Monthly Archive for December, 2008

As we move forward into a new year and a new administration in Washington, it’s good to look back at people and issues (and a few great quotes) that resonated over the last year.

THE GOOD NEWS

Women are a market…but we need to be vigilant
We proved it with three of the top 15 grossers of the year: Sex & the City ($152 million domestic), Mamma Mia ($143 million domestic) and Twilight ($168 million domestic and still going). My hope for 2009 is that we keep making movies for women (including those of us over 25) and not freak out if they don’t have a stupendous opening weekend. Look at Mamma Mia. Didn’t open that big but had legs.

But, my worry is that there is not enough product in the pipeline and that if we don’t keep building on the momentum we will regress back to the age old perception that successful women’s film are just flukes. I would be so happy to never hear again: “that was just a fluke.” It’s just a cop out. Continue reading ‘A Look Back on 2008 as We Move Into 2009′

It’s still very rare (though becoming decidedly less rare) when a woman runs a single artistic institution in a major city, but in Baltimore it seems that women are running all the major arts institutions. How interesting.

The Baltimore Sun sat them down for a dialogue about their institutions and touched on some issues related to be being a woman leader in the arts. The conversation included: Marin Alsop who made news in 2007 when she was appointed the first female music of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. (She was the first woman appointed to lead a large orchestra anywhere); Doreen Bolger who runs the Baltimore Museum of Art; and Debbie Chinn and Irene Lewis who are the Managing Director and Artistic Director of Center Stage.

Interesting quote:

It’s lonely at the top. What’s it like to be a female arts leader in Baltimore?

Alsop: My immediate answer is it’s fantastic, it’s wonderful, but there are a lot of issues. The discussion of women’s leadership issues is even more repressed in America than the discussion of race. [She proposes a future city or statewide festival addressing the topic of women in management.] It need not be spoken in an extremely pointed way, but we could subtly celebrate the achievements of women. It could help young women coming up to move ahead.

Chinn: It could also be an opportunity to build more arts leaders of color. It’s very rare to find a managing director of color unless you’re part of an African-American or Asian-American theater company. They’re going into accounting and marketing and fundraising, but for some reason, there are very few managing directors of color in this country. I’d like to explore why that is.

Lewis: Being a woman informs my work, but it doesn’t define it. I came up at a time when it was so much harder than now; I don’t feel thwarted in any way. I was invisible for so long, or tried to be, so I’d slip through. When I was at Hartford Stage in the 1970s, I was accused of taking a man’s spot: “This is a do-or-die situation for women. We don’t really think you can direct.”

The year of the woman (Baltimore Sun)

The new issue of Vanity Fair has a cover piece by Leslie Bennetts on Cate Blanchett. What I find so fascinating about the piece, is really how little she reveals about herself. She’s a private person and I am impressed that she has able to maintain that veil of privacy even while being one of the most talented, respected and most sought after actresses of her generation.

While Hollywood seems obsessed with the drama surrounding people sometimes more than the actual films (witness Angelina Jolie), Blanchett — probably because she lives in Australia– has completely escaped the Hollywood drama scene. And more important, she’s not punished for not playing the game. I think she gets away with it because she is so damn good, but also because she’s not American.

After finishing the piece I can’t pretend to know any more about Blanchett than I did before, and that’s probably her point. She seems to have a wonderful marriage and partnership with writer, playwright and director Andrew Upton. They are co-running the Sydney Theatre Company and raising three young sons. They seem quite…normal. Busy, yes, but not stuck up.

What a pleasure to see and read.
A Hollywood Elusive (Vanity Fair)

I just finished (more like devoured) Curtis Sittenfeld’s recent novel American Wife, loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. Loved the book, especially the ending and can’t help but think what a great movie it will be.

I’d rather see a fictionalized version of Laura Bush than the one being paraded around town now on the Bush presidency legacy press tour. We’ve barely heard from Laura Bush for eight years and now she’s out defending her husband’s administration. Nobody’s buy it.

Update: Plum Pictures has purchased the rights to the book.

