CNN By Claire Evren Guest of The Week Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg’s The Post named Best Film by National Board of Review.

CNN World News Actuality By Claire Evren

Steven Spielberg’s The Post named Best Film by National Board of Review.

Steven Spielberg and his latest movie “The Post,” one of the big favorites of the U.S. movie industry awards season. Amid the build-up to potential Golden Globe or Oscar nominations, the National Board of Review has picked the movie as its Best Film of 2017, while also crowning its lead actors, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.

The film has already gotten off to a strong start when it comes to awards, having taken home trophies for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress at the National Board of Review Awards, which were announced with Steven Spielberg’s Nixon-era newspaper drama The Post winning for Best Film, Best Actor (Tom Hanks as the editor of the Washington Post) and Best Actress (Meryl Streep as the publisher).

The film’s lead stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks were handed top acting honours with the supporting categories awarded to Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project) and Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird).

Steven Spielberg began by saying he was working on another film (“Ready Player One”) for the past 2 1/2 years when producer Amy Pascal handed him a script by a 31 year-old writer who wrote a spec script called The Post.

“It was kind of a remarkable moment,” said Spielberg, who met the writer and soon after that felt this was going “to be a movie that I was going to make immediately while I was still working for Warner Bros making this other movie.” The turn around was fast, as fast as when he made “Munich” because Spielberg said he had a “motivational purpose.”

The Post is a movie about the importance of journalism. “When I read the first draft of the script, this was something that couldn’t wait for three years or 2 years,” Spielberg said. “This was something that I really thought was a story we needed to tell today.”

He brought on Oscar-winning “Spotlight” scribe Josh singer to do the rewrite

Steven Spielberg “I realized this was the only year to make this film,” says the director, who tapped Meryl Streep to star as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as the editor.

STEVEN SPIELBERG “I read the script without any intention of telling the story myself or of committing to a production while in the middle of [another one,] Ready Player One, which was only half sane. But I was really curious about the subject matter. Ben Bradlee was my neighbor for years in East Hampton. He and his wife, Sally [Quinn], and Nora Ephron and [her husband] Nick Pileggi would come over and we would have these soirees. When I finished Liz’s script, I thought this was an idea that felt more like 2017 than 1971 — I could not believe the similarities between today and what happened with the Nixon administration against their avowed enemies The New York Times and The Washington Post. I realized this was the only year to make this film. My first reaction was I got scared — which is good for me because fear is my fuel. The more frightened I become of something, the more I have to work through it. This was a topic that was scaring everybody I know on my side of the [political] street — and quite rightly.”

Steven Spielberg “I’m in the business of working with very charismatic actors, and Ben was right up there in the highest echelons. The only other person that reminded me of Ben — as a performer who was not in the entertainment industry — was the former head of Time Warner, Steven J. Ross”.

Steven Spielberg drama The Post becomes Oscars 2018 frontrunner
The Post not only entering the field absent any other would-be frontrunners but existing as an approximation of a perfect would-be Oscar movie. It is a major studio release from a beloved/respected director filled with prestigious movie stars and character actors.

The Post – which is spearheaded by acting titans Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks – is based on a true story in which journalists working for The Washington Post in 1971 raced to expose a massive cover-up of government secrets that spanned three decades, an effort that endangers their own freedom.

CNN World News Actuality By Claire Evren at a special screening of Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Post, is based on a true story about the unlikely partnership and complicated relationship of the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep), the first publisher of a major American newspaper, and the paper’s editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) during the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. The film co-stars Matthew Rhys as Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the documents exposing a massive cover-up of government secrets over three decades and four U.S. Presidents that revealed the war effort to be a lost cause. Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) plays colorful Washington Post reporter Ben Bagdikian.