Lots of official promotion material for “Mary Poppins Returns” has been released by Disney Films over the last couple of days. There’s the official b-roll with lots of footage from behind the scenes, an interview with Meryl Streep on her character (she reveals her character’s full name, but I cannot understand it :-) can you?), two music videos from songs performed by Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda and an additional television spot. All videos can be found in the video archive. Screencaptures from the b-roll and the interview have been added to the photo gallery.

Before Mary Poppins Returns arrives in movie theatres December 19, take a look at the below featurette, in which the stars and creative team discuss the joy behind bringing the magical nanny back to the screen. The original Disney film is nearing its 55th anniversary, and naturally, the prospect of returning to that world was daunting. But looking at the source material (P. L. Travers’ series), director Rob Marshall realized: “There was a real sense that there’s so much more story to be told.” Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman have penned a new score for the story—one that star Lin-Manuel Miranda asserts is filled with “incredible, enchanting original music.” “This is a film with great hope and spectacle,” adds Emily Blunt, who takes on the title role this time around, amid clips filled with laughter, dancing, and dayglow animation. “And it’s moving, so I think it’s a very important film to be making right now.” The all-star cast of the new movie also features Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, and Dick Van Dyke. The featurette can be found in the video archive, while screencaptures have been added to the photo gallery.

Entertainment Weekly spills all the secrets on this month’s “Mary Poppins Returns” with the stars Emily Blunt and Lin-Manual Miranda gracing the cover. Here’s an excerpt from Meryl’s interview: As Topsy, the three-time Oscar winner has a scene-stealing supporting role in Walt Disney Pictures’ Mary Poppins Returns (in theaters Dec. 19). Streep’s character, who is a cousin to Mary Poppins, is an oddity who involuntarily spends every second Wednesday upside down. She visits to the Banks to fix family heirloom and sings the jazzy “Turning Turtle.” Streep took the role solely to work with Rob Marshall, who directed her in 2014’s Into the Woods. “Rob knew that I wanted in on whatever it was he did next. But I had no idea what he had in his head. And when he [and producer John DeLuca] invited me to talk through this idea, I thought, ‘They’re crazy, these two. They’re just insane. They’ve lost their minds,'” Streep, 69, says with a laugh in in Entertainment Weekly’s Nov. 16 issue (out now). “But It was such a big vision, and it was so ambitious that I said, ‘Oh, well, I want to be in it. Absolutely. Right away.'”

Working with the living legend was a dream come true for Lin-Manuel Miranda, who plays a lamplighter named Jack. “One of the greatest moments I experienced on set was Meryl. She was sort of in weird Mary Poppins aunt mode the whole time, and at one point she goes, ‘Hey, kids, wanna see a perfect pratfall?’ And just boom, face down, went from 90 degrees to flat. You haven’t seen Buster Keaton do a pratfall like this. Everyone rushed over like, ‘Meryl Streep has died!'” he recalls. “And then she just got up and was like, [wiping hands] ‘I learned that at Yale.'”

According to The Guardian, Meryl Streep, JK Rowling and Zadie Smith have all added their names to an open letter calling on the United Nations to investigate the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. More than 100 artists, writers and activists have shown support on the international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists, a month after the Washington Post journalist was killed at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. “The violent murder of a prominent journalist and commentator on foreign soil is a grave violation of human rights and a disturbing escalation of the crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia, whose government in recent years has jailed numerous writers, journalists, human rights advocates and lawyers in a sweeping assault on free expression and association,” the letter reads. It’s addressed to António Guterres, the UN secretary general, and calls on him to initiate an independent investigation into what really happened to Khashoggi. Since his disappearance, Turkish officials have said they have evidence that he was dismembered and his body was dissolved by a squad of Saudi assassins. Yet Saudi officials still claim it was the result of a fistfight and an interrogation gone wrong. “The murder of a journalist inside a diplomatic facility would constitute nothing less than an act of state terror intended to intimidate journalists, dissidents and exiled critics the world over,” the letter reads. The full article can be read over at The Guardian.

“Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again” has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States and is already available on demand, so you can basically find it EVERYWHERE to own or rent. Those of you who have seen it in the theater (which includes probably everyone) know that Meryl Streep’s Donna, although talked about in length, is limited to a cameo performance by the end of the film – singing two songs nevertheless. So if you’d like to revisit her renditions of “My Love, My Life” and “Super Trouper”, make sure to grab your copy, or get the soundtrack, or both. Over 300 screencaptures from the Blu-Ray have been added to the photo gallery. Enjoy!