Nothing but the Truth was getting some decent buzz earlier this fall. Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga were getting noticed for their brave performances in the Rod Lurie fictionalized version of the Judith Miller goes to jail to protect her source story. I very much liked the movie. Here’s my review.

The film was supposed to come out in limited release through the awards season and then open wider in January. But the problem (and it’s a big one) is that the Yari Film Group the film’s distributor filed for bankruptcy a couple of weeks ago screwing the film out of any possibility of getting awards recognition in any major scale.

The awards season is about visibility and money and with the bankruptcy this film has gone from potentially being on the bubble to invisible. I don’t know if Beckinsale would have made it to the Oscar final five (I doubt it) but people were talking about her work. No more. It’s too bad.

Here’s a quote from Rod Lurie on the situation:

The Chapter 11 is like a drive-bye shooting. Life is going well, your actresses are being lauded and getting nominated, the reviews are terrific, and all of a sudden something out of your control knocks you down hard. But we’re just wounded. The hope of myself and my producing partner and everybody involved creatively is that another distributor – who wants to release a very commercial thriller – swoops the film up.

Are there any other distributors out there with some money to release this film in January or February? There are very few women centric films coming out then. Might be a good window.

I remember her from the film Yanks and a variety of TV roles (The Practice, Law & Order among others) in the 1990s, but actress Lisa Eichorn now living in England has become a producer and writer of the filmDefender of Riga, the highest grossing movie in Latvia and that country’s submission for the best foreign film award. Here’s an interview from the LA Times on her role with the film.
Lisa Eichhorn: an American in ‘Riga‘ (LA Times)

Check out this great quote from a great interview with The Guardian

Society makes women of a certain age invisible. It’s convenient. Remember our mothers? How inconvenient they were to us? It’s like that, on a grand scale. In the early part of my life I carried the flame for fiery women: perky women who were not dumb. And now I feel like I could be the woman to play this role: the invisible woman.” Only no one is writing these kinds of parts. “Roles for women. There aren’t any. They’ve been saying that since the 1920s, and it’s true. [My theory is that] women don’t write enough. Because who do they expect to write these roles? Men?”

One new years wish: more parts for Debra Winger, bigger than her part in Rachel Getting Married.
The interview: Debra Winger (The Guardian)

Revolutionary Road is a tough movie for a woman who grew up after the women’s movement of the 1970s to watch, but after watching it a couple of times I actually think that it should be required watching for all young women who think that feminism is irrelevant. (Disclaimer, I am a consultant to the studio and organized a blogger screening for the film.)

The film tells the story of April and Frank Wheeler living the post World War Two “American dream” that morphs into the American nightmare. It is the era described in the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan the book that articulated for women the “problem with no name” which Kate Winslet read while preparing for her role as April.  She stated in an interview:  “It was the era of prescription medication, you know, and women really starting to believe …Maybe I’m crazy, because I don’t want this life, I think there’s something wrong with me.’” (The Guardian)

April and Frank were was supposed to be different. But they weren’t. They were exactly the same as everyone on their boring suburban street and that’s what was driving them both crazy. But the thing is that Frank had options and choices and given the fact that it is 1955, April did not. Frank went into the city everyday on the train with lots of other men to their boring jobs and April was stuck at home.

She had no choices, no options.

A scene that really shows April’s suffocation is when she takes out the garbage cans and positions them perfectly on the curb. She then looks up and sees all the other garbage cans perfectly positioned on the curbs up and down the street. Her face at seeing all the cans, the disbelief that this has become her life is palpable.  Juxtapose that with the scene of Frank standing on the train smoking and breathing in the fresh air and the suburbs fly by.  He’s free, she’s in a box.

April wants out and does her best to get herself and her family out but Frank, who can’t perceive the depths of her unhappiness because each day he escapes to his office and his lunches with the guys and his affair with a young woman who works in the office, is not in the same place.  When April finds out she is pregnant for the third time it sends her over the edge. She knows that if she has another baby she is never, ever, getting out and she can’t bear it.  Women took abortion decisions into their hands in the days before it became legal, and April performs a DIY abortion which leads to devastating consequences.

