Monthly Archive for October, 2007

Even Gay Movies Only Care About the Guys
EW has an interesting article this week about the Brokeback Effect on movies. The story lays out the argument that two years after the breakthrough film, Brokeback Mountain, nothing has changed. There are no new films with gay leads or gay themes in the pipeline. The article also talks about how much better TV is when dealing with gay characters.

The article strictly focuses on gay movies about men never even broaching the conversation about lesbians in film. Seems that just like the rest of Hollywood even a conversation about gay films leaves out the women.

Some interesting quotes.
“When audiences complain that Hollywood is out of touch with the rest of the country, it’s invariably because a movie is deemed too liberal. When it comes to gay characters, however, it’s out of touch for the exact opposite reason. In the past decade, America’s attitudes toward homosexuality have shifted, particularly among young people.”

“While television has been fostering greater acceptance for gay people, movies remain stuck in the 20th century. Almost two years after Brokeback, the best Hollywood can do with gay content is the ”I’m not gay!” punchlines of Wild Hogs or the homoerotic homophobia of 300. Even the ”gayest” studio movie of the year, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, climaxed with stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James horrified by the idea of a same-sex kiss. Here’s the weird thing: Walt Disney, the company behind Wild Hogs, is the corporate sibling of ABC, which, with Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, and Desperate Housewives, is the most queer-inclusive broadcast network around. So what gives? How can TV shows be so progressive while movies seem so…old?”

Brokeback Effect

Strayed outside the girl movie theme this weekend and saw two good and different movies. First was Dan in Real Life starring Steve Carrell and Juliette Binoche. Film is directed by Peter Hedges who did What’s Eating Gilbert Grape 14 years ago. Carrell plays a widower who writes an advice column while trying to raise three daughters. He meets and connects with Binoche at a bookstore then realizes that she is the girlfriend of his brother played by Dane Cook (who appears to be everywhere these days.) This funny, sweet family comedy also stars Diane Weist, John Mahoney, Allison Pill and Amy Ryan.

Speaking of Amy Ryan, she seems to be the “it” actress this fall and has put herself at the top of the list for the best supporting actress Oscar with her performance in Ben Affleck’s Gone, Baby, Gone which I found surprisingly good. This drama about the aftermath of a girl’s kidnapping is a true Boston story. A way better Boston story than The Departed ever was.

The fantastic Janet McTeer seems to be everywhere these days. I still can’t get her performance as Nora in A Doll’s House a decade ago on Broadway out of my head. Catch her in The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard on PBS and in Five Days on HBO.

News
ABC’s Samantha Who starring Christina Applegate has gotten a full season pick-up.

Robin Wright Penn will star in Rebecca Miller’s adaptation of her book The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. “The film takes an adventurous trip through Pippa Lee’s past and present, as a methamphetamine-addicted mother whose husband leaves her for a younger woman. Pippa indulges in an array of erotic adventures while heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.” Film co-stars Julianne Moore and Winona Ryder. (Hollywood Reporter)

As Cate Blanchett gets ready to take over the reigns at the Sydney Theatre Company next year with her husband Andrew Upton, the backlash has begun. Sydney actor Colin Moody has gone public about his opinions. Did anyone one question the competence of Kevin Spacey when he was appointed at the Old Vic, or Roger Rees at the Williamstown Theatre Festival?
Blanchett Not Fit to Run Our Theatre (The Observer)

Megan Mullally, Karen from Will & Grace, is about to open in Mel Brooks’ new musical Young Frankenstein
A Will to Success, Grace Under Pressure (LA Times)

ABC Hearts Women- all their new shows are doing well by targeted women with its news shows this season.
ABC In Sync With Women (MediaWeek)

Scaring and mutilating women wins the weekend box office. The millionth version of Saw (actually its #4) made $32 million over the weekend. I’m sick of these movies doing so well. Problem is, women likes these movies too. Why?

Lifetime has ordered a pilot tentatively titled “The Verdict” from Jonathan Price (Executive Producer of Cane). Premise is “the trial of a female celebrity accused of having her lover murdered.” (Hollywood Reporter) Groan

Movie of the Week
Rails & Ties directed by Alison Eastwood
In a fall obsessed with political dramas Rails & Ties is a welcome respite. I’m not saying that this is a light and easy film to watch because it’s not — it is a character driven intense drama about love and loss which marks Alison Eastwood’s directing debut from a script by Micky Levy.

Kevin Bacon plays Tom a man who lives in the world of trains. He is an engineer driving his train up and down the pacific coast, and then spends his free time building his model train in his garage. He is a closed off man. His wife Megan, is played by Marcia Gay Harden, a nurse who has recently been told that her cancer has returned again, and metastasized in her bones. They have a long-time indifferent marriage — they love each other both pass each other by without really connecting. Megan’s death sentence unleashes a torrent of emotions that Tom is incapable of handling. His pain stays deep down and hers just pours out.

Like many people in this situation Megan gets angry, because she thought she had so much time to do everything. Yet she wound up not doing anything. She says “I’m not afraid to die but to know I haven’t lived terrifies me.”

A terrible train accident changes their lives and a young boy named Davey winds up living with them and instantly changes both of them. Davey’s arrival renews Megan and gives her a sense of purpose in her last days, and he also connects with Tom through their mutual love of trains. They become an instant, loving family something that has alluded Megan and Tom throughout their marriage.

The performances are quiet and wonderful. You see and feel their pain. Marcia Gay Harden is one of the best actresses of her generation, getting better and better with each role. In an early scene she is in the bathroom looking at the scar that was her breast and you can’t but help hold your breath because these types of scenes are so rare, yet the rawness of that moment helps define the tome of the film. Eastwood doesn’t rush any of the scenes, she lingers and let’s you think before moving on. Newcomer Miles Heizer (Davey) is able to hold his own and more playing scenes with much more seasoned performers. This film is all about the characters and Eastwood skillfully is able to get nuanced performances from her actors that bode well for a long directing career.

News
Cate Blanchett goes from Elizabeth to Bob Dylan
The Power and the Glory (The Guardian)

Brooke Smith joins Grey’s Anatomy as Dr. Eric Hahn.
Anatomy of a Career Move (LA Times)

Natalie Portman is confused. She runs around naked in the Darjeeling prequel then edits a Scholastic math magazine. We know you’re a smart girl Natalie.
Natalie Portman Edits Scholastic Math Magazine (Newsday)

Tube This Weekend
Mrs Miniver (Saturday, 6am, TCM)

What Women Can Learn from Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry is a huge success, even a phenomenon. His new film Why Did I get Married? opened to over $21 million beating both George Clooney’s and Mark Whalberg’s new films. He plays by his own rules. He didn’t screen the film in advance for the critics because he knows that the film critics (especially the newspaper critics) won’t help sell tickets to his targeted audience which is Christian, middle-class, African American women. Not your typical Hollywood audience.

Tyler Perry gives me hope. Hope that thinking outside the system works.

Here are some other things I’ve learned from Tyler Perry.

1- Niche films can be successful. Lately, every article about women in Hollywood calls us a niche market. So if they want to categorize us that way, let’s embrace it and use it. Perry built a brand first on a successful stage show, then with films, then with TV, then with books. He has upwards of 600,000 people on his email list. The TV business is more comfortable with niche shows and the successes of Seventh Heaven, Girlfriends, and Army Wives shows how far ahead TV is in its thinking. The concept of kitchen sink entertainment no longer works. With so many choices, you need to give people what they want when they want it.

2- Hollywood conventional wisdom is flawed. Even though there are several movies that are about and directed by women they will never really appeal to women because they have been developed in the Hollywood pipeline. We need to escape from Hollywood conventions and be adventerous.

3- Find independent financing outside the studio system. Venture capital has been streaming into the movie business and women need to get some of that money. When Perry first tried to get money for his films “hollywood executives told him that African Americans who went to church did not go to the movies. None of the majors would take a chance on Perry on his terms so he cut a nonexclusive deal with Lions Gate, the independent studio known for its horror films “Saw” and “Hostel.” Lions Gate gave Perry total autonomy and released the $5-million movie, which was co-financed by the star. It grossed more than $50 million.” (LA Times)

4- After you are a success, don’t go Hollywood. This is the most important piece. Everybody wants to get a Hollywood deal and the studios bank on that. People try to parlay their small successes into bigger deals that at most times don’t lead to movies being made. Perry has made a ton of money but has stuck with Lion’s Gate and has just built a 75,000 foot production studio in Atlanta to make his films and TV. Keeping control of his vision and his brand is key to his success.

So, in following Perry’s model, women we need our own money, our own studio and people who are willing to think outside the box. The issue I don’t have any answer to is the distribution problem. There are a finite amount of screens and too much product. Perry could only get his film in 2,000 theatres.

What do you think?

