Meryl Streep's daughter, Mamie Gummer, marries

Mamie Gummer and Ben Walker

Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's eldest daughter, wed Ben Walker last Saturday at the family estate in Connecticut. Mamie, 27, and Ben, 29, both actors, celebrated their nuptials with a lakeside ceremony. The couple had invited 150 guests to help them celebrate tie the knot, the Washington Post reported that Claire Danes, Tracey Ullman and Laura Linney were among the guests.

Off the Map actress Mamie walked down the aisle in her grandmother's wedding gown.

Mamie met Ben, when performing in Broadway's Dangerous Liasons in April 2008. The couple got engaged in October 2009. At the time she told People Magazine, that "he was the Keanu to my Uma. We were kind of pals first. And he's very patient."

Considering Meryl Streep On Her Birthday

"Instant gratification is not soon enough. "



I saw The Devil Wears Prada again while channel surfing. Wow, that film certainly still stands up. She is not gay,  & she seems neither need nor tragic, but does she have the making of a Gay Icon just for her talent? She turns an astonishing 64 today & she has never been bigger at the box office. I love her. She is an actor goddess to me. I love her doing anything, but I like her best doing comedy & singing.

Meryl Streep has received 15 Academy Award nominations & 23 Golden Globe nominations (winning 6), more than any other person in film history. Her work has also earned her 2 Emmy Awards, 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, 3 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 4 Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, & a Tony Award nomination.

I first time I saw her was on stage in The Taming Of The Shrew with Raul Julia at The Public Theatre in 1975. At the start of her film career, I wasn't really on board. She seemed all accents & technique. I was wrong. Her work is inspired, heartfelt & transcendent. My favorite Streep film performances:

Manhattan
Silkwood
Out Of Africa
Postcards From The Edge (love her singing!)
The Bridges Of Madison County
Adaptation (fearless,& without vanity as always)
The Hours
A Prairie Home Companion (again, the singing)
The Devil Wears Prada
Julie & Julia
& Angels In America

She is funny, self effacing, & the best actor of my generation. I forgive her for Mama Mia. I also passed on Iron Lady... was I wrong?


This summer I am very much looking forward to- Hope Springs, featuring Streep & Tommy Lee Jones as a 60-something married couple on a steep sexual slide. The couple travel to Dr. Steve Carell's Seaside Coitus Clinic, they will explore the all the carnal dilemmas faced by us senior population. This is from the director of The Devil Wears Prada. I don't know about cranky pants Jones, but I predict that at least the box office for this film, which opens in early August (right around the time that Julie & Julia hit big 3 years ago), will be rock hard.


What is your favorite Streep performance?

Birthday Roll Call For June 22nd

"Style is primarily a matter of instinct.”

William Ralph Blass was a very handsome man, who happened to be gay. He produced clothes for many renowned women including Jacqueline Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Pat Buckley, Brook Astor, Nancy Kissinger, Happy Rockefeller, Gloria Vanderbilt, Jessye Norman,  Barbra Streisand, & Barbara Walters.


Bill Blass's life epitomised the Gatsby-esque American dream. Along with Oscar de la Renta, Blass was the American designer who most successfully brought together the roles of couturier & social butterfly. One of the most successful 'walkers' in the 1980s & 1990s, he was an indefatigable partygoer, showing up with some of the richest women in Manhattan at every party, gallery opening & hip restaurant. He not only loved the world of glamour, big money, high profile & style, but understood how to dress it, which is why his company was so successful for more than 30 years.

He was one of the founder members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). He was the first to receive the CFDA Perignon Award for Humanitarian leadership beyond fashion. He donated the $25,000 prize to the AIDS care centre of New York Hospital. He was also a major donor to Gay Men's Health Crisis at a time when well known people were silent about AIDS. Bill Blass died of cancer aged 79.

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Pears on the left & Britten on the right.

For 40 years, Peter Pears was the lover/partner of composer Benjamin Britten, who wrote the leading roles in many of his operas & song for Pears.Their partnership is important for the vast body of music & recordings it produced, & because many homosexual subjects figured in their work. Because Opera is just not gay enough.


Pears became a leading lyric tenor of the Sadler's Wells Opera, where he developed an extensive repertoire, but Pears's greatest triumph in this company, was his creation of the title role of the tortured & homosexual outcast in Britten's Peter Grimes (1945).


For the next 30+ years, Pears created many operatic roles that Britten wrote for him, including the title role in Albert Herring (1947), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1951), Essex in Gloriana (1953), Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw (1954), Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), the Madwoman in Curlew River (1964), Nebuchadnezzar in The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966), the Tempter in The Prodigal Son (1968), Sir Philip Wingrave in Owen Wingrave (1971), & Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1973).


In 1974, Pears made, at last, his debut at the Metropolitan Opera Company, New York, in the 1st American performance of Death in Venice.


Even after Britten's death in 1976, Pears continued his singing career until nearly the age of 70. He spent the remainder of his life teaching & administering the Britten-Pears School. Pears was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1977, & died on April 3, 1986. He is buried next to Britten.

