As previously reported, Meryl has attended the New York screening of “Bully”, yesterday. Pictures from the event have been added to the image library.

Here’s what Forbes wrote about the event: Meryl Streep has three Oscars and is considered the best of all American actresses. But she was bulled in school. She talked about it on Monday night after she was introduced by actress Regency Boies at the Weinstein Company screeening of “Bully” at the Paley Center in New York. The screening was part of the campaign to get the MPAA to change the rating to PG-13 before the film opens next Friday in New York and Los Angeles. Here’s what she said: “I watched this with my four college roommates. We get together every year. A child psychologist, a woman who’s a lawyer, a columnist, and a businesswoman–we were all stunned. It brought me back to New Jersey in nineteen fifty…–a long time ago. I was eight year old and up a tree. And my nemesis, this one bully, was hitting my legs with a stick until they bled. It was very ‘Lord of the Flies’. It was a very nice Republican community, I might add. [Ed note–Meryl said this a with a smile, knowing a lot of the audience were bankers from similar towns. The remark got laughs.] Seeing this, you realize it’s been around, bullying. But I hope this film will give encouragement to the kids who are being bullied. My dad had a little statue on his desk of three little monkeys, a carved Chinese statuette– doing this, this and this. [She demonstrated See No Evil, Say No Evil, Hear No Evil]. I thought maybe this will encourage all those little monkeys to stand up and open their eyes and take the earbuds out of their ears and say something. Because a team is stronger than a bully. I hope you really like it, and tell absolutely everybody at the MPAA that it should have a rating of PG-13.”

And from the New York Daily News: Meryl Streep learned something new about her daughter Tuesday. At a special screening of “Bully” that the Oscar winner hosted at the Paley Center for Media, actress Regency Boies recalled the times her classmate, Streep’s daughter Mamie Gummer, came to the aid of fellow students who were being tormented. “I saw her on more than a few occasions come to the rescue of some of our classmates that were being ridiculed when none of the rest of us were brave enough to confront them,” Boies said, adding that she knew Gummer’s actions were a product of “the integrity and the kindness that Meryl instilled.” After listening to Boies remarks, an emotional Streep said it was the first time she’d heard this and needed a moment “to recover, because that’s just so great to hear.” Other guests called “Bully” great, adding that they could not understand why the MPAA would give such a powerful documentary an R rating.

In other news, director Ulu Grosbard, who directed Meryl in the 1984 love story Falling in Love, has died. Grosbard was nominated for his first Tony Award in 1965 for The Subject Was Roses, Frank D. Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a soldier (Martin Sheen) returning from war to his parents in the Bronx. His second nom came in 1977 for the original Broadway production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, the junk shop-set drama that starred Robert Duvall. Grosbard directed Dustin Hoffman in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971) and Straight Time (1978) and helmed the 1968 screen adaptation of The Subject Was Roses, his feature debut. Other credits include Georgia (1995), with Jennifer Jason Leigh and The Deep End of the Ocean (1999), starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

The movie of the week is “Dark Matter”, the 2007 feature film debut by opera director Shi-Zheng Chen. The film is little known and even lesser reviewed since its theatrical release collided with the killing spree at the Polytechnic Institute and the State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Its original release was pushed back to an unnoticed release in 2008. As always, production notes and review after the cut. The image library has been updated with new screencaptures and the video archive with three clips from the film. Please let me know what you thought of “Dark Matter” in the comments.

The image library has been updated with a bunch of additions to most of Meryl’s 2012 appearances – featuring some new albums – a stunning photocall she did in Tokyo last week and from the Japanese talkshow “Tetsuko’s Room”, which aired there a couple of days ago (I’m working on bringing the full interview to the video archive). Other than that, new pictures from the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, various “Iron Lady” premieres and more. Click the previews to launch all recently added pictures.

Yesterday, Meryl has attended the Broadway revival’s opening night of “Death of a Salesman”. Pictures have been added to the image library.