News
Tamara Jenkins’ tribute to Sundance Institute’s Michelle Satter in presenting her the Women in Film Leadership award via Ann Thompson.
Satter has helped nurture female writers and directors including:
JULIE TAYMOR
ALLISON ANDERS
MIRANDA JULY
GINA PRINCE BYTHEWOOD
KIMBERLY PIERCE
NICOLE HOLOFCENER
ALISON MACLEAN
LISA CHOLODENKO
LAURIE COLLYER
HILARY BROUGHER
Michelle Satter (Variety)

More on Hollywood writer it girl Diablo Cody
Diablo Cody

New Trend: Movie theatres specifically for adults
(USA Today)

It’s a sad time to be a indie producer. They are making great films that no one is seeing.
Indie Films Could Use a Little Sunshine (LA Times)

Alison Eastwood’s film Rails & Ties opens tomorrow.
Alison Eastwood is Feelin’ Lucky (LA Times)
See Women & Hollywood’s interview with Eastwood
Women & Hollywood Interviews Alison Eastwood

Do We Keep Seeing Elizabeth Reinvented Because of the Lack of Strong Roles for Women?
Elizabeth Fatigue (BBC)

I gave up on Prison Break two years ago. Fox is looking to expand on the brand by spinning off a women’s prison drama.
Fox Eyes Break for Women’s Prison (Hollywood Reporter)

The Judith Miller movie is shooting now with Kate Beckinsale playing a much younger Miller type character.
Hollywood Plugs Its Tale of a Leak (Washington Post)

Penelope Wilton is a fantastic actress appearing now in the HBO drama Five Days about the search for a missing woman and the devastating effects on her family.
Unspoken Worlds (The Guardian)

Dakota and Elle Fanning have been cast to co-star with Cameron Diaz in New Line’s adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. (Variety)

Mercedes Reuhl will star next spring in Edward Albee’s The Occupant about the sculptor Louise Nevelson at New York’s Signature Theatre Company. (Variety)

Tube Tonight
Carrie Fisher guest stars on 30 Rock (8:30pm, NBC)
Elizabeth Reaser returns to Grey’s Anatomy a former amnesiac Rebecca (9pm, ABC) Also check out Reaser in Sweet Land now out on DVD about a mail order bride from Germany who comes to the mid-west after World War One and is not welcome to the town with open arms. Very nice, quiet movie. (Add it to your netflix cue)
Terms of Endearment (12pm Lifetime)

Women & Hollywood interviews Alison Eastwood, director of Rails & Ties (opening Friday)

Alison Eastwood’s makes her directing debut with the small budget ($7m) drama Rails & Ties. The film is a powerful story of love and loss. Both Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Bacon give Oscar caliber performances.

I was able to ask the director a couple of questions about this film and how it feels to be a woman director in Hollywood.

W&H: What was it about this script that made you want to direct?

AE: Originally, I had attached myself as a producer and after a couple of years living with the script and working with the writer (Micky Levy- a woman) I just grew to love these characters. I found them very real and touching and even though Kevin Bacon’s character Tom is a very shut down person, I know people like that. I liked the ideas, the subject matter. Everyone deals with tragedy and loss but the idea is that through unsavory circumstances you can still find a way to have connections.

W&H: This is an intimate almost theatrical film not usually released by the major studios nowadays. How did you get this made?

AE: It was initially financed through Warner Independent. The situation with WB distributing came about because Warner Independent is a much smaller division and they had a few films coming out this year and they really weren’t capable of distributing and marketing the film. I really lobbied for it to come out this year, films that are more character driven and deep usually come out in the fall, and I just didn’t want to wait until next year. I’m lucky because a big studio is willing to get behind a small film with great actors.

W&H: This summer both of Lawrence Kasdan’s sons had films come out and I asked myself where are the daughters? (Sophia Coppola is the most prominent and only director daughter I can think of) As the daughter of a director (father is Clint Eastwood) what was it like becoming a director?

AE: It felt natural. Subconsciously, I didn’t want to get into directing because I’ve lived in the shadow and was trying to be an actress. Somewhere I thought I just don’t want to go there. But I felt inspired by the story and it felt natural. He (Clint) always made it look easy, enjoyable and collaborative. I know it’s not easy.

W&H: Why aren’t there more women directing films?

AE: I think the biggest problem is that Hollywood is a boy’s club and has been for a long time. It’s shifting but we need to keep pushing ahead and developing projects and sticking together. I don’t want to sound like a feminist, but we have to band together.

W&H: You don’t want to sound like a feminist?

AE: Well I don’t really like that term. it’s always sounded a little radical to me. I certainly believe in equal rights for women but I also believe there is a way of doing things more subtly. The media makes it a negative term and I feel things can be done without being in your face or angry but showing by example.

In Hollywood, there are more women producers & actresses commanding bigger roles and bigger salaries and have production deals and production companies. It’s just a matter of continuing to move forward and it will take a long time but since the 30s and 40s we’ve come a long way.

It’s just a matter of doing good work. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or woman, if your work is shabby you’re not going to get any respect.

W&H: Did you bring different things to this script because you are a woman?

AE: I don’t think a man would have picked this script. I found it to be emotional and touching. It meant a lot to me.

Thoughts: I was a bit disturbed by the feminist comment, but more about her conception that women are commanding higher salaries and better roles. Am I crazy or is this not true? Also, she says we’ve come a long way since the 30s and 40s- well come on of course we have. The movie business was so young then and the funny thing is that women had more power in the early days of Hollywood. If you are interested in learning more about those days check out Cari Beauchamp’s fantastic book Without Lying Down about Frances Marion.

News
“Winners of the Lifetime Movie Network’s Student Filmmaker Competition have been selected by judges Jennifer Lopez, Lauren Shuler Donner and Gale Ann Hurd. First-place winner is Liliana Greenfield-Sanders for Anna; second prize went to Jessica Marie Sutherland for Seven Turn. The pics will premiere on LMN and LMN.tv. (Variety)

The British Independent Film Awards nominees were announced. Women nominees include:
BEST DIRECTOR: Sarah Gavron – Brick Lane
BEST ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway – Becoming Jane; Tannishtha Chatterjee – Brick Lane; Sophia Myles – Hallam Foe; Kierston Wareing – It’s A Free World…; Judi Dench – Notes on a Scandal
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR/ACTRESS (combined category) Samantha Morton – Control; Cate Blanchett – Notes on a Scandal

Hampton’s Film Festival’s winners include Birgit Moller’s drama about a fading German model, Valerie which won the Golden Starfish best feature award. Other winners include:
Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue’s Iraq War soldier portrait Body of War the audience award for best documentary, Chris Kraus’ German female prisoner tale Four Minutes won the audience award for best narrative feature. Matthew Galkin’s documentary I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA won the Golden Starfish Documentary Feature Film Award. Marisa Zanotti’s At The End of the Sentence took home the Golden Starfish Short Film Award. (Hollywood Reporter)

Alexandra Pelosi is developing a fictionalized version of her HBO documentary Journeys with George about being on the campaign trail with George Bush. She was hired by uber-screenwriter Steve Zaillian for the project. (Reuters via Hollywood Reporter)
Bush Documentary Inspires Political Romance
King’s Men Failure Spurs Project (LA Times)

Jessica Biel has been cast as the lead in Die a Little based on the novel by Megan Abbott. (Variety)

Ashley Judd stars in Helen the English language film debut of Mostly Martha director Sandra Nettelbeck. “Judd plays a woman who gives the illusion of leading a perfect life but actually harbors a dark secret.” (Variety)

Shirley MacLaine will star in Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, for Canadian TV. Pictures also stars Hannah Endicott-Douglas stars as the young Anne Shirley, Barbara Hershey as the grown-up Anne Shirley. (Variety)

Tube Tonight
John Cusack still has a strong place in my heart. See him in the the classic Say Anything (8pm, FMC)
Guilty pleasure show Work Out serves up a special on how they spend their down time. (11pm, Bravo)

Gotham Awards Nominations Announced
Kicking off the awards season which seems to gets longer and longer each year even though they moved up the Oscars, are the Gotham awards from IFP.
Women nominees include:
Best Feature: The Namesake directed by Mira Nair
Best Documentary: The Devil Came on Horseback directed by Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern
Best Ensemble Cast: Talk to Me directed by Kasi Lemmons; The Savages directed by Tamra Jenkins
Breakthrough Director: Julia Loktev for Day Night Day Night
Full list of nominees: Gotham Awards (Indiewire)

News
Megan Fox from this summer’s smash the Transformers (which had possibly the worst dialogue I have ever seen in a movie) has been cast in Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body. Fox plays a cheerleader who gets possessed and starts killing boys and has to be stopped by her best friend. Yuck. (Hollywood Reporter)

Julia Stiles will play a stalking victim who falls for her stalker (come on!) in the adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Cry of the Owl. I’m disgusted. (Hollywood Reporter)

Tony Kaye talks about his abortion documentary Lake of Fire.
See my review here: Lake of Fire Review
Right to Choose (The Guardian)

DVDs Out This Week
My So-Called Life, which introduced us to Claire Danes and Jared Leto as her object of affection, Jordan Catalano, complete series is out now. (I loved this show)
Mr. Brooks- most people missed this thriller when it was in the theatres. It’s worth a look. Stars Kevin Costner, William Hurt and Demi Moore

Tube Tonight
Season finale of Damages on FX (10pm). This show has not yet been renewed. LA Times makes a plea for its renewal.
Making a Plea for Damages (LA Times)

Review- Matters of Life and Dating
If you’re noticing a lot of pink around the reason might be that it is October, breast cancer awareness month. Tonight on Lifetime is the premiere of their annual breast cancer movie Matters of Life and Dating starring Ricki Lake and Holly Robinson Peete. Lake plays Linda Dackman a 30-something woman single woman who is concerned about returning to the dating scene after a cancer diagnosis and mastectomy. Film is based on the book Upfront by Dackman.

