TRAILER: Ricki And The Flash

Meryl Streep, Audra McDonald, and...Rick Springfield.

No, No, That Wasn't A Question

"International Food & Restaurant Consultants, Baum + Whiteman, have sent out their 2015 trend report, which tells us all what we'll be eating next year. What, you think this has nothing to do with you? You go to your refrigerator and you select... I don't know... that lumpy blue cheese, for instance... But what you don't know is that that cheese was filtered down from high end restaurants and then through farmer's markets and then it trickled on down into some tragic grocery store clearance bin, where you, no doubt, fished it out. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the food and restaurant industry when, in fact, you're eating a cheese that was selected for you, by the people behind this memo." - Jen Carlson, writing for Gothamist. (Tipped by JMG reader Rob)

Alvin Ailey And Stephen Sondheim To Be Among 2014 Medal Of Freedom Honorees

Late dance legend Alvin Ailey and Broadway superstar Stephen Sondheim will be among this year's Presidential Medal Of Freedom honorees.

Among the honorees representing the arts world are Stevie Wonder, Stephen Sondheim, Meryl Streep, actress Marlo Thomas, Tom Brokaw, writer and activist Suzan Harjo, and author Isabel Allende. Streep and Sondheim are particularly timely honorees, considering the film adaptation of Sondheim’s Into the Woods stars Streep and arrives in theaters on Dec. 25. The other honorees include professional golfer Charles Sifford, who helped to desegregate the Professional Golfers’ Association, economist Robert Solow, scientist Mildred Dresselhaus, and Ethel Kennedy. Several political representatives will also be honored: John Dingell, Abner Mikva, and Patsy Takemoto Mink. There will also be five posthumous medals awarded to activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey, and Edward R. Roybal.

Ailey died of AIDS in 1989. Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner were the three civil rights activists murdered in 1964 by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. The Presidential Medal Of Freedom is the highest honor granted to any American civilian. (Tipped by JMG reader Peter)

RELATED: Among the 2013 Medal Of Freedom posthumous honorees were astronaut Sally Ride and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Both of their medals were presented by President Obama to their surviving partners as an off-screen announcer recounted their contributions to LGBT history.

TRAILER: Into The Woods

(Tipped by JMG reader Jeff)

TRAILER: Into The Woods

From the recap:

“Into the Woods” is a modern twist on the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tales, intertwining the plots of a few choice stories and exploring the consequences of the characters’ wishes and quests. This humorous and heartfelt musical follows the classic tales of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Jack and the Beanstalk (Daniel Huttlestone), and Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy)—all tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife (James Corden & Emily Blunt), their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch (Meryl Streep) who has put a curse on them.  Rob Marshall, the talented filmmaker behind the Academy Award®-winning musical “Chicago” and Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” helms the film, which is based on the Tony®-winning original musical by James Lapine, who also penned the screenplay, and legendary composer Stephen Sondheim, who provides the music and lyrics. Produced by Marshall, John DeLuca, “Wicked” producer Marc Platt and Callum McDougall. Starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine, “Into the Woods” is a humorous and heartfelt musical that follows the classic tales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel—all tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife, their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch who has put a curse on them.

The film opens on New Year's Day.

(Tipped by JMG reader Brad)

RELATED: Last month Sondheim revealed that he had agreed with Disney's requests for some fairly major plot changes.

TRAILER: August: Osage County

New trailer and more Oscar buzz for Streep.

TRAILER: August: Osage County

The Diva Wears Prada

Totally hits all my favorite lines. "That's all."

(Via Boy Culture)

2012 Oscar Nominations

BEST PICTURE: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse.

BEST ACTOR: Demián Bichir - A Better Life, George Clooney - The Descendants, Jean Dujardi - The Artist, Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Brad Pitt - Moneyball.

BEST ACTRESS: Glenn Close - Albert Nobbs, Viola Davis - The Help, Rooney Mara - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady, Michelle Williams - My Week With Marilyn.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kenneth Branagh - My Week With Marilyn, Jonah Hill - Moneyball, Nick Nolte - Warrior, Christopher Plummer - Beginners, Max von Sydow - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bérénice Bejo - The Artist, Jessica Chastain - The Help, Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids, Janet McTeer - Albert Nobbs, Octavia Spencer - The Help.

BEST DIRECTOR: The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius, The Descendants - Alexander Payne, Hugo - Martin Scorsese, Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen, The Tree of Life - Terrence Malick.

Here are the rest.

Mini-Review: Iron Lady

The post below this one reminds me that I'm now allowed (I think) to mention that about a month ago I attended an advance screening of The Iron Lady. Despite my long-running morbid fascination with the Thatcher regime, I found the film surprisingly dull. Far too much time is devoted to Thatcher's battle with Alzheimer's as she hallucinates conversations and encounters with her long-dead husband.

The other half of the film breezes through her early life as the daughter of working-class shopkeeper and then her speedy rise to prime minister. Thatcher's devastating policies and their effects on British culture are largely depicted with news clips from the day, although it was chilling to realize how precisely her 1980s rhetoric dovetails with modern-day Tea Party philosophies. Overall I'll give The Iron Lady a piddling two stars, one of which is just for Streep's impersonation.

TRAILER: The Iron Lady

Meryl Streep As Margaret Thatcher

(Via - Towleroad)

Meryl Streep As Margaret Thatcher

Publicity stills have been released for the upcoming Margaret Thatcher biopic starring Meryl Streep.

Streep said, "The prospect of exploring the swathe cut through history by this remarkable woman is a daunting and exciting challenge. "I am trying to approach the role with as much zeal, fervour and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher possesses - I can only hope my stamina will begin to approach her own." The film, called The Iron Lady, also stars Jim Broadbent as her husband Denis. Other members of the cast include Anthony Head, Richard E Grant and John Sessions.

The film's PR flacks say the movie is about "a woman who smashed through the barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male-dominated world, an achievement helped along by licking the boots of Ronald Reagan." I may have slightly edited that quote.

Julia Child, Homophobe

Tomorrow the movie Julie & Julia opens, starring Meryl Streep as famed chef Julia Child. The premise of the flick seems cute enough, but I thought I'd remind folks about the real Julia Child, whose casual homophobia was so famous, she was sued in 1992 for blocking a gay chef from an executive position with the American Institute for Wine and Food. From a 2007 Boston Magazine article:

Homophobia was a socially acceptable form of bigotry in midcentury America, and Julia and Paul participated without shame for many years. She often used the term pedal or pedalo—French slang for a homosexual—draping it with condescension, pity, and disapproval. “I had my hair permanented at E. Arden’s, using the same pedalo I had before (I wish all the men in OUR profession in the USA were not pedals!),” she wrote to Simca. Fashion designers were “that little bunch of Pansies,” a cooking school was “a nest of homovipers,” a Boston dinner party was “peopled by 3 fags in an expensive house…. We felt hopelessly square and left when decently possible,” and San Francisco was beautiful but full of pedals—“It appears that SF is their favorite city! I’m tired of them, talented though they are.”

Although the article notes that Child appeared to have softened in her later years and spoke sympathetically at an AIDS fundraiser in 1988, the lawsuit that came a few years later tells us that perhaps she didn't change that much. Many excuse Child's attitudes as typical for her day, but one has to wonder how someone could maintain a decades-long homophobic posture in a gay-heavy environment like professional cooking.