Many thanks to John for sharing this: Academy Award winner Meryl Streep and Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday have contributed their considerable talents to Sky Island, a new film on Bandelier National Monument and the Jemez Mountains. The film was written, produced and directed by environmental filmmaker John Grabowska. Participation in the film production was, in a way, a health issue for Streep, relating to open spaces and wild places: “Our personal health depends on the health of the environment,” she said. “Preserving national parks and wildlands is an exercise in long-term thinking about the sustainability of the planet, and it directly impacts each one of us. I hope viewers are inspired by the mood and method of Sky Island. I know I was which is why I wanted to be a part of it.” “It’s such a pleasure to work with artists who are the best in their field,” Grabowska said. “Meryl is charming and down to earth but very dedicated to getting the performance exactly right, even for – or perhaps especially for – a project like this, which addresses dramatic climate change effects in Bandelier and the Jemez. Sky Island is currently on the film festival circuit and will air on PBS in 2011.

The Daily Mail has the latest scoop on the upcoming Thatcher biopic “The Iron Lady”, and according to its author, Baz Bamigboye, Meryl has confirmed to her that she’s indeed going to play Miss Thatcher – he just doesn’t quote when and where she confirmed this: Oscar-winning Meryl Streep has confirmed she will play Margaret Thatcher in a major movie, although a British actress has been ­chosen to portray the former Prime Minister’s early years. Alexandra Roach, a recent ­graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, will play Mrs Thatcher in her 20s in The Iron Lady, which begins shooting in the middle of January – although Meryl will dominate much of the footage.

The two actresses will not only have to study Mrs Thatcher’s voice pattern, but also each other’s. They will do their own research, examining film footage and listening to radio broadcasts and tapes. It hasn’t been decided yet whether or not a dialect coach will be hired to teach the actresses how to capture Mrs Thatcher’s distinctive vocal signature, bearing in mind Meryl’s legendary skill with accents. However, even she may need an expert to help her navigate the period when Mrs Thatcher, on her rise to power, was ordered by her savvy PR master Gordon Reece to lower and soften her often strident voice. The film, based on a screenplay by Abi Morgan, will be directed by Phyllida Lloyd. It’s being produced by Damian Jones with Pathé and Film 4. Morgan’s screenplay reflects on Mrs Thatcher’s life in and out of power, criss-crossing time-zones, looking back on her glory years and her challenges.

Jim Broadbent will play her husband Denis, and he told me that he understood Denis would be a ghost – although that aspect of the screenplay may have changed by January. ‘His purpose would be to visit Margaret Thatcher now and go back over her life. I don’t know how they plan to make me ghostly, or whether some other dramatic device will be used,’ Broadbent, like Streep an Academy Award-winner, told me at a supper for Mike Leigh’s great new movie Another Year, in which he stars with Lesley ­Manville and Ruth Sheen. Reports that The Iron Lady focuses solely on Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands War are wide of the mark. Ms Roach has appeared in The IT Crowd, a forthcoming BBC show called Candy Cabs and she plays one of the leads in ITV’s adaptation of Kate Summerscale’s best-selling novel The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher. Olivia Colman, famous for her roles in Peep Show, Beautiful People and the recent Tom ­Hollander hit Rev, has been cast to play Carol Thatcher.

According to Deadline, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep are in talks to star for The Weinstein Company in the bigscreen adaptation of the Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer and Tony-winning play August: Osage County. I hear Roberts and Streep have agreed to the project and they are now working out deals and locking a production start. John Wells will direct the film from a script written by the playwright. Production will start by next summer. Streep will play Violet, the drug-addicted matriarch of the working class Weston clan. Roberts will play Barbara Fordham, the oldest daughter in the family. While mom’s problems and her penchant for revealing family secrets is a big issue, Barbara is melting because her husband is cheating with a college student. They are brought together when Violet’s husband goes missing and all three of their daughters come home to rally around mom. In the process, a lot of family secrets get revealed. The film has been developed for several years by Harvey Weinstein, who was involved in the original stage production with Jean Doumanian. As nothing is official as of now, it’s yet another project to the long list of upcoming rumored projects for Meryl.

There are news on Mike Nichols’ planned “Great Hope Springs”. After Jeff Bridges’ department from the project, sources are now reporting on James Gandolfini joining Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the drama. Streep and Gandolfini would play a married couple who undergo intense couples therapy to see if they want to continue their 30-year-marriage. Hoffman would play the therapist. According to Vulture, no deals have been signed, but all parties are highly interested, and recently even did a table read.