Some impressive casting news, according to The Playlist: One of our most anticipated films coming in the next year or so is the new project from Steven Soderbergh. No, not “High Flying Bird.” His other, other new project – “The Laundromat.” And while we already know that Antonio Banderas, Gary Oldman, and Meryl Streep are starring, we have learned just what other incredible actors are rounding out the cast and whom they might play in the upcoming true story about the infamous Panama Papers. We have learned that Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Parnell, James Cromwell, and Melissa Rauch have all joined the cast of the film. For those not aware, “The Laundromat” tells the true story of one of the largest money laundering schemes ever to be made public. The Panama Papers references the reams of documents that were handed over to authorities linking the money laundering to politicians and other powerful figures, thanks to a whistleblower with knowledge of the Mossack Fonseca law firm. It has already been reported that David Schwimmer will play an attorney in the film. And now we know that Cromwell will play Meryl Streep’s husband, with Rauch coming along as their daughter. In an “SNL” reunion, of sorts, Will Forte and Parnell will share scenes together as an obnoxious American duo in Panama. There’s no official release date for the film, as it was announced that Netflix would be handling the distribution. Filming began on Monday. You can read the complete article over at The Playlist.

Yesterday, Meryl Streep presented her friend and long-time collaborator Ann Roth at the Director Guild of America Honors in New York City. Roth created costumes for 14 of Streep’s projects, from Mike Nichols’ “Silkwood” in 1983 to Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” earlier last year. Pictures from the event have been added to the photo gallery.

Today, more than 98 million adolescent girls around the world are not in school. That’s a lot of empty desks—and a lot of dreams that are being cut short. When girls get the opportunities they deserve, amazing things start to happen; poverty goes down, economies grow, families get stronger, and babies are born healthier. And the world, by all accounts, gets better. Join the Global Girls Alliance to take action to help adolescent girls and the grassroots leaders working to educate them. As they write on their website, “It’s simple: when girls go to school, the world gets better. Hear from some of our friends—Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, John Legend, Natalie Portman, David Beckham, and more—about why they’re excited to be a part of the Obama Foundation’s Global Girls Alliance, a program that will engage people around the world to take action to help adolescent girls and the grassroots leaders working to educate them”. To learn more, visit globalgirlsalliance.org.

According to Deadline, Netflix has committed to finance and release The Laundromat, the Steven Soderbergh-directed drama about the Panama Papers scandal. David Schwimmer has just joined a killer cast that is led by Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep and Antonio Banderas. Other cast circling include Will Forte and Riley Keough. The film has a script by Scott Z. Burns, based on the Jake Bernstein book Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite. Schwimmer will play Matthew Quirk, an attorney who speaks on behalf of one of the insurance companies after twenty elderly passengers die on a boating excursion. The boating company learned its insurance isn’t the large company it thought it was, but merely just a P.O. box in Nevis. Quirk would eventually kill himself after seeing no way out of the liability situation, but the incident triggers lawyers, government officials, and more to track down these shell companies. Those investigations lead to the laundering geniuses at the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, who created hundreds of thousands of ‘companies’ to help the wealthy avoid paying taxes. The scandal drew in several world leaders, including former UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Iceland Prime Minister Sigmunder Gunnlaugsson, the latter of whom resigned on April 5, 2016, after it was revealed he and his wife set up an offshore shell company in 2007 in the British Virgin Islands; he then sold his half of the company to his wife for $1 on the last day of 2009 to shield them from a new law that would have required him to declare his ownership as a conflict of interest. Among the swarms of famous people named in the leaked documents was current President of the United States Donald Trump — already embattled over charges his empire was built by avoiding taxes — and director Pedro Almodovar, Jackie Chan and Emma Watson. Bernstein was part of a team of journalists who formed the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to break the Panama Papers story. The leak of data — 11 million records revealed — was the largest in corporate and government history.

Bustle has an in-depth article on “Mary Poppins Returns”, Rob Marshall’s work behind the scenes and news on which songs will be performed – brace yourself for a musical number with Meryl Streep: Mary Poppins Returns is Blunt’s “third film with Meryl Streep,” the actor says, referencing The Devil Wears Prada and Into the Woods. “What a stalker she is.” In the film, Streep plays a character named Topsy, adapted from P.L. Travers’ books, who is an Eastern European distant cousin of Mary’s and lives in a fixit shop that turns upside down every Monday. Sounds a bit like Uncle Albert and his penchant for levitation, doesn’t it? The movie’s production designer teased some fun instrumental moments in Streep’s big “Turning Turtle” musical moment, because Topsy is more apt to turn a broken instrument into something else rather than fix it. When Meryl was here,” Platt recalls of the actor’s time on set, “she turned to me and said ‘it feels like we’re giving a gift to the word.'” That’s the joy that everyone involved with the movie seems to be taking in telling this new story and singing these songs. You can read the full article at Bustle with many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up!