Sometimes Lifetime movies are annoying because they try too hard not to be serious. Having had my best friend just go through breast cancer, I got pissed that Lake looked so good after surgery, and that the amount of time from diagnosis to the operating room was like a nanosecond. But the film did calm down after Linda joins a support group and meets Nicole (Robinson Peete) a former camp friend whose circumstances are quite different from hers — she has no health insurance and is $100,000 in debt from the cancer.

This is not the best movie about breast cancer — Lake overacts throughout — but I always give Lifetime credit for tackling subjects other networks won’t touch. I just wish they would trust themselves by now to know that we will watch and that the scripts don’t need to be so cheesey anymore. My advice to Lifetime is to trust your audience, we are smarter than you think.

Film Comedies No Laughing Matter for Actresses
LA Times writer Carina Chocano takes on the new and disturbing trend — the lack of roles for women in comedies.

Here are some interesting quotes.

When actress Isla Fisher (girlfriend to Sascha Baron Cohen of Borat fame and new mom) remarked on the dearth of decent comedy roles for women earlier this month (“I realized after ‘Wedding Crashers’ there aren’t that many comic opportunities for women in Hollywood,” she told Details magazine. “All the scripts are for men and you play ‘the girl’ “), the comment was widely picked up, with most of the headlines making some allusion to feminism.

So now in order to justify the truth, you can take comment and label it as “feminist” as a sure way to make sure it doesn’t get treated seriously.

The idea that a girl might play anything other than “the girl” in a studio comedy is so far out of the mainstream that it’s considered an experimental concept, not to mention a major financial risk. It seems that not a week goes by without a dust-up about the alleged misogyny of studio executives, or a lament about the state of women’s careers in Hollywood, or an explosion of frustration on feminist blogs. (Hope she’s referring to me)

Smart girl brings up the new Susan Faludi book and our culture’s obsession with gender roles. She also refers to David Denby’s summer piece in the New Yorker about romantic comedies. Here is my take on the Denby piece. A Fine Romance

“The (hot) girl” so thoroughly displaced the loopy broad — that venerable type — from American comedy, that it’s hard to imagine where comedians such as Madeline Kahn, Bernadette Peters, Lily Tomlin, Diane Keaton or even Julia Roberts would fit in today.

The “likability” of the male hero has become such an imperative in American comedies — even in small, woman-written ones such as “Lars” — that a movie will sooner make a nice guy out of a dude in love with an anatomically correct Barbie than give us a girl’s point of view.

When you think about the comedies with female protagonists, you have to go way back to movies like “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Clueless” or to a bad movie such as “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which inverted the fantasy and grossed $354 million worldwide. Maybe there’s a lesson in Tyler Perry’s ability to tap what is clearly some major pent-up demand from an underserved audience. Half the population is a pretty big niche audience.

Great piece, but as women are 52% of the population the whole niche thing is getting old. Read the piece: Film Comedies No Laughing Matter for Actresses

The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard
Since I got my Tivo a couple of years ago I hardly watch anything in its proper time slot. Last night I turned on The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard to get me to Brother & Sisters. Suffice it to say I haven’t watched Brother & Sisters yet. I loooved this movie. I am a political junkie, especially for women in politics, and this film was my ultimate fantasy movie. The mini-series was written by Sally Wainwright and the premise is that Ros Pritchard (played so well by Jane Harrocks who is more known for her comedy), a manager of a Costco type superstore decides to get in the race to be a member of Parliament because she believes she can do as good a job if not better, than the current candidates who wound up in a fist fight outside her store.

Her candidacy sparks other women to get into the race gets people talking about politics and throws the British political system into a tizzy. Her party is called the Purple Alliance and she not only wins her seat, but becomes Prime Minister as a woman with no political experience whatsoever (she still seems more competent than our current president). Reality sets in immediately and she is confronted with international crises making her question her ability to handle the job.

There are several more parts on consecutive Sunday evenings on PBS. if you missed the first segment it will re-air on October 25 at 1am on PBS. Don’t miss this.

News
Weekend Box Office: Women’s movies shut down. Neither Rendition nor Things We Lost in the Fire did much business this weekend despite the relatively good reviews for Things. According to a spokesperson for Paramount, Things fared well with adult women. (LA Times)

The Jeff Robinov/Warner Brothers no more women in leads comment seems to have made its way to the heartland and people are pissed. Check out this story from the Kansas City Star.
Movie Studio Exec’s Statement About no Women Leads Sparks Protests (Kansas City Star)

Stephanie Allain, one of the most successful African American female producers spoke this weekend at the Filmmakers Forum in LA.
Stephanie Allain (IndieWire)

Vanessa Redgrave was her usual outspoken self when receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Hampton’s Film Festival.
Redgrave Bathes in Controversy (Hollywood Reporter)

Halle Berry talks about her career and her new film Things We Lost in the Fire
A Career So Strong it Survived Catwoman

Rod Lurie who is very good with women in politics and power has started shooting a new thriller Nothing but the Truth starring Kate Beckinsale and Matt Dillon. Other cast members include: Angela Bassett, Noah Wyle, Alan Alda, Vera Farmiga, Harry Lennix and David Schwimmer . Beckinsale stars as a reporter who reveals the identity of a CIA agent and is sent to jail for refusing to reveal her source. Bassett plays her editor in chief. (Hollywood Reporter)

Zooey Deschanel has been cast as the female lead in the new Jim Carrey comedy Yes Man. (Hollywood Reporter)

Tube Today
Diane English just wrapped the remake of The Women (scheduled now to be released in fall 2008) but the classic is on TV today. (2:30pm, TCM)

Movie of the Week – Things We Lost in the Fire
Things We Lost in the Fire is the American debut of the acclaimed Danish director, Susanne Bier (After the Wedding). It is a brutal and intense depiction of grief and recovery.

Halle Berry plays Audrey Burke a woman living a privileged life in the Seattle area with her two children and husband Brian (David Duchovny). On a typical ice cream run on an ordinary evening, Brian is shot to death trying to intercede between a man beating his wife on the street. Berry is understandably devestated as is Brian’s best friend since childhood Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), a drug-addict whom Audrey resents because Brian refused to give up on him. But fate brings them together because they both loved Brian the most. Audrey brings Jerry into their home giving them both a second chance.

Bier spends a lot time focusing on her characters and their raw emotions. There are multiple close-ups of Berry’s eyes and face, and these close-ups enhance the rawness of their emotions.

Both Berry and Del Toro are terrific, especially Del Toro. His scenes of a drug relapse and then detox are brutally real and hard to watch.

Even though Berry won the Oscar for Monster’s Ball and is one of the top film actresses, she still has to fight for this role. “I think most actors have to fight for the good parts…they’re so few and far between, especially for women. Audrey wasn’t written as a black character, so I wasn’t the first thought on anyone’s mind.”

Bier was nervous that in coming to America worried that she wouldn’t have the same artistic freedom she enjoyed in Denmark. But she was proved wrong: “coming to American, I was expecting that I would experience certain restraints, like being asked to make the movie more mainstream, but in fact it was quite the opposite,” she says. “I received comments like, ‘be more courageous, be more daring…make it more dangerous.’” (Since these quotes come from the press materials I think they are probably a bit generous.)

Bier is a top-tier artist and we should all welcome her with open arms into American theatres. The film opens in 1,142 theatres today.

Some words for Shonda Rhimes
Private Practice the new show from Shonda Rhimes just got a full-season pick-up at ABC. Here’s what I want to say to Shonda: either get Amy Brenneman some meds or shut her up. I am so angry that she is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown (and she’s the shrink!) cause she got dumped by her boyfriend who then quickly married a younger woman. Yes, it sucks, but enough already. Also, Audra McDonald is constantly bitterly angry all the time. What I like about Grey’s Anatomy (the flaws within each character), I hate on Private Practice. Give those girls some backbone.

USA Today talks to the Oscar prognosticators
Here’s what they say about the actresses who have a chance at the nomination

Female contenders from the past nine months have a strong chance this year because pundits see few flashy roles for women in the as-yet-unreleased films. That bodes well for Jodie Foster’s vigilante in The Brave One, as well as Angelina Jolie’s take on Mariane Pearl in the docudrama A Mighty Heart.