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"Instant gratification is not soon enough. "

She is not gay, but turns an astonishing 61 today & she has never been bigger at the box office. I love her. She is an actor goddess to me. I love her doing anything, but I like her best doing comedy & singing. Meryl Streep has received 15 Academy Award nominations & 23 Golden Globe nominations (winning 6), more than any other person in film history. Her work has also earned her 2 Emmy Awards, 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, 3 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 4 Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, & a Tony Award nomination. I first time I saw her was on stage in The Taming Of The Shrew with Raul Julia at The Public Theatre in 1975. At the start of her film career, I wasn't on board. She seemed all accents & technique. I was wrong. Her work is inspired, heartfelt & transcendent. My favorite Streep film performances:

Manhattan
Silkwood
Out Of Africa
Postcards From The Edge (love her singing!)
The Bridges Of Madison County
Adaptation (fearless,
 & without vanity as always)
The Hours
A Prairie Home Companion (again, the singing)
The Devil Wears Prada
Julie & Julia
& Angels In America


She is funny, self effacing, & the best actor of my generation.

Recipe For Tasty Stuff

The husband & I decided to spend the late afternoon seeing a new movie. I went in with some trepidation. I had posted on this blog, way back in April when the trailer was released, about how much I was looking forward to Julie & Julia. The subject matter & the juxtaposition of the 2 stories had me intrigued, but it was the cast that had me feeling anxious & excited to experience this film: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci & the always amazing Jane Lynch, all in a film that seemed filled with promise. But, Nora Ephron's work in movies has given me pause on several occasions. She wrote the screenplay to several movies that I can't abide: When Harry Met Sally (one of my most disliked films ever), Sleepless In Seattle, You've Got Mail, & Mixed Nuts. All of these movies rang false for me on so many levels. But I have loved her pieces in the New Yorker & she has written screenplays for films that I think are superior, especially Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (based on her own marital breakup with Carl Bernstein) & the very funny My Blue Heaven. With the mixed reviews over the opening weekend, with most critics liking the Julia section & not so much the Julie part, I was afraid of being disappointed, but I knew I would be all moony over Streep's performence. Well...Meryl Streep's performance is a revelation. More than astounding mimicry & more than inhabiting Julia Child in her essence, her creation is heartfelt, funny, sweet, fun & original. She deserves all the accolades & her certain Oscar nomination. I feel this is one of her very best performances & she moves into her 60s with more box office clout than ever & more than the male stars of her generation can muster. She seems to just give us more surprises with each new movie.

I loved the film in every aspect: first rate screenplay & direction, great performances down the tiniest of roles, & a great balance between the 2 stories. The film spoke, so much to me, on the subjects of how to live your life with meaning, how the love of a good man & a passion for what you do, can be redemptive & transforming, & how someone you have never met can inspire & move you forward through life. It has something major to say about be a sensualist, about food & earting, about reading, & about what makes a home. I laughed a great deal & I was very struck with the excellent & interesting acting by Tucci, Lynch, & Deborah Rush in a crucial small & fun role. The film spoke to me about being a husband, especially about being a husband to someone who is creative. I was made slightly uncomfortable by the theme of how narcissistic, needy, selfish, & single minded those who are fated to be bloggers can be to the people in their lives.

I had taken note of Chris Messina from his work on Six feet Under & Vicki Christina Barcelona (another film that surprised me with how I was made uncomfortable by a film with themes that brushed up against my own life). Both portrayals of the husbands in Julie & Julia were interesting, complex & avoided cliches. Chris Messina held his won in a movie full of world class acting & he still shined through, & he had a great butt shot.

Go see it & bon appetit!
Bonjour!

Born On This Day- June 22nd... the astonishing Mary Louise Streep

"Instant gratification is not soon enough. "

She turns an astonishing 60 today. I love her. She is an actor goddess to me. I love here doing anything, but I like it best when she does comedy or singing. Meryl Streep has received 15 Academy Award nominations & 23 Golden Globe nominations (winning six), more than any other person in film history. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, three New York Film Critics Circle Awards, four Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, & a Tony Award nomination. I first time I saw her was on stage in The Taming Of The Shrew with Raul Julia at The Public Theatre in 1975. At the start of her film career, I wasn't on board. She seemed all accents & technique. I was wrong. Her work is inspired, heartfelt & transcendent. My favorite Streep film performances:

Manhattan

Silkwood

Out Of Africa

Postcards From The Edge ( love her singing!)

The Bridges Of Madison County

Adaptation (fearless, as always)

The Hours

A Prairie Home Companion ( again, the singing)

The Devil Wears Prada

& Angels In America

She is funny, self effacing, & the best actor of my generation.

Meryl Streep has B.O. Clout

This is a first peek at the new film JULIE & JULIA with Meryl Streep playing Julia Child.
OMG! I am so looking forward to this film starring four of my most favorite actors:
Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Jane Lynch & Stanley Tucci. Since working in films starting in 1979, she has been a steady, consistent, & amazing actress whose films got nominated for awards but didn't make a lot of money. Now she's a box office star. Starting with The Devil Wears Prada & cemented with Mamma Mia!, Streep (weeks away from her 60th birthday) is now the summer box office champ & is considered to be one of the few actors who can "open" a movie. Instead of competing with Susan Sarandon or Annette Bening to play the latest eccentric mom, Streep is going head to head with Angelina Jolie & Julia Roberts for the title of Most Bankable Actress On Earth. She's bigger than she's ever been. There is a poetic justice to the fact that Streep's career has a eclipsed her male contemporaries: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, & even Jack Nicholson for box office clout. Can't wait!