Winslet shows that she is the greatest actress of her generation in her portrayal of April Wheeler. She is able to raise Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance to another level and he should be thanking her for all his glowing notices.  April is a real feminist hero as the film’s director Sam Mendes (and Winslet’s husband) said in an interview about the film. “She’s the only person in the movie that is big enough to face the truth. You know well this is not a movie about a woman who wants to go to Paris. It’s a movie about a woman who wants her life back and can still remember the dreams she once had and is finally wakening up, which a lot of people do in their 30s and 40s, who go, ‘How did I get here? This is not what I wanted.” (LA Times)

Revolutionary Road shows what life was like for women before feminism. It’s an important history lesson from the not too distant past. Watch it and read The Feminine Mystique and be thankful that there was a feminist movement or who knows what life would be like now.

‘I did have moments where I’d say, Oh my God …’ (The Guardian)

I get up pretty early in the morning to do my writing.  I like to write with TV or radio (because I am a pop culture and news junkie.)  Some mornings I watch the Rachel Maddow show from the previous evening, but lately I’ve been watching Morning Joe on MSNBC.  I clearly don’t watch the show for Joe Scarborough the forner Republican congressman who does nothing for me and sometimes makes me want to hit him… I’ve been watching the show for his partner — Mika Brzezinski who I find is a total breath of fresh air.

This is a woman who grew up with a dad with National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter and ironically got fired from CBS two years ago when they brought Katie Couric in.  I kind of remember Mika from a couple of years ago in an earlier incarnation on MSNBC where she co-hosted an afternoon news show with Ashley Banfield.

What I love about her is that she is the one who keeps things moving and focused.  She’s usually surrounded by guys, Joe, Willie Geist the news guy (please tell me why this guy is on this show) Mike Barnicle, occasionally Pat Buchanan.  There are other female guests, but none are parked for hours like the guys are.  She doesn’t let them get away with anything and calls them on their crap and also manages to get in some really strong opinions.

I love her even more because she refused to read a story about Paris Hilton getting out of jail.  This You Tube video has been viewed almost 4 million times.

photo credit: Albert L. Ortega/ PR Photos

Newspaper editors and broadcast producers picked Ms. Fey as the AP  “entertainer of the year” beating out Robert Downey, Jr. and Heath Ledger.

I’d say she had a pretty good  year.

• Baby Mama made $60 million.
• She revitalized Saturday Night Live.
• She helped take down a really awful vice presidential candidate.
• Is on the cover of Vanity Fair (I know its the January 2009 issue but it did come out in 2008)
• oh, yeah she also won 3 Emmys for 30 Rock.

She so rocks!
Tina Fey voted AP Entertainer of the Year

Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!

This site has been closely tracking the worldwide success of Mamma Mia! noting that it took down Titanic last week as the highest grossing movie in the UK.

David Carr (aka the NY Times Carpetbagger) who writes a blog about the awards season spoke to Streep about why Mamma Mia’s amazing success isn’t getting enough attention.

“No one writes about the fact this movie was bigger than the ‘Quantum of Solace.’” (That’s true not just in the U.K., but worldwide, where “Mamma Mia” has taken in more than $570 million, while the latest Bond — with a budget nearly four times as high — currently stands at $528 million.)

Ms. Streep relates this more in exasperation than in anger. “It doesn’t get the press, partly because it is perceived as a woman’s movie, but ‘Mamma Mia’ has buried, and I mean buried, all the conventional block busters.”

“That fact that it is going to make over $600 million is not that interesting to people who write about the business,”

Really, why aren’t people talking more about Mamma Mia’s success? Is it a girl thing? Who cares that it was a light, fun movie. It’s a huge hit.

To the new location for Women & Hollywood. I’ll be working through the kinks over the holidays. IN the next week, I’ll be setting up the rss feed, the sidebars, some subpages, the blogroll, the newsletter signup etc.

Everyone please bookmark this location.

Thanks for your patience.

This just came through and I couldn’t resist putting it up. The Fox Network is developing a drama called Bitches, “about a quartet of female friends in New York who are werewolves.” The show has received a script commitment and its from a guy names Michael Dougherty whose credits include the screenplay of X Men 2, Superman Returns, Trick r Treat and the upcoming I, Lucifer.