Julie Christie stands a strong chance for her role as a woman slowly forgetting her husband as she enters the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in the heartbreaking Away From Her. “She’s one of those actresses, like Judi Dench or Helen Mirren, who is so iconic that she can’t be ignored,” Stone says.

Another likely actress contender is Keri Russell for her cynical, pregnant piemaker in Waitress. “It’s from Fox Searchlight, and they are incredibly good at pushing their movies,” Stone says of the studio behind last year’s Little Miss Sunshine and The Last King of Scotland. “They’re pushing hard on Waitress.”

O’Neil adds La Vie en Rose, starring Marion Cotillard as singer Edith Piaf. It’s a tiny film, but he believes voters make room for non-commercial films. “They hold on to the box office week after week after week,” he says. “And they find their audience.”

Pre-Fall Premieres Shift Oscar Race (USA Today)

Joanna Langfield of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists gives her take on the recent Warner Brother controversy.
As I’ve been saying all along, it’s up to us women to support these movies.

Some of these femme made and/or oriented movies will be good. Some will not. But they are being made and released–along with a lot more male-oriented pictures. Whether they make money (and therefore, encourage the funding of similar projects in the future) or not is, ultimately, not only up to the studios, the critics and media, it’s also very much up to the ticket buying public.

The Femme Flick Flap (Alliance of Women Film Journalists)

News
Paula S. Apsell, Senior Executive Producer at Nova will be awarded the 2007 pioneer award on December 7 by the International Documentary Association.

Toni Collette to star in Showtime series The United State of Tara from Steven Spielberg. Collette will play the mother of two teenagers who have some sort of dissociative identity disorder. Diablo Cody the new “it” girl writer is executive producing and writing. (Variety)

Screen star Deborah Kerr dies at 86 (Reuters)

Naomi Watts who is set to star in a remake of The Birds talk about her career and why she is drawn to dark roles.
Naomi Watts Talks about Hollywood the Hard Way (The Guardian)

Laura Dern and Diane Ladd will star in Bruce Dern’s directorial debut Hart’s Landing making it a family affair. Picture is written by Ashley Reed. Story “centers on a daughter attempting to regain custody of her son and seeking out her father — who left her when she was 3 years old.” (Variety)

Leslie Bibb will headline Miss Nobody. Also cast Missy Pyle and Kathy Baker. (Variety)

Weekend Tube
Damages Marathon- if you’ve missed this FX show starring Glenn Close today is your day to stay in bed and watch the whole thing. (FX)
The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard- Masterpiece Theatre presents how an average woman gets sucked into politics and winds up as Prime Minister in England. (Sunday, 9pm- PBS)

Review: Rendition
Opens Friday, October 19

What would you do if your loved one went on a business trip and never returned? That is the hell of Isabella El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon), in the new movie Rendition directed by South African Gavin Hood (Tsotsi). The film begins as a bomb explodes in a north African country killing a CIA operative which sets off a series of decision and events that cause the “extraordinary rendition” of Anwar El-Ibrahimi, Isabella’s husband.

Rendition is something that very few of us had heard of a couple of years ago and now weighs heavily on our country’s psyche. This films asks us to confront how this country gets information about potential terrorist threats and whether the end justifies the means.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays an inexperienced CIA analyst thrust into a leadership position when his colleague is killed in the bombing. He is clearly in over his head. In his new role, he observes the torture of El-Ibrahimi who is flown to his posting after he was taken from a Washington DC airport and erased from the flight manifest. The torture shakes Gyllenhaal and makes him question his job and his country. In a light moment in an otherwise intense film, Gyllenhaal escapes into a drug haze after observing a torture session when he receives a call from Corrinne Whitman (Meryl Street) the self-righteous CIA agent who ordered the rendition. She asks him how its going and he bumblingly responds that this is his first torture. She immediately cuts him off by saying that the US does not torture. You have to laugh cause you know she is full of shit.

Isabella is told that her husband was not on the plane and when she gets evidence that he was she takes it to a college pal (Peter Saarsgard) who works for a Senator (Alan Arkin) to try and get answers. Suffice it to say that she doesn’t get her answers.

In a parallel plot line (which was at times very confusing), a young woman in the unnamed North African country is challenging her father (the man who runs the prison and tortures Anwar El-Ibrahimi) about her life and her boyfriend. When she makes a terrible discovery about her boyfriend the plots converge in an unexpected and jarring way.

Women Playwrights on Broadway
My friend Theresa Rebeck had her first Broadway play Mauritius open earlier this month. Theresa is not a novice, she has written a dozen or so other plays that have been performed off-Broadway and around the country. Also, she is the only female playwright with a new play being produced on Broadway this fall. The NY Times theatre critic in his infinite wisdom (or lack thereof) decided that the way he would review Theresa’s play would be to put it in the context of a male playwright and a misogynistic one at that (David Mamet). Not cool.

This perspective was sent to Theresa from her friend Janet Neipris, Director, Graduate Studies, Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University

“Do they say Horton Foote is just like Thornton Wilder?
Or Pete Gurney is a blueprint of Philip Barry?
Is John Shanley Lanford Wilson?
Maybe August Wilson is Loraine Hansberry.
And who will they say is Lillian Hellman?”

Rock on Janet, and rock on Theresa.

News
The LA Times is a little late on this- Katherine Heigl’s (Izzie on Grey’s Anatomy) deal for Lost & Found
Katherine Heigl Becomes Producer (LA Times)

Damages, the FX Drama starring Glenn Close is on the renewal bubble for next season. This season’s season finale airs next Tuesday. If you missed any episodes this season a marathon begins on FX this Saturday at 8am. It’s worth a look just to see Glenn Close in action.
Damages: It’s Future is Still Uncertain

Finally somebody is questioning a male star’s box office draw
Is George Clooney Really a box Office Draw? (Slate)

Susanne Bier Leaves Behind Dogma for First American Film (SF Chronicle – review to come tomorrow)

Jorja Fox: Why I Quit CSI (EW)

“Kim Basinger has signed on to star alongside Charlize Theron in Guillermo Arriaga’s (writer of Babel) directorial debut, The Burning Plain, for 2929 Prods.” Film weaves together two storylines taking place in the past and present. Basinger will play Gina, the mother of Charlize Theron’s character as seen in childhood. Theron will play Sylvia, who tries to find common ground with her parents after a turbulent childhood.”(Variety)

Kathleen Turner will direct Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley at the Roundabout in NY this spring. Cast will include the same women — Jennifer Dundas, Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe — who appeared in Truner’s production in Williamstown last summer. (Variety)

Angelina Jolie will be honored with the outstanding performer of the year award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2, 2008.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles starring Lena Headey will premiere on Fox on January 24, 2008 and will lead into the season premiere of 24.

Debi Mazar, Aida Turturro and Karen Duffy are shopping a Jersey Girls version of the View (Hollywood Reporter)

Tube Tonight
Run Granny Run- Doris Haddock who came to celebrity for walking across the country to raise attention for campaign finance reform is profiled in this documentary about her effort to unseat New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. (HBO)

Mark your calendars!
Hollywood scion, Alison Eastwood makes her featured film directing debut next week with Rails & Ties an intense, exquisitely acted film starring Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden above love, loss and family. (I don’t want to make it sound too simplistic) Film opens October 26. (Interview with director to come.)

Since last week I bashed Warner Brother president Jeff Robinov for his stupid ass comments about not looking for scripts with women in the lead, I have to give him (or others at WB who deserve the credit) for having two films by female directors coming out in the next month. Both are daughters of directors (Alison Eastwood mentioned above, daughter of Clint; and August Rush, opening November 21 directed by Kirsten Sheridan, daughter of Jim Sheridan.)

Ricki Lake and Holly Robinson Peete star in the Lifetime movie on Monday night, October 22- Matters of Life and Dating which tells the stroy of a cancer survivors return to the world of dating. (advance review to come)

News
Grace is Back!
Debra Messing’s hit mini series The Starter Wife will be a weekly series come spring 2008. USA has greenlit 10 episodes. “Starter Wife joins a USA slate heavy on skeins with male leads, including Monk, Psych, Burn Notice and The Dead Zone. Cabler is attempting to add more female-centered series, previously announcing plans for the Mary McCormack starrer In Plain Sight (working title).” (Variety)

The Hollywood Film Festival opens today. Here is a story on a documentary bring screened directed by Karen Gehres about her friend Elise Hill, a homeless woman living in NYC.
Her Friend Through Thick and Thin (LA Times)

Karen Arikian has been named new head of the Hamptons Film Festival. She is currently director of the European Film Market based in Berlin. She starts in March. (Variety)

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie the former movie critic of the Atlanta Journal Constitution will be honored on October 19 by Women in Film and Television’s Atlanta chapter.
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie Honored for Creative Excellence (Alliance of Women Film Journalists)

Jorja Fox is officially leaving CSI (we already knew, but this is final confirmation) I read a while ago that she refused to sign the standard one year agreement that the rest of the cast did because the salary bump that they offered was too low. It’s rare that someone stands up in this way since they get paid such crazy amounts of money anyway.
Jorja Fox quitting CSI (AP via USA Today)

Sarah Roemer and Elisabeth Shue have been cat the indie thriller Waking Madison written and to be directed by Katherine Brooks. (Variety)

Around the Web
Reese Witherspoon gets political for Rendition opening Friday (review to come)
Witherspoon Takes Dramatic Step in Rendition (AP via MSNBC)

Another take on the women are being pushed out of Hollywood stroy, this time from Australia
Say Goodbye to Hollywood, Baby (Sydney Morning Herald)

Yeardley Smith – The Voice of Lisa SimpsonMy Life as Lisa (The Telegraph)

Video Game to Blame for Failure of Ben Stiller movie?
The young male audience that the studios rely upon to open their big budget boy movies each weekend has other things on its agenda, namely video games. It seems that the studios have begun to realize that they can’t assume the boys will be there on opening weekend when there are other entertainments competing for their time.

