Streep receives Emmy nomination for narrating "Five Came Back"

Well isn't this a nice surprise?!  The Emmy nominations were announced Thursday and our girl snagged a nom for her narration of the Netflix documentary series Five Came Back.  Congrats, Meryl!  The others in her category were as follows:

Liev Schreiber (Muhammad Ali: Only One)
Liev Schreiber (UConn: The March To Madness--“Episode 1”)
Sam Neill (Wild New Zealand)
Ewan McGregor (Wild Scotland)
Lawrence Fishburne (Year Million)

Interestingly, Meryl has worked on screen with all of her fellow nominees, with the exception of Lawrence Fishburne.

The awards ceremony will be held September 17.  I highly doubt Meryl will be in attendance.

Lily James cast as mini Meryl in "Mamma Mia!" sequel

Multiple sources are now reporting that actress Lily James (Downton Abbey, Cinderalla, Baby Driver) has been cast in the role of 'Young Donna' in the upcoming Mamma Mia! sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.  Meryl of course plays the original Donna, while the film goes back and forth between past and present.  The great Christine Baranski has also confirmed that she'll be reprising her role for the sequel as well.

With the quality of cast that has agreed to return and new members joining, I can't imagine that this script is pure crap.  As I mentioned before, having Ol Parker at the helm this time around boosts my confidence in this project a bit as well.  The one big question remaining is exactly how big of a role is this for Meryl?  Will it be half and half present and past?  Almost a cameo?  Lead role? I'd venture a guess that it's somewhere in the middle.  We'll find out soon enough.

The film is set for release on July 20, 2018.

New pic from the set of "The Papers"

A new pic has surfaced of Meryl in costume as Kay Graham in Steven Spielberg's The Papers:

I think the glasses might be Meryl's, but obviously the rest is pure character.  

There's certainly been a lot of chatter on awards blogs about not only Meryl's role but the entire pedigree of this film.  Speculation is that this will contend for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress.   I want more than anything for this movie to be big deal and of course bring Meryl a lot of acclaim, but the pessimist in me is cautious.  We've been in the position before where expectations were super high for a film (see A:OC) and it not delivering in all departments.  Here's hoping The Papers is the real thing.  

John Williams to score "The Papers"

Variety reported yesterday that five-time Academy Award-winning composer John Williams will be writing the score for The Papers.  Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg's other film that is currently going through post-production, was apparently going to be scored by Williams, but since The Papers will likely be finishing up within the next month, Allen Silvestri will handle Ready Player One and Williams The Papers. 

I hadn't realized that Williams worked with Spielberg on all but two of Spielberg's other films.  The Papers is shaping up to have everything it needs to in regard to production team and actors to be a huge deal.  If this goes well, it could be a major boost to Meryl's career.  I realize that she already enjoys legend status in Hollywood, but I'm always looking forward to whether or not great scripts get put into production with her involved.  Favorable reviews and big box office returns for a film that captures the zeitgeist of the U.S. political climate could very well be the next project to do that for her, a la The Devil Wears Prada.  It's exciting.

Wish list entry #5: Clarice Lispector

It has been since March of 2014 that I've made an official entry to this blog section.  What's prompted the update?  Well, over the past several weeks I've been revisiting the list of roles I've kept of characters (whether real people or fictional) I'd love to see Meryl portray.  I have a more specific intention for revisiting this list, but I'm not going to get into that quite yet.  Suffice it to say that I'll be taking on another fairly extensive Meryl project, not unlike my Reimagined Filmography.  More on that in the future.

Having the day off from work yesterday for Independence Day, I found myself doing a deep dive of the "rumored projects" section of the Meryl Streep Forum.   It was a good review of some things I already knew, but there were many roles or potential projects that I had never heard of!  Most of them were indeed simply rumors.  Others turned out to be the real deal.  One role in particular that she was rumored for, based purely on fan speculation, was a biopic of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector.

I had never heard of Lispector prior to yesterday.  Reading that she was Brazilian quickly made me wonder if it would be appropriate for a white person to portray a Brazilian, but Lispector was actually born to Ukrainian parents (in Ukraine) and emigrated to Brazil as an infant.  Of course my mind immediately went to "OMG I wonder what she sounded like?!"  So I promptly went on YouTube and watched a portion of the only television interview she ever did, which took place in January of 1977, less than a year before her death, one day before turning 57.

Why this character?  After reading about her background, life events and personality, and having watched her interview online, she seems like an absolutely fascinating individual.  Leaving post-WWI Ukraine with her family as a baby, growing up Jewish, frighteningly intelligent, possibly mental illness, physical impairment (she suffered severe burns on her right hand after falling asleep with a lit cigarette in 1966), death by ovarian cancer at relatively young age.   Add that to the aforementioned distinct speech she had (one of Meryl's specialties), and it would be very interesting to see on screen.

I couldn't find any info on whether or not she definitively spoke English, but considering she spent a fair amount of time in London and over five years living in the U.S., I imagine she did.  American author Benjamin Moser published an extensive biography on Lispector in 2012 entitled Why This World, which I may just have to check out.  Perhaps I'll get a better idea of how a feature film would've worked out if one were interested in chronicling her later life.

Poll #3: Which film would you remove from Meryl's filmography?

If any of you have read my reimagined filmography of Meryl's career, you know I've spent way too much a lot of time pondering which movies of hers I'd replace or simply remove, given the chance.  As it's been a few weeks since I've posted a poll and a few readers have had the same suggestion on what the next one should be, off to the side you'll see the latest question.  Feel free to add your explanations for your choices in the comments section as usual.  I'm going to leave voting open for two weeks this time.

First look at Meryl in "The Papers"

Some lucky woman who was apparently late for work snapped a selfie on an elevator with Meryl (on her birthday no less) and Tom Hanks while the two were in costume on the set of The Papers. 

It looks like Meryl is wearing her own glasses, but that hair and dress are extremely 1970s.  She of course will be portraying publisher Kay Graham, while Tom Hanks plays editor Ben Bradlee.  Despite this being a non-official still, it's nice to get a glimpse of their looks.  

Thanks to Sean L for alerting me to the pic!