WTF? I find the show’s title incredibly offensive. Why can they get away with this crap?

Update: To me there is a difference between Bitch Magazine, a magazine created by feminist women to talk back or bitch about how pop culture treats women, and a TV show called Bitches which to me comes off as anti-woman. It just doesn’t pass my smell test.

I’m a big fan of Jackie Hoffman. I’ve seen her holiday show that runs at Joe’s Pub in NYC a couple of times and I literally peed in my pants. I know that’s gross, but she is that funny. While she may not be the biggest star (and she should be) you may recognize her from Kissing Jessica Stein or have seen her on Broadway in Hairspray and Xanadu.

She’s taken some of the material from her recent shows and put them on a hysterically funny CD which is out now. Purchase her CD here. She can be seen at Joe’s Pub in NYC on December 22 and January 5. Info here.

She answered some questions for Women & Hollywood:

Women & Hollywood: You’re back at Joe’s Pub in NYC for another edition of your anti-holiday show. What is it about the holidays that brings out the worst in you?

Jackie Hoffman: The hypocritical obsession with all things warm and fluffy and children. The music that is shoved down my throat everywhere. If you’ve seen my show, I think you’d say that it brings out the best in me.

W&H: Your comedy is hysterical and bitter. Where does that come from?

JH: Right? My theory is all the taunting at the playground, and growing up the overweight girl with the big nose and crossed eyes.

W&H: You’ve been on Broadway in Hairspray and Xanadu. Any more shows on the horizon?

JH: Just mine as far as I know. That horizon is dying more by the minute

W&H: On your CD you make fun of your health issues. Tell us why you make fun of your fibroid and scare with cancer.

Because the irony is just too perfect. Someone who has the courage to speak out about not worshipping children, and then getting a gigantic tumor that resembled a pregnancy, and being rendered infertile. I couldn’t not talk about it.

W&H: You love to make fun of the Jews without making Jews feel defensive (which is hard). Why are the Jews such fodder for your comedy?

JH: Thank you. I just do what writers do, go with what I know. I was raised by and with very funny Jews. And some of the attitudes and characters that I’ve come across in my life are too good to pass up.

W&H: What’s next for you?

JH: I am taking my act on the road to different cities to promote this album. There is nothing like it out there, and I’m very proud of that.

I spent both Saturday and Sunday morning fixated on watching the English series The Commander (which was recommended by the Flickfilosopher several months ago.) The series totally rocks. The show debuted on ITV in Britain in 2003 starring Amanda Burton as Commander Clare Blake. Super awesome crime writer Lynda La Plante (who specializes in writing about women and also wrote the Prime Suspect series with Helen Mirren) gives us a strong female leader competing against the boys and holding her own. She just a tough and conniving as the guys and does quite a few shady and compromising things to keep her job. Some of her decisions are more than questionable — like falling in love with a man she put in jail ten years before for murdering his girlfriend, or sleeping with the boyfriend of a woman who works for her– but that’s typical of La Plante’s women.

Amanda Burton is fantastic. I also loved her in Silent Witness (a forensic CSI like show that ran on BBCA.) I guess I am a bit obsessed with British crime dramas that star women. They just seem to be so much better than ours.

If you have some downtown over the holidays and are looking for some good TV, check out The Commander. I got it on netflix. I can’t wait until they release the next series here in the US.

Rod Lurie is one of the few guys who cares about writing really strong female characters. I fell in love with his complicated women back when Joan Allen played a hopeful vice-presidential candidate in The Contender. It continued through the too short TV show Commander in Chief that starred Geena Davis as the first female president of the United States.

In his latest film, Nothing But the Truth, a drama very loosely based on the Judith Miller going to jail to protect her source saga, Lurie again brings to the fore some seriously complicated women. Kate Beckinsale who shows acting skills here far beyond what has been demanded or frankly expected of her before, plays Rachel Armstrong an ambitious reporter at a Washington DC newspaper who blows the cover of a Valerie Plame like CIA operative. Vera Farmiga (one of the most interesting and versatile actresses around) plays the subject of the bombshell piece, a suburban mom