The failure of the Ben Stiller’s Heartbreak Kid remake (which looked to be a no-brainer since it reteamed Stiller with the Farrelly brothers who made There’s Something About Mary, which made Stiller a star) is being blamed on the release of Halo 3.

What will the studios do if this keeps up? Maybe look towards women and girls? No, that would be too easy.
Bad Box Office? Blame Halo

Relationship Films Now Starring Boys
Newsweek has a web exclusive piece that talks about how buddy movies nowadays are chick flicks made by guys for guys. I don’t necessarily agree with that (and the piece is all over the place talking about the women’s movie and the fact that there are few women directors), but there are several good points in the piece.

As women moved behind the camera, they began telling women’s stories and not just melodramas. The revival of “women’s pictures,” (now rechristened “chick flicks”) coincided with the rise of independent film in the ’80s and ’90s, and featured protagonists who were allowed to live, and even laugh a little.

But lately it seems if two characters are sharing their feelings and valuing each other’s company, they’re more likely to be men than women.

Hollywood can be hostile territory for female directors in general, and may be becoming even less welcoming. As Meyers said recently, “the pendulum is swinging in the wrong direction,” from the time a decade ago when women were able to get small, relationship-driven films produced.

I’ve never heard Meyers say anything even remotely negative as she is basically the only female commercial director so that quote is interesting but it is undated so who knows when she said it.

Where the Boys Are (and Girls Aren’t) (Newsweek)

News
The annual event honoring “Women in Hollywood” hosted by Elle magazine (taken over from the now defunct Premiere) was held last night in LA. The honorees were director Julie Taymor, actors Lauren Bacall, Diane Lane, Kate Bosworth, Jennifer Connelly, Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson. Aside from Taymor, Bacall and Lane the rest don’t seem to have had done enough to seem worthy of an honor of this sort. Since all the women are featured in the new issue of Elle, seems they just want to sell magazines and not honor the real women in Hollywood.
Elle Magazine Honors Women in Hollywood (AP via Yahoo)

“Woman In Film and General Motors have announced the five winners of their Acceleration Grant for Emerging Filmmakers. The winners are Jamie Taucher from Sedona, AZ; Julia Kots from New York; Connie M. Florez from Honolulu, and Joyce Lee and Mabel Valdiviezo, both from San Francisco. The five winners will receive a six-day broad-based immersion program on the movie industry as part of the grant. Grant is a program of the WIF/GM Alliance, whose goal is to support filmmakers from underrepresented communities.” (Variety)

Sherri Shepherd, the new View co-host, has set up a sitcom at CW loosely based on her life.
View Host Plots Show (Variety)

Around the Web
Nia Vardalos is filming her follow-up to My Big Fat Greek Wedding in Greece.
Nia Vardalos Filming at Acropolis (AP via Backstage)

Actress Marsha Hunt who was blacklisted in the 50s is still working at 90 (isn’t it interesting that we don’t really here much about women who were effected by the blacklist?)
Actress Marsha Hunt Still Spry at 90 (AP via Yahoo)

Amy Ryan slips into the skin of another anguished character in Gone Baby Gone.
Disappearing Act (Backstage)

Jane Austen: The FanVid Mania (EW)

DVDs Out Today
A Mighty Heart – Most people missed this terrific movie in the theatres this past summer. It’s not easy to watch but has a great performance from Angelina Jolie.

Roseanne – Season 9

I just put this on my netflix queue
Girl 27
“Author-screenwriter David Stenn investigates a notorious Hollywood scandal more than 65 years after it occurred, a rape case involving Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio execs and an underage dancer who refused to stay silent. Hired along with 120 other young girls to entertain MGM salesmen at a stag party in 1937, Patricia Douglas was violently raped and brought a landmark lawsuit against her attackers — then mysteriously disappeared.” (Netflix)

Persepolis
Persepolis, the animated film written and directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud closed last night’s New York Film Festival. The film is based on Satrapi’s graphic novels of her life growing up in Iran under a repressive regime. This film (which is France’s submission to the Academy Awards) opens in US on December 25. It is a fantastic film. I was skeptical at first because I am not a big fan of animated films, and the fact that the film is in French…but it is one of the best films I have seen in a very long time. Original and about something important, funny and dramatic. Mark your calendars now.

The voices in the film include Catherine Deneuve and her daughter Chiara Mastroianni playing Marjane’s mother and Marjane respectively, and last week I had the opportunity to put some questions to both of them. Here are some noteworthy quotes from the conversation with Deneuve and Mastroianni (yes, they are both gorgeous and smoked way too many cigarettes in a 20 minute period)

Q: It’s a very political piece without being overtly political.

Catherine Deneuve: That’s why I like it. It’s a great opportunity for her (Marjane) to make a film of this book because it is a political story, the story of a little girl trying to grow up and her parents trying to raise her. (The film) is a stronger statement than the book because you have the images and you sympathize with the little girl. For people living in America who have no idea how people live in Iran, I think it’s a great opportunity to learn about that part of the world.

Chiara Martroianni: I think it’s also interesting in the way she shows politics, some moments in the film are very dramatic and some moments are very funny despite the situation she is describing. She tries to give you a vision through laughter which is a very subversive thing to do.

CD: That’s why the Iranian government was so upset that the film was going to be shown in Cannes and they tried to forbid it.

Q: What do you think about the lack of opportunities for actresses?

CD: I don’t think I would have the same opportunities in America that I have in France.

CM: Often you read a script and you think wow, the male character is really good.

CD: In America there are less parts for women especially for women above 35- that’s the biggest problem for American actresses. For a long time I’ve heard from actresses saying its so difficult here. (in the US) People are so obsessed with youth in America, especially in Hollywood.

More to come closer to opening

News
Jeff Robinov, the Warner President of Production who caused a stir last week by saying that he wasn’t making any more films starring women looks to be in line for a promotion. This guy should be in the woodshed rather than in line for a promotion. Typical Hollywood.
Is Jeff Robinov Ready for WB Moguldom? (Deadline Hollywood)

The Tyler Perry juggernaut is finally being acknowledged by mainstream media. His new film Why Did I Get Married? brought out black women in droves and was number 1 at the box office (with $21 million) beating George Clooney in Michael Clayton and Mark Wahlberg is We Own the Night.
A New Movie Brings Out Throngs of Black Women (NY Times)

Julia Roberts was awarded the 22nd American Cinematheque award this weekend in LA. AMC will air the show on December 5.
Film Biz Comes Out to Salute Roberts (Hollywood Reporter)

Meryl Streep will be honored by the Film Society at Lincoln Center next April.
Film Society Ceremony to Laud Streep (Hollywood Reporter)

Fox has cut the order to 7 for the mid-season series The Return of Jezebel James created by Amy Sherman-Palladino starring Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose.

Helen Mirren will be directed by husband Taylor Hackford in the drama Love Ranch co-starring Joe Pesci (Joe Pesci and Helen Mirren? Can’t really see it). Film is about a couple that starts a legal brothel. (Variety)

Around the Web
Juliette Binoche’s American Adventure (LA Times)

Tube Today
Series Premiere: Samantha Who- Christina Applegate stars as an amnesiac who wakes up to learn that she was a horrible person. (ABC)
Samantha Who (LA Times)

Opening Today – Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Cate Blanchett is one of my favorite actresses, and I firmly believe she is one of the best of her generation. She hesitated for several years to climb on board the sequel to her star making and Oscar nominated performance in Elizabeth, and based on the outcome of the sequel she should have stuck to her guns more firmly. I don’t know about you, but I kind of feel “Elizabethed” out with the recent Helen Mirren HBO miniseries (and The Queen, even though itwas a different Elizabeth) and the Showtime series, The Tudors. Guess others are feeling the same way since The Other Boleyn Sister starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson was moved to early spring 2008.