Meryl Streep, Tom Brokaw, Terrence Howard, Dianne Reeves, Chip Kidd, and others will gather on stage at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, on April 5 for the 10th anniversary celebration of Poetry & the Creative Mind. This annual poetry gala is hosted by the Academy of American Poets and features acclaimed actors, musicians, writers, visual artists, and other creative individuals sharing the poems that inspire them. Tickets to the performance ($45-$75) are now available and can be purchased through the Lincoln Center website, the Alice Tully Hall box office, or by phone. Many thanks to Sabine for the heads-up!

Another fine example of using your celebrity power to raise word on an important subject matter. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood support is growing to overturn the R rating for language that was assigned to Lee Hirsch’s documentary “Bully”. Meryl Streep and her daughter Mamie Gummer will co-host a screening of the film in New York City on March 20, and Johnny Depp has offered his help. The Weinstein Co. releases “Bully”, about the bullying epidemic in the U.S. schools, in theaters March 30. “Bully” has galvanized a national movement, since the very audience it was made for will be restricted in seeing it. Michigan high school student Katy Butler, a victim of bullying, started a petition that has been signed by 300,000 people. On Capitol Hill, more than 20 lawmakers have signed a bipartisan letter to the MPAA urging that the rating be overturned. And on Tuesday, Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand, D-N.Y., tweeted that she too supports lowering the rating to PG-13. It’s unusual to have lawmakers asking that a rating be lowered. I recommend you to watch the trailer on Youtube. Thanks to Glenn for the heads-up!

The movie of the week has been put on hold these last weeks because of awards season. This week’s spotlight is “Ironweed”, the 1987 adaptation of the Pulitzer prize winning novel by William Kennedy, starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl as two prowlers during the Great Depression in Albany, New York. The image library has been updated with screencaptures from the film, three clips have been added to the video archive. Production notes and review after the cut. As always, please share your thoughts on the film in the comments.

As reported earlier, Meryl Streep was in New York City today for Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s third annual Women in the World Summit. Housed at Lincoln Center, the three-day event spotlights the urgent challenges facing women today, from forced marriage to the economic crisis to the Arab spring. The full speech has been added to the video archive and a bunch of pictures can be found in the image library. Pictures are © Marc Bryan-Brown.

In summit’s final act before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton closed out the third annual weekend’s events, Meryl Streep took to the stage to praise the women in the room and the panelists’ many achievements. She went on to compare herself – “as every woman my age has done” – to Clinton, who shares so many attributes with the film star: they both were raised in middle-class families by big-hearted mothers who encouraged them to lead interesting lives. They both went to public schools and on to prestigious all-women colleges, then Yale. “But while I became a cheerleader, Hillary became the president of her class,” Streep joked. “And there, the two paths in the woods diverged.” Streep held up her Oscar to illustrate what actresses receive for playing parts well, but, she said, “Hillary is the real deal.” When Clinton emerged onto the stage, the women shared a long embrace – sisters at the top of their fields, inspiring other women of all ages to aspire to the same.

“Joe Papp in Five Acts,” a new documentary film by Tracie Holder and Karen Thorsen about the late founder of the Public Theater, will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Kevin Kline and James Earl Jones are among the artists featured in the Papp film that is co-produced with PBS/American Masters. According to the creators, “In Joe Papp’s eyes, art is for everyone, not just a privileged few. This is the story of this indomitable, street-wise champion of the arts who brought more theater to more people than any other producer in history… This documentary lets Papp’s great accomplishments and tumultuous personal history be revealed by the artists he helped create – and sometimes tried to destroy.”

Joseph Papp has launched Meryl’s theatrical career in the seventies, giving her leading roles in the Public Theater productions of “Henry V”, “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Measure for Measure”, among many others. And just in time for the news on the documentry, I’ve added a couple of fantastic high quality pictures of Meryl’s early stage work to the image library. Enjoy!

A wrap-up on Meryl’s Tokyo visit to promote the Japanese premiere of “The Iron Lady”. Additional pictures have been added as well as a video compilation of television reports and interviews from the premiere and the full press conference on the film in two parts. Many thanks to Yasuko for additional information and video contribution. Enjoy!