News courtesy Digital Spy: The Graham Norton Show is really rolling out the red carpet and inviting Hollywood royalty onto its sofa. On Friday, January 19, the late night chat show will welcome Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Both actors will be promoting their forthcoming Steven Spielberg movie The Post, which has already picked up awards season buzz and nominations And… that’s it! Yes, apart from musical guests in the form of band First Aid Kit, Tom and Meryl will be the ONLY celebrity guests; which, if you think about it, actually makes a lot of sense. We mean, any more star power put on the sofa and it would FOR SURE crumble to dust. The Post tells the true story of Katharine Graham (Streep); the first female publisher of The Washington Post. With help from editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), she races to catch up with The New York Times to expose a massive cover-up of government secrets that spans three decades and four US presidents. The movie was actually on last year’s ‘Black List’ (best movie scripts without a deal), and was rushed to cinemas in an incredibly quick – and practically unheard of – turnaround. It’s now primed to dominate the awards season. The Post has already been nominated for six Golden Globes; with both Streep and Hanks up for the best actress and actor in a a motion picture gongs respectively. Spielberg was nominated for best director, while the film has also secured nominations for Best Motion Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score. The Post is in cinemas on January 19. The Graham Norton Show featuring Hanks and Streep will air at 10.35 pm on Friday, January 19 on BBC One.

New article by The Washington Post: A little less than a year ago, just before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Meryl Streep accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes ceremony in Los Angeles, using her speech to castigate the president-elect for his treatment of the press during the presidential campaign, especially a disabled New York Times reporter. “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing,” she said to a crowd of her largely supportive peers. “Disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” She concluded by rallying support for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Streep’s remarks — the first widely publicized criticism of Trump by a world-famous figure since his election — became a fulcrum moment, especially in Hollywood. “It felt like [she] was finally letting the air out of the room,” producer Kristie Mocosko Krieger recalls. “We were all just keeping our mouths shut for so long, and [Meryl was] like, ‘[Forget] it — I’m not keeping my mouth shut anymore.’” The screenwriter Liz Hannah remembers the Golden Globes speech just as vividly. At the time, her script for “The Post,” about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham confronting the perilous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was making the rounds in Hollywood. Immediately after Streep spoke, one of “The Post’s” producers, Tim White, texted Hannah and fellow producer Amy Pascal. “He said, ‘Did you see Meryl give her speech?’” Hannah recalls. “And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘That’s Kay.’”. The complete article can be read over at The Washington Post. Many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up.

Combined, award-winning actors Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks have appeared in more than 100 films. But “The Post” marks the first time they are on screen together. In the movie, Streep plays Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and Hanks portrays legendary editor Ben Bradlee. The plot centers on the paper’s famous and difficult decision to publish top secret government information from the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Streep and Hanks join “CBS This Morning” to discuss how the film resonates today.

The promotion for “The Post” is on a roll with the official b-roll footage and interviews with the cast and crew being launched. Hopefully, a couple of insightful featurettes will follow. Both clips can be watched below and in the video archive.

This morning, “The Post was among the leading motion pictures to receive Golden Globe nominations, earning 6 in total. Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers drama received nominations as Best Picture (Drama), Best Director for Spielberg, Best Actor (Drama) for Tom Hanks, Best Actress (Drama) for Meryl Streep, Best Screenplay for Liz Hannah and Josh Singer and Best Original Score – Motion Picture for John Williams . “The Shape of Water” leads with seven nominations. “The Post” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” received six each. “Lady Bird” has four nominations, and “I, Tonya”, “The Greatest Showman” and “Dunkirk” each have three. This is Meryl Streep’s 31st nomination for a Golden Globe! She has won nine, eight for her fim work (for “Kramer vs. Kramer”, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, “Sophie’s Choice”, “Adaptation”, “Angels in America”, “The Devil Wears Prada”, “Julie & Julia” and “The Iron Lady”) as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award last year. The Golden Globes will be handed out quite early next year during a live ceremony on January 07, 2018.

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
Jessica Chastain, Molly’s Game
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards
Meryl Streep, The Post
Michelle Williams, All the Money in the World

More and more critics circles announce their annual winners or nominations for the season, and both “The Post” and Meryl Streep are featured. The St. Louis Film Critics association has nominated “The Post” for 6 awards: Best Picture, Lead Actress, Lead Actor, Director, Editing and Score. Their winners (and runners-up) will be tweeted next Sunday, December 17th around 3pm CST. The North Texas Film Critics Association has nominated “The Post” for five awards: Best Picture, Lead Actress, Lead Actor, Director and Cinematography. The San Diego Film Critics Society has 2 nominations for “The Post”: Best Ensemble and Best Editing. And the Seattle Film Critics Society closes today with 3 nominations: Best Picture, Lead Actress and Ensemble. Be sure and check back at 9:00 am PST on Monday, December 18 when they begin announcing the winners for this year on Twitter. Many thanks to Frank for the heads-up. Much appreciated.

