This is Meryl Streep playing Thatcher in the new bopic The Iron Lady.
According to the press release the film is about “a woman who smashed through the barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male-dominated world. The story concerns power and the price that is paid for power, and is a surprising and intimate portrait of an extraordinary and complex woman.”
As reported in The Guardian, Jim Broadbent plays Denis Thatcher, with Olivia Coleman as their daughter, Carol. Anthony Head is Geoffrey Howe, Richard E Grant plays Michael Heseltine, Julian Wadham is Francis Pym and Michael Pennington Labour leader Michael Foot. Tom Cruise is Colin Moynihan with Samuel L Jackson in a cameo role as Enoch Powell (“there is motherfucking blood in this motherfucking river”). Michael J Fox will play Ronald Reagan but although Jude Law was originally cast as John Major he was dropped when the producers thought his performance may be too wooden for the role. Will Ferrell will play Neil Kinnock. Badly.
Ok, I may have made some of them up and am just being silly. But they started it. Memories are still strong of The Comic Strip‘s “The Strike” when Peter Richardson played Al Pacino playing Arthur Scargill, with Jennifer Saunders playing Meryl Streep playing Scargill’s wife. I would show you a clip, but the wankers at Channel 4 won’t let me embed it, but you can see it youtube. Anyway, I’m not sure this new movie will be quite as funny, but it has all the potential of being a classic. Er…
Please do feel free to tell me what the movie’s like when you go see it. I’m busy that day.
The Sharp Single 
It should be pointed out that the writer and director of this revisionist Everest of shite was also the one who brought the world “Mama Mia”–the feel-good show and movie (Streep again) that taught humanity it’s okay to feel good and happy about the kind of insipid melodic pixie dust and IQ-slaying lyrics that Abba created (and which an equally vapid “story” was built out of). That the same woman who made the Wonderful World of Disney steeped in 1970s muzak for aging hippies would now decide to tell us who were around in the 198os that, no no, she wasn’t the evil, heartless, neo-fascist hater of everything from the upper-middle class down probably makes sense. We probably should have expected it. I hope her children die slowly as the offended film viewer dismembers them as she gazes on.
PS. Thanks for the item. I didn’t know Jim Broadbent was a total drunk.
Thank you, Leslie Halliwell.