It’s not that Elizabeth: The Golden Age is bad, it’s just not good. The problem is that it’s over the top and takes itself way too seriously. Blanchett spends the whole movie bellowing over music that is so loud, it overwhelms everything. (The music is really annoying, I’m not understating it) The film might look spectacular, the sets are enormous and Blanchett’s costumes are amazing, but it feels hollow.

The film takes place in Elizabeth’s middle years when she has gained confidence as a woman and ruler. But, the realm is threatened by the mighty Spain which is still smarting about England’s denunciation of Catholicism. Because all wars, then and now, seem to be based on religion, Spain is amassing a force to take over England and install Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary (played by Samantha Morton) on the throne. Elizabeth lived in fear of assassination for many years, yet refused to execute Mary who was behind many of the attempts for almost two decades. The scene where Elizabeth is almost killed, and when Mary is executed are the strongest in the film.

Joining the cast this time around are Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, the commoner who Elizabeth loves but cannot love, and Abbie Cornish as her favorite lady in waiting Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton who she pushes towards Raleigh. Elizabeth becomes enraged when she finds out they are together, jails Raleigh and banishes Bess. Geoffrey Rush is a big disappointment as Walsingham, her adviser, he just has no energy about him at all.

If you love Blanchett you should see this film because even though the film fails her, she is still a special performer.

News
The International Documentary Association’s nomination are out
Women nominees include:
Feature: A WALK TO BEAUTIFUL- Mary Olive Smith, director
Short: BODY & SOUL: DIANA & KATHY- Alice Elliott, director/producer; THE FIGHTING CHOLITAS- Mariam Jobrani, director/producer; FREEHELD- Cynthia Wade, director
Limited Series: ADDICTION- Kate Davis, Susan Froemke, Liz Garbus, Chris Hegedus, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, Barbara Kopple, Susan Raymond, Jessica Yu, directors (among others); COMING OUT STORIES- Karen Goodman, director/producer; THE HILL- Ivy Meeropol, director/producer

Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator of the Gilmore Girls and the upcoming the Return of Jezebel James) has signed on to adapt and direct The Late Bloomer’s Revolution to star Sarah Jessica Parker.
Parker and Sherman-Palladino Team Up (Variety)

Lifetime and Starz are teaming up to produce original movies. Films include:
Queen Sized, starring Nikki Blonsky (“Hairspray”) as an overweight teen who overcomes the vicious insults of her schoolmates, ending up as homecoming queen. (Variety)

Around the Web
Can Across the Universe become a hit? It will if teenage girls have anything to say about it. (I liked this film a lot)
Is This the Next Cult Sensation? (LA Times)

I didn’t think Stardust was that bad, but it sank this pastsummer. It’s opening in England and Michelle Pfeiffer was on hand. I’m still waiting for the Amy Heckerling directed drama with Pfeiffer I Could Never be Your Woman which is supposedly opening next month.
Michelle Pfeiffer on Turning 50 (The Guardian)

Tube Today
Friday TV used to suck but no more. Tonight is the Season Premiere of the quirky Men in Trees (10pm, ABC) and the Series Premiere: Women’s Murder Club (9pm, ABC). Also, don’t forget Friday Night Lights.
Classic Alert: Sissy Spacek in the Altman classic 3 Women at 5:30pm on FMC

Women Continue as the Topic of Conversation in Hollywood

In an industry that pays scant attention to women, this week seems to be girls week in Hollywood thanks to Jeff Robinov and his alleged and pretty much confirmed (see Nikki Finke follow-up below) comments that Warner Brothers is out of the business of women leads onscreen. The story has legs not because it has resonance with women in Hollywood (not that this is anything new to them), but because it has resonance outside of Hollywood. My mother even commented that she saw it on the local news. Big question: is there any momentum for change other than the typical grumbling?

Rebecca Traister continues that conversation over at Salon with a roundtable discussion conducted (for an issue of Elle) a couple of months ago with 10 Hollywood female bigwigs to discuss the state of Hollywood and women.

Producer Lynda Obst moderated and the other included: Nora Ephron (writer and director, “This is My Life), Laura Ziskin (producer, “Spider-Man”), Callie Khouri (writer and director, “Thelma & Louise,”), Patty Jenkins (writer, director, “Monster”), Cathy Konrad (producer, “Walk the Line,”), Kimberly Peirce (writer, director, producer, “Boys Don’t Cry”), Andrea Berloff (writer, producer, “World Trade Center”), Margaret Nagle (writer, producer, “Warm Springs”), and Universal president of production Donna Langley.

First off, big problem, I’m pretty sure that none of these women are women of color. How can anyone convene a roundtable to discuss women’s issues about anything, anywhere and not have some women of color. Not Cool.

Here are some excerpts of note:

From Traister’s overview

More women than ever write, direct and produce movies. But we’re in a period in which their on-screen stock is falling.

But if Hollywood isn’t doing much for female moviegoers, it’s in part because female moviegoers have not, of late, been doing much for Hollywood. They haven’t been showing up to multiplexes, at least not on the first weekend, which is all that counts. And in Hollywood, money has always been a bigger motivator than visions of equality.

Amen sister. Women, nothing is going to change until we demand change with our pocketbooks. If we go to certain movies they will make more. It’s not rocket science in Hollywood. If one movie hits, five more will be in the pipeline in a week. We need a movement to make this happen. Anyone want to join me?

Comments from the panel:

Kimberly Peirce: I think the indie world is actually great for women, and for gay people. Because if you have a story, you’re going to be able to [tell it]. That’s where a lot of women get their start. But you get into your second, your third movie, and you’re building a career, and it’s hitting smack up against those years when you want to have a child. I mean, you can’t get bonded if you’re pregnant.

For those who don’t know what getting bonded is- it’s insurance for movies. So pregnant women are now in the category of repeat drug offenders (I remember when Robert Downey, Jr, couldn’t get bonded.) Can this be legal?

Ziskin: But the truth of the matter is those teen boys are less reliable because they have way more choices, and in fact the most reliable moviegoing audience — and also the dirty word in the movie business — is “women over 35.” Because we have the moviegoing habit. I would go to the movies every weekend if there was something for me to see. The studios, if they were smart, would have a geriatric division.

I have been saying this all along. If you make good movies, we will go. The thing nobody mentioned in this piece is that most of the movies made in Hollywood are crap.

Ziskin: But there are movies in general, and then there are women’s movies. We’re still the other — we’re still a secondary audience. When they made “Little Women,” my daughter was 11, she went five times in one week. That was because as a young woman, she never got to see herself and her experience on the screen. We know so much about the male experience because it’s been fed to us through the literature that the men wrote and the world that the men created; it’s a relatively new phenomenon in the modern world that we have power to say what we think and to express ourselves and our sensibility. But we’re still considered an alternative class.

Laura Ziskin, you are so right on and are my new best friend (has someone slipped you my book proposal?)

Khouri: It’s more in the business than in the relationships. You’re more likely to feel less-than in your business relationships. What we were talking about a little while ago, the fact that we still are defined as women directors or women producers, it still feels that as long as the studios see the female audience as a secondary audience or not as easy to get into the theater on the first weekend, then there’s going to be a lid on us.

Ziskin: I want to say one thing. What is extraordinary is that the movies are arguably the most powerful medium ever in history so far. And there are so many of us that you could get a quorum at this table. You don’t have to have the intention of influencing your work by your gender, but you’re going to. That’s a really good thing. It’s really good for the culture that women are a real voice more and more, even though we’re not the final say, like those guys who really control all the media in the world. We’re still influencing.

Ziskin clearly gets it, good thing she’s one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. She produced the Oscars and Spiderman in the same year.

Nikki Finke continues her story about Jeff Robinov
The Reality Behind the Robinov Denial

Nikki also gets interviewed in the Elle issue
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Around the Web
Lifetime is gobbling up all the chick flicks for the first network run. Recent purchases include: Jane Austen Book Club, No Reservations and the Nanny Diaries.
Lifetime Makes Theatrical Impression

2 Elizabeths, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, chat about smelly old England

Tube Today
80s alert: Jennifer Beals in Flashdance at 10pm on CMT

Warner Production President Says He Is Still Committed to Women
Anne Thompson reports in today’s Variety that Jeff Robinov, who was accused over the weekend of having said he is not interested in making films with female leads, is still committed to making films with women in them.

“Citing such Warners hit chick flicks as Cinderella Story and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (a sequel is in the works), Robinov said he is still in the business of making pics with women.”

Well, good for him. But I am not convinced.

To me, both the films cited above are what I call “tween chick flicks” – where the stars are young women — like Hillary Duff in Cinderella Story and the quartet from Sisterhood which includes America Ferrera (it seems that her rise in stature due to Ugly Betty star is what pushed this sequel into production), Blake Lively (now on the CW’s vile Gossip Girl), Alexis Bledel (late of Gilmore Girls), and Amber Tamblyn (Stephanie Daley – have you rented that yet?) And, Sisterhood was adapted from the famous teen novel by Ann Brashares.