More awards news for “The Post” today. The Detroit Film Critics Society has honored the films cast as Best Ensemble, while the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association has nominated both the ensemble and Streep as Best Actress, alongside Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) and Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird). “The Post is expected to be included in AFI’s Top 10 List, which will be announced later today. Next week, we can look forward to the nomination announcements by the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Many thanks to Frank for the heads-up.

Also, a first batch of scans from press reviews and magazines have been added, with many thanks to Alvaro!

Congratulations to “The Post” and its makers for receiving 8 BFCA Critics’ Choice Awards today. The film was nominated in the categories Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Acting Ensemble, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Original Screenplay (Liz Hannah and Josh Singer), Best Editing (Michael Kahn, Sarah Broshar) and Best Score (John Williams). The film “The Shape of Water” scored the most nomination with 14 nods. Streep shares the Best Actress category with Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game), Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) and Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird). The ensemble category also includes Dunkirk, Lady Bird, Mudbound and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The 23rd Annual Critics’ Choice Awards show will be produced by Bob Bain Productions and Berlin Entertainment. The BFCA and BTJA are represented by Dan Black of Greenberg Traurig and WME. Meryl Streep won the Critics Choice Award last year for Florence Foster Jenkins and in recent years for Julie & Julia and Doubt. Congratulations to all.

“Timely” is a word you’ll read often as the first wave of film critics have published their reviews of The Post, Steven Spielberg’s journalism drama about The Washington Post‘s efforts to publish The Pentagon Papers. Entertainment Weekly has assembled a collection of critics reviews. Though, despite the performances and the impressive ensemble of supporting players, one critic says it “isn’t quite a work of art,” due in part to the “boundingly busy and a little too expository” writing. Others agree, pointing to how characters deliver exposition “purely for the benefit of the audience.” In the end, the majority praised the “dynamic” film for using “the past to reinvigorate our resistance to the present,” accompanied by a “dynamite John Williams score” and Streep’s feminist-tinged delivery.

Chris Nashawaty (Entertainment Weekly)
“The beauty of Streep’s performance (and it’s one of her best in years) is how she lets you see her grow into the responsibility of her position. She elevates The Post from being a First Amendment story to a feminist one, too. Spielberg makes these crucial days in American history easy to follow. But if you look at The Post next to something like All the President’s Men, you see the difference between having a story passively explained to you and actively helping to untangle it. That’s a small quibble with an urgent and impeccably acted film. But it’s also the difference between a very good movie and a great one.”

Owen Glieberman (Variety)
“It’s a potently watchable movie that isn’t quite a work of art. Two of Spielberg’s recent history films were also made in a messianic spirit of topical fervor: Munich, a dread-inflected thriller that addressed the post-9/11 world, and Lincoln, a kind of dramatized time machine that commented on our own increasingly fractious and divided political arena. Yet both those films had a depth and mystery and power that transcended the moment; you could watch them 20 years from now and they would still echo. The Post, written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer in a mode that’s boundingly busy and a little too expository, is a more functional, less imaginative movie — it’s high-carb docudrama prose rather than poetry. You can be stirred by what it’s saying and still feel that when it’s over, the film declares more than it reverberates.”

Here comes a great cover story by Hollywood Reporter, featuring interviews with Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Amy Pascal, Liz Hannah and Kristie Macosko Krieger. “We are on the way to something better,” says Meryl Streep of the recent “earthquake” of harassment claims and female empowerment that has upended Hollywood, which many view as a direct response to the Trump administration. Certainly, the regime loomed large for Steven Spielberg when he first read The Post. “I realized this was the only year to make this film,” says the director, who tapped Streep to star as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham despite the fact that he had only collaborated with her once before — for a single day of voice work on 2000’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. “Most of the time we talked about how his property was haunted and did I know anybody who did exorcisms?” recalls Streep. “And of course, I did. I got him a priest.” The $50 million-plus Post tells the story of how Graham gave the green light to her editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) to report on the Pentagon Papers in 1971. (The New York Times had broken the story on the report, which revealed that America was losing the Vietnam War, but a court had ruled it couldn’t publish more about the top-secret documents.) Graham now faced a terrible dilemma: Go ahead with the Post’s article and risk imprisonment or withhold and silence the truth. Nearly half a century after she made her momentous choice, Graham’s tale is at last told. The complete interview can be read here. The cover and outtakes have been added to the photo gallery.