Oh No! Margaret Thatcher : The Movie

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The Iron Lady re-teams Streep with her Mamma Mia director Phyllida Lloyd...

http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/first-look-meryl-streep-as-margaret-thatcher-the-iron-lady.php

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Oh No! Margaret Thatcher : The Movie

This has to be the title.

Jim Broadbent as Maggie’s husband Dennis, Richard E. Grant as Michael Heseltine, Roger Allam as Gordon Reece and Anthony Head as Geoffrey Howe.

Can't say any of those would have been my first picks.

If you're making a British film about older dudes you're pretty much required by law to include at least two of those actors, and Bill Nighy.

Bill Nighy should surely have been Heseltine

The writer is from TV, anyone know her stuff?

And no Reagan?

Say this for Meryl, she's perfectly captured that concerned/ slightly starled look Thatcher use to pull when she was pretending to be a human being

big credit to eyebrows artist there, maybe

very tricky, casting thatcher. someone said it was inevitable that emma thompson would do it. too posh, unless she knows what she's doing. lindsay duncan played her a few years ago, which somehow felt wrong even though LD is generally brilliant -- i think it was just a badly written film.

i've seen 'mamma mia' so don't have high hopes for this.

could anyone have made a good film out of Mamma Mia?

as long as Thatch don't sing it can't be worse than Mamma Mia, tho I fear it won't feature enough scenes of her feasting on the hearts of the living

Patricia Routledge as Thatcher ftw

very tricky, casting thatcher.

Yeah, she's such a weird person

Nobody w's.

well, that's why I liked the TV clips of Reagan in Let Me In

xxxp

Julie Walters could do a good Thatcher maybe?

well, adopts mark lawson tone, she's kind of an ACTRESS ALREADY right? via elocution lessons. which btw i don't think sneer-worthy or politically relevant/significant, but it's a thing i don't think lindsay duncan's performance 'got'.

Whatever happened to Steve Nallon anyway?

It's not sneerworthy, it's v.v. important as you say. To portray Thatcher as a feminist icon is a cartoon version of reality, but her class struggle within the Tory Party is part of what made her as a politician.

This is gonna be bullshit btw.

Her "class struggle" wasn't any greater than Ted Heath's

True but between them they introduced major changes into the Tory Party in terms of ideology and presentation.

Can do the vampire jokes and also discuss her as a historical figure tbh.

went to a talk on this film 'il divo' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023490/ yesterday where they really do show the main dude, italian PM andreotti, to be like dracula

they shd do it in that style, which is kind of like goodfellas

Il Divo was pretty nice

Thatcher as Raging Bull cd be good, with Pesci in the Tebbit role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im2UvBs_gfs

:-|

And John Sessions as Ted Heath?

Say what?

would have thought Richard Griffiths had that role locked down.

or jim broadbent

He's Denis. LOL, John Sessions was Geoffrey Howe in the Lindsay Duncan Thatcher film!

Sack that agent, John.

or Tony Curtis (oops too late)

Is this out yet? Anyone seen it? I will never watch it so I need people here to tell me all about it.

I saw it last night. Streep is uncannily accurate and quite brilliant, but there's too much emphasis on Thatcher's imagined present-day decline, which gets stretched very thin. (The Carol Thatcher character's a hoot, though.) There are some well-staged reconstructions of the glory years - although her final scene with Airey Neave is a preposterous re-write of history - but in general she's given too easy a ride (except for a riveting scene of cabinet-room bullying towards the end of her reign), with oppositional figures represented as hysterical fools or crude thugs. Howe is well played by Anthony Head, but Richard E Grant doesn't cut it as Heseltine, which perhaps account for his surprisingly limited screen time. Worth seeing for Streep's performance alone, though - she's pitch-perfect.

i cant imagine many cinemas up here showing it. And they would be ultra daft to put any posters up.

This and "Braveheart" are the only two films I have promised myself never to watch

never seen braveheart either

Braveheart is ok! Have seen a trailer for this (during the Celtic game yesterday, lol target market), Streep seems to have nailed it in terms of accent and mannerisms, but I can't imagine paying money to see it. Will probably watch it on telly in future to point and laugh and exercise my right to indignation.

margaret thatcher, the only person that can unite all of scotlands football fans together

What certificate is it? I'm worried that lesbian schoolgirl who's in charge of the Scottish Tories these days won't be allowed in.