While lovely, the actresses cited above are young, most not even in their mid 20s, so Robinov actually confirms my theory that in Hollywood you can make films with strong, female leads on the condition that those leads be young women and targeted towards a younger demographic. I can’t believe that he would even think that those two films cited above would show that he is committed to women.

The other films he cites as “women’s films” (my italics) co-star men except for Spring Breakdown a bout 20s somethings on spring break (sounds really stupid to me) The other are an adaptation of Nights in Rodanthe from a Nicholas Sparks novel starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere; Fool’s Gold staring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. Women will also be thrilled to learn that there will be a female character included in the The Justice League and Watchmen (gee, that sounds like a movie about women)

I think he really believe that the slate above is representative of women and that women should feel satisfied that Warner Brothers is still pro-woman. I think he just dug a deeper hole for himself.

Full story here: Warner Bros Still Committed to Women

Other big news is the sale of Oxygen to NBC Universal for a very impressive $925 million. I wish I could say that I’ve ever watched any of the original programming on the station (I have watched some of the reruns.) It just seems to me to be the station for college girls gone wild and reality tv shows about women who beat each other up. The NY Times story says that NBC seems to have gotten a good deal paying just $12 per subscriber for Oxygen when it paid $22 per subscriber for Bravo in 2002. Guess the artsy people who watch Bravo are worth $10 more than the young women who watch Oxygen.
NBC Buys Oxygen

Tube Today
Classic Alert: Ellen Burstyn in Resurrection at 1pm on Sundance
Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice at 8pm on Flix

Film Review: Golda’s Balcony
Golda Meir was always one of my great heroes; she saved a nice Jewish girl from Long Island from believing the world was only full of men who make decisions. Several years ago William Gibson wrote a one-woman play about Meir, her history and the dilemma surrounding the potential use of nuclear weapons during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The play which starred Tovah Feldshuh was very moving, and now Gibson has rejiggered his script for film. Starring Valerie Harper and directed by Jeremy Kagan, the film opens in limited released in NY on Wednesday.

Talking about Israel today is not an easy topic, tempers flare up quickly on all sides. This film is interesting because it is a history lesson from the perspective of a woman leader and those are very few. This is the unlikely story of a how midwestern, American woman wound up as Prime Minister of the young state of Israel. She escaped the US in her late teens (pulling her husband with her) to go to Palestine to work on a kibbutz needing to be free from the American restrictions on young women. She became excited by politics and worked her way up to a seat at the table at the founding of the state of Israel. Right before the British were going to pull out in 1948 she made the pilgrimage to America to raise the money necessary to buy arms to fight off the Arab neighbors who were poised to attack the second the British departed. She wound up raising $50 million dollars, much more than expected.

Her family suffered for her political ambitions and she felt guilty, but staying home and not working was not something she could endure.

The decisions about the constant need to fight and defend the country weighed heavily on her, probably because she was a woman and her other peers in leadership were all military men. No decision was more difficult than the potential dropping of a nuclear bomb on Arab military sites during the dire days of the 73 war when Israel was on the brink of extinction. She debates the global implications with her cabinet and fortunately, the issue was never forced.

The film is still a one-woman show, Harper is a tour de force, but it does get trying seeing her play all the other characters too. But Meir, is a worthy topic, especially now that we could be potentially on the verge of a female president in the US.

More info on screenings and openings:
Golda’s Balcony

News

The Princess Diaries producer Debra Martin Chase and producer-writer Nely Galan are teaming up to bring Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s novel The Dirty Girls Social Club to the big screen.
It’s Girls Night Out at the Movies (Hollywood Reporter)

IFC Entertainment has announced its acquisition two French films screening at the New York Film Festival, Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s Actresses. Already a box office hit in France, Chabrol’s thriller opened there this summer and also screened at the Toronto and Venice festivals. Bruni Tedeschi’s comedy Actresses was an award-winner at the Cannes Film Festival. Both films will be released theatrically and via cable V.O.D. next year (Indiewire)

Around the Web
Catherine Deneuve and Laura Linney to be Honored at AFI Fest next month
Fest Honors Deneuve and Linney

Films in competition at AFI with a woman focus or women directors include: (still trying to check out all the titles)

International Documentary:
“Operation Filmmaker” Featuring: Liev Schreiber, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson DIR: Nina Davenport PROD: Nina Davenport, David Schisgall. USA
“The Unforseen”
DIR: Laura Dunn PROD: Laura Dunn, Douglas Sewell, Jef Sewell, William Warren. USA

American Showcase:
“Expired”
Cast: Samantha Morton, Jason Patric, Teri Garr, Illeana Douglas DIR: Cecilia Miniucchi PROD: Jeffrey Coulter, Fred Roos EXEC PROD: Alex Shing, Antoni Stutz, Lawrence Wang USA

Documentary Showcase:
“Body of War”
DIR: Ellen Spiro, Phil Donahue EXEC PROD: Phil Donahue CO-PROD: Karen Bernstein USA

Meryl Street Talks Politics and Passion

Castings
Lisa Kudrow joins Hotel for Dogs with Don Cheadle and Emma Roberts.
Kudrow Checks Into Hotel for Dogs (Hollywood Reporter via Reuters)

Tube Today
Classic Alert: Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl @5:15pm (Turner Classic Movies)

Do Women Matter to Hollywood?
The shit hit the fan this weekend when Nikki Finke posted on her Deadline Hollywood blog that Warner Brothers President of Production Jeff Robinov verbalized a sentiment that has been unofficial in Hollywood for some time — studios don’t believe that making movies with women as the lead are viable vehicles any longer.

Based on all my research this is not news, this has been going on for some time, it’s just that someone had the gaul to say it out loud that seems to shock people.

So Mr. Rabinov, since Ben Stiller underperformed this weekend in the Heartbreak Kid, should he not be given another leading role? Jodie Foster did practically the same money as Stiller yet she is deemed a failure, but the thought that Ben Stiller – OR ANY MAN- shouldn’t be given another lead in films is never discussed.

Read Nikki’s piece: No Women Leads at Warners

News
Reese Witherspoon opens in Rendition on October 19th. Reese plays the very pregnant wife of an Egyptian-American man who is whisked off a return flight from a business trip and taken to an African country under the absurd US policy of “extraordinary rendition.”

This is quite a political film for Reese who has mostly been known for her lighter roles. Meryl Streep plays the CIA villain who makes the deicsion to have this man removed from the plane. (Full review to come nearer to opening) Reese has a lot of pressure being the highest paid female actress.

From the Times in London

According to the most recent survey by the film-trade paper The Hollywood Reporter, Witherspoon, who is 31, is now America’s highest-paid actress, outstripping Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie. She has been able to command a salary of $15m a movie for the past four years, since the twin successes of the first Legally Blonde film and the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama. Her status was cemented when she won a best-actress Oscar in March 2006 for her spirited performance as June Carter Cash, singer and long-suffering wife of the country legend Johnny, in Walk the Line.

A Testing Time for Reese Witherspoon

TV is much more welcoming to women because the people who work in the TV business rather than the film business understand that women do watch TV and that there should be programming for women on TV. ABC (is the best network for women in my opinion) will launch the Women’s Murder Club this Friday based on the James Patterson novels. I haven’t seen any of the shows, but I am always interested in a show that has four female leads. ABC is banking that women and men will watch the show because they can get the women with the female characters and the men with the procedural aspects.

I’m a bit apprehensive because the creators of the the are Brett Ratner (director of the Rush Hour franchise) who prides himself on his womanizing, and Joe Simpson, father to singers Jessica and and Ashlee. But they did hire a female executive producer Sarah Fain and writer Liz Craft so…

Here are some quotes from an LA Times piece.

The female detectives on “WMC” are trying to have it all — career and a personal life too. But will modern audiences find their balancing act a touching reflection of career women’s plight today? Or will a group of crime-solvers who fret over guy troubles at the scene of a horrific murder just seem like pop culture’s latest setback for feminism?

ABC Likes Its Chances in Murder Club

Around the Web
Cate Blanchett’s Golden Touch (LA Times)

Margaret Cho Bares it All for a Good Laugh (NPR)

David Denby – A Fine Romance

My New Yorker’s are usually the last magazine in the pile (aside from the NY Times magazine), so I am very late to this past summer’s (July 23rd issue) piece by David Denby on how Knocked Up has shifted the whole genre of the romantic comedy. (I would link to it, but for some stupid reason The New Yorker only makes limited archives available.)

The overall thrust of the piece is that in today’s romantic comedy ala Judd Apatow, the woman and the man are not working from a place of equality like they were in earlier versions of the genre from the screwball comedies of the 1930s all the way through the Woody Allen comedies of the 1970s.

I couldn’t agree more. While I did find Knocked Up to be quite funny, I also found it very disturbing because the comedy was so guy-centric without caring at all about the female character aside from showing that there is no way these two should be together because she was competent and ambitious and he was a stoner an his job (unpaid) was to create a porn site.

But this reality has become quite typical 21st century Hollywood – stories about guys, told by guys and the woman is thrown in because they need to get laid.