While there haven’t been any news on the reported Meryl Streep/Tina Fey collaboration in the Stanley Tucci directed “Mommy & Me” since the original announcement back in June (read here), Stanley Tucci has now talked a bit about the current development of the project in an interview with Collider. As of now, now script has been written. The part can be read below and after the cut.

ST: This movie I’m going to do next year if we get a script and get everything together with Tina Fey and Meryl Streep will be the first time I’ve ever directed a studio picture. So obviously there are going to have to be some adjustments on my part. But still, for the most part, it’s an intimate comedy.

The Daily Mail has posted a report on the ongoing controversy on how Margaret Thatcher will be portrayed in the upcoming film. Meryl is headlined by most sources at this time to be playing Thatcher. So far, as mentioned by the Daily Mail – she is “expected” to play Miss Thatcher. The complete article can be read here.

There’s still no official confirmation of Meryl’s participation, but this is a step towards the official direction. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sony has picked up “Mommy & Me,” the comedy package featuring Meryl Streep and Tina Fey as a mother-and-daughter duo to be directed by Stanley Tucci. CAA circulated the project around town earlier in July and signs pointed to Sony, which made last year’s Streep comedy “Julie & Julia,” as a strong contender. Storylines are under wraps, although it spotlights the thorny and funny sides of mother-daughter relationships. Joby Harold wrote the treatment that went with the package and is exec producing with Tucci, Steve Buscemi and Joshua Astrachan. Wren Arthur, Lucy Barzun Donnelly and Tory Tunnell are producing. Streep and Tucci have worked together on-screen in “Devil Wears Prada” and “Julie & Julia.” It’s unclear at this time if Tucci would appear in the movie or just stick to directing.

No final word so far if Meryl is indeed going to play Margaret Thatcher, although it sounds pretty much a done deal according to this article from the Telegraph: Although the prospect of Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher may have pleased some admirers of the Conservative former prime minister, her children have been horrified to discover more about the film. Mandrake hears that the screenplay of The Iron Lady depicts Baroness Thatcher as an elderly dementia-sufferer looking back on her career with sadness. She is shown talking to herself and unaware that her husband, Sir Denis Thatcher, has died.

“Sir Mark and Carol are appalled at what they have learnt about the film,” says a friend of the family. “They think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy. They feel strongly about it, but will not speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity.” Cameron McCracken, the managing director of the film-maker Pathé, confirms: “It is true that the film is set in the recent past and that Baroness Thatcher does look back on both the triumphs and the lows of her extraordinary career. “It is a film about power and the price that is paid for power. In that sense, it is the story of every person who has ever had to balance their private life with their public career.” He says Lady Thatcher’s health will be featured, but insists that it will be “treated with appropriate sensitivity”. He adds of the film: “Although fictional, it will be fair and accurate.”

Prepare for a longer post :-) Here come some news that I didn’t pay much attention to at first. The Los Angeles Times has reported today about a new comedy “being shopped around Hollywood” called “Mommy & Me”, starring Meryl Streep and Tina Fey, and to be directed by Stanley Tucci. Doesn’t sound all to bad (sans the title probably), but if you read between the lines, there actually isn’t a project.

There’s no script and no writers yet on the film, which is obviously at the shopping/development stage, but the central idea is that of a mother-daughter comedy that will give the two actresses a chance to flash their comedic and dramatic chops.

As previously said, I didn’t give much to it, given the fact of not a single written word for a script, and because it’s the third unconfirmed role for Meryl within two weeks. But – give the internet some hours – every source from Entertainment Weekly to New York Magazine to People is reporting on this new project – fairly quoting its current status. Then, according to the Wrap, there’s even confirmation by CAA (the agency that represents both Streep and Tucci) that such project is currently being shopped. If this idea of a film is really being made into a feature, it very well might be the first project of Meryl we knew about before it was even written! Most certainly, it adds a new level to the fast paced community of online movie news. Let’s wait and see.

I’m not sure how reliable these news are – but in terms of unofficial movie news, I guess nothing is :-) According to Cinema Blend, in quoting Deadline New York, Streep and Nichols are very much involved, but Bridges isn’t attached to “Great Hope Springs” anymore.

Continuted from Cinema Blend: It’s a bummer not just because it would have been awesome to see The Dude and Julia Child team up as an age-appropriate couple, but because it’s pretty hard to find an actor in Streep’s age range who’s remotely up to her challenge. She and Stanley Tucci made a great team both in Devil Wears Prada and Julie & Julia but Tucci is actually 11 years her junior. At 60 Streep is seven years older than Tom Hanks but more than a decade younger than Robert Redford, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman – all the actors who were her contemporaries in the 70s. Bridges and Streep are nearly exactly the same age, which is just another reason they would have been perfect together.