It's a 12A. The only rude bit is when they use The Notsensibles "I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher" to soundtrack a fast-forward news montage through the Lawson/Big Bang boom years. "I go erect when she's on the telly"... did they not listen to that bit?

i think there's a lot of interesting analysis to be done of Thatcher's place in feminist history and her struggle within a massively patriarchal Establishment but i assume the director of Mamma Mia! isn't gonna bring it

So, The Notsensibles get paid residuals?

I just saw the trailer on tv...shudder to think how many of my moron co-workers are going to come back to the office instructing us all on how misunderstood Thatcher was, as I try very hard not to kill them all.

Got one! Colleague said yesterday "You realise she was just a human being really."

Overheard a young woman on the bus yesterday, saying the fact that Maggie was going senile made you feel sorry for her but otherwise you wouldn't have, which reassured me a bit... mind you, she was Scottish.

Not seen this yet, but the best thing this film can do is not take a stance TBF.

NO. KILL HER WITH FIRE.

Thatcher bio should be like a cross between "Koyaanisqatisi" & "Night And Fog", and everyone leaves the theater on their hands and knees.

Colleague said yesterday "You realise she was just a human being really."

The go-to here is "So was Hitler"

Film would've been mildly more interesting had Broadbent played Thatcher.

Hahaha

I enjoyed this Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker about Meryl Streep trying to charm British journalists by making them dinner:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/01/23/120123ta_talk_collins

Saw the first half of this - I had to grind my teeth a lot to keep from groaning. Soooooooooo saccharine. Poor doddering old Mags can't remember where Mark is, imaginary convos with dead Denis, cry me a bloody river UGH

it's sad she was a wife and mother

I mean I could appreciate it if it was anyone else but her

I work with a lovely older woman (She's at least in her late 50's if not a little older), she immigrated here from Manchester abt 15 years ago. She came over to my desk this afternoon with a panicky look on her face and in a very hushed voice asked me what I thought of the movie so far. I told her how I hated that they were trying to make me feel sorry for her when I hated her so much and it was pissing me off that they weren't showing more of the socio-political story. And this poor woman looked SO relieved! She said the movie made her so mad she wanted to scream, but I guess she couldn't tell anyone else she worked with because they don't really know the story. But it was amazing, the more my co-worker talked, the more furious she got. At one point she bit hand and turned away, she was that mad. And this woman is the smiling-est, sweetest, wouldn't hurt a fly person you will ever meet.
Thatcher, man.

Seriously. Ugh @ this movie.

I don't even think I could watch this, I don't want some movie to try to manipulate me into feeling sorry for this evil creep.

Yeah, taken the pledge myself too.

I mean how do you even screen this to irl non-Thatcher loving Britishers? I mean to a) get audience to show up first, b) stay in the theater, and c) not rip out the seating & throw them at the screen when it's over.

For three weekends in a row I broke plans to watch this.

It's like they took "Iris" and just replaced all the Iris Murdoch bits with Thatcher.

Iris at least intimated Murdoch's considerable intelligence.

Exactly. I meant, but expressed poorly, that Iris was kind of a lovely movie. You can't make a lovely movie about Thatcher and anyone who tries should go to hell.

I've had a screener of this for 2 months. There it sits.

A+ coaster

Made it an hour into this. When I try to describe it people here (Scotland) nobody quite believes me. Just really awful.

What other movie could they have displaced the female lead subject and imposed MThatcher in place?

Countess Dracula

Evita

or

The Titfield Thunderbolt

I Don't Know How She Does It

Iron Lady lost in Russian translation

In a scene from the original film, two Conservative advisers tell Thatcher that she needs to soften her image after they watch her being interviewed on television. In the Russian version, which has been dubbed to have her say that she would crush the working class, an adviser responds: "Of course you went a bit over the top ... One of them [the workers] could be literate and have a television and see everything and tell all the rest," he says, "and then rumours would spread that you are a pitiless, heartless bitch."

[A]t one point Thatcher says she intends to deliberately start the Falklands war with the help of fellow fans of her favourite free market economist, Milton Friedman.

would watch that version

otm!

in russia film pirates you

Accurate.

And John Sessions as Ted Heath?

Say what?

― R. Stornoway (Tom D.), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 10:41 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

John Sessions was Geoffrey Howe in the Lindsay Duncan Thatcher film!

― R. Stornoway (Tom D.), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 10:45 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Even better he was Harold Wilson in "Made In Dagenham". Quite an achievement for the talentless UKIP voting bastard to be cast as Heath AND Wilson.