Here are some interesting quotes:

Knocked Up, written and directed by Judd Apatow, is the culminating version of this story, and it feels like one of the key movies of the era- a raw, discordant equivalent of The Graduate forty years ago. I’ve seen it with audiences in their twenties and thirties, and the excitement in the theatres is palpable- the audience is with the movie all the way, and, afterward, many of the young men (though not always the young women) say that it’s not only funny but true.

The louts in the slacker-striver comedies should probably lose the girl, too, but most of them don’t. Yet what, exactly, are they getting, and why should the women want them? That is not a question that romantic comedy has posed before.

What’s striking about Knocked Up is the way the romance is placed within the relations between the sexes.

All the movies in this genre have been written and directed by men, and it’s as if the filmmakers were saying, ‘Yes, young men are children now, and women bring home the bacon, but men bring home the soul.’

The perilous new direction of the slacker-striver genre reduced the role of women to vehicles. Their only real function is to make the men grow up.

The society that produced the Katherine Hepburn and Carole Lombard movie has vanished; manner, in the sense of elegance, have disappeared. But manners as spiritual style are more important than ever, and Apatow has demonstrated that he knows this as well as anyone. So how can he not know that the key to making a great romantic comedy is to create heroines equal in wit to men? They don’t have to dress for dinner, but they should challenge the men intellectually and spiritually, rather than simply offering their bodies as a way of dragging the clods out of their adolescent stupor.

Doesn’t it seem that the men are the ones who don’t challenge the women intellectually rather than the reverse? And why is it women’s fault that they want to be successful and have a career? Get with it Judd Apatow, you have two daughters and I know you wouldn’t want either of them dating any of the dudes who populate your movies.

Any comments?

Continuing in Theatres This Weekend
Trade
Jane Austen Book Club

News
Nikki Blonsky (Hairspray) wil receive the Rising Star award at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival on Jan 3 and 4. (Hollywood Reporter)

Women in Film’s Entertainment Forum is this weekend. More details:
Women in Film Entertainment Forum

Some of the most interesting panels include:
DOES “FUNNY” HAVE A GENDER?
Cynthia Littleton, Deputy Editor, Variety
Morgan Murphy, Comic/Writer/Actress
Jane Lynch, Comic/Actress, 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Jennifer Coolidge, Comic/Actress, For Your Consideration, Legally Blonde

SOCIAL ISSUE FILMMAKING: FILM AS AN AGENT FOR CHANGE
Bonnie Abaunza, VP, Campaign Development & Operations, Participant Productions
Ted Braun, Writer/Director, Darfur Now
Cathy Schulman, President, Mandalay Pictures/Mandalay Independent Pictures
Colin Thomas-Jenson, Policy Advisor, ENOUGH Project
Janice Kamenir-Reznik, Co-Founder & President, Jewish World Watch

Ugly Betty’s America Ferrara has been named the U.S. Hispanic Woman of the Year
America Ferrara (AP via US Today)

Story of DC’s first female police chief to be made into film.
Cathy Lanier (Hollywood Reporter)

Tube Tonight
I plead with you to watch Friday Night Lights. Most people are not watching this show because they think its about football, I can assure you it’s not. Last season they had a show the dealt with race relations that was so fantastic and non-preachy that I can’t believe it didn’t win an Emmy.

Quick Sneak
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Cate Blanchett returns to the screen as Elizabeth I in this sequel to her 1998 breakout film, Elizabeth. She has come quite far since that performance, and its always a risk to go back in and play the same character after almost a decade. Whereas the first Elizabeth was magnificent and exciting because we were all in on the discovery of a new movie star, this film is over the top and takes itself way too seriously. The costumes and wigs are exquisite. (Full review next week)

News
Actress Rita Moreno on Latina Longevity in the Arts (NPR)

Jill Carroll is back in the mideast and today reports on Tunisian women filmmakers whose work is not seen in their own country.
Scarce at home, the movies of Tunisia’s female filmmakers draw world acclaim (Christian Science Monitor)

Kathleen Kennedy along with Frank Marshall will receive the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the Producers Guild awards in LA on February 2, 2008.

HBO has renewed Tell Me You Love Me for a second season. Show is created and Executive produced by Cynthia Mort.

Jill Soloway, currently writing for Grey’s Anatomy, will team up with J.J. Abrams on a new drama for ABC.

A take on Private Practice.
Is ‘Private Practice’ a bit too ‘Grey’? (MSNBC)

Tube Tonight
WATCH THIS SHOW!
Tina Fey fresh off her Best Comedy Emmy win premieres the sophomore season of 30 Rock, with guest star Jerry Seinfeld (who is doing a lot of press to push his animated film Bee Story)

Alicia Witt joins Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Mr. Big’s partner (Chris Noth) which now airs on USA (9pm)

Review – Lake of Fire
Abortion is one of the hottest political issues in our culture, with both sides very emotional and very committed to their convictions. Into this controversial subject steps British director Tony Kaye (American History X) with his brutal black-and-white documentary, tracing the issue over the last 15 years. The film starts at the beginning of the Clinton administration with the annual March for Life in Washington DC, but it really begins when he takes us to the clinics, the frontline of the war.

Kaye definitely wants to push the envelope, showing an abortion of a 20-week fetus, and he interviews lots of thinkers on the topic, including Noam Chomsky, Alan M. Dershowitz, and Nat Hentoff, but the film is very lacking on female experts, and for an issue that is about women, this is a big problem. He does interview Francis Kissling, who, until this year, was the head of Catholics for a Free Choice and whose knowledge of the church’s role on abortion is vast, and Kate Michelman, the former head of National Abortion Rights Action League (whose name the film spells incorrectly).

Memory is short and fleeting even for people who care about this issue (disclaimer: I participated in protests and rallies in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s), so this film is an important reminder of a series of horrible events, the murders of abortion providers. Kaye interviews many of anti-abortion activists (almost all men) who were on the forefront when the murders occurred. Most of the men, at first, come off as normal, but you quickly realize (through their own words and actions) that they are extreme zealots. They commonly talk about wanting to create a jihad and how most of the rabid “feminazis” are lesbians. Paul Hill, who murdered Dr. John Bayard Britton and was executed for that crime, called Michael Griffin, the murderer of abortion provider Dr. David Gunn, a “hero” and declared that “all abortionists should be executed.”

Kaye also shows how the anti’s got organized in the late 1980s, from volunteers to full-paid leaders of the growing non-profit organizations that bought houses around clinics to lure women away and to get them to change their minds about having an abortion. His 15-year devotion to the topic is commendable, but it is not until the last third of a too-long movie that the film brings women into focus with Jane Roe, Norma McCorvey. She has always been a woman of controversy and initially took pride in her role as Jane Roe, but of late she has become the poster woman for the anti-abortion movement and is working to get Roe v. Wade overturned. Kaye also takes us on the journey of a woman who has made the decision to have an abortion (even filming it), with all the surrounding emotional issues. It’s a behind-the-scenes close-up into this issue that you seldom see.

Some of the most moving moments of the film are from Emily Lyons, the nurse who was maimed by a 1998 clinic bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. She relays what many women who are passionate about the issue believe: this is “not just about abortion, it’s about choice.” I just wish the film had more of the women’s passion in it. (written for Film Forward)

News
Director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) will direct Twilight from Stephanie Meyer’s young adult series. “Twilight tells the story of 17-year-old Bella, who moves to a small town to live with her father, and is drawn to a pale mysterious classmate who comes from a family of vampires.” (Variety)

Emma Thompson helped organize an exhibition in London that exposes the inhumanity of human trafficking.
Acts of Compassion (The Guardian)

Universal has bought Girly Style a pitch from writer and former stripper Diablo Cody. Film will be a girl centric college comedy. Cody’s first film Juno was runner up for the audience award at Toronto. Film will open before the end of the year. (Hollywood Reporter)

The American Film Market kicks off in LA Oct 31-Nov 7. One of the films to be shown is Mad Money written and directed by Callie Khouri starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes in her post Tom Cruise marriage comeback role. (Hollywood Reporter)

Cate Blanchett will receive the Modern Master Award at the 2008 Santa Barbara Film Festival on January 26, 2008. (Hollywood Reporter) Check out this story from W on Blanchett
Queen Cate

Actress Michelle Yeoh, received France’s highest civilian honor on Wednesday.
Actress Michelle Yeoh gets top French award (Reuters via Yahoo)

Castings
Molly Shannon will play Kath in the pilot Kath and Kim for NBC. The series is about a disfuction mother-daughter relationship and is based on the Australian series of the same name. (Hollywood Reporter)

Natalie Portman joins Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire in Brothers an American reworking of Susanne Bier’s 2004 film. (Variety)

Former ER vet Alex Kingston will star in a modern day version of Jane Austen’s pride and Prejudice for British TV.
Kingston to Star in Austen Drama

Tube Tonight
Season premiere of the Sarah Silverman show on Comedy Central at 10:30pm. You can also now get season 1 on DVD.