing she’s done since last winning in 1982, save for maybe 2002’s “Adaptation,” has warranted a win over her competition. But 16 nominations is nothing to sneeze at, and it seems a 17th could be on the way, further extending her record.

    Check out the full press release after the jump.

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  • Hope for Meryl

    I didn’t post this still of Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady” that did the web rounds two days ago, largely because I didn’t have much to say about it — for all the “uncanny resemblance” claims being made by some excitable bloggers, she looks rather a lot like Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. (Which is fine, by the way.) But this amended still from reader/blogger Bradley Porter gave me a chuckle, so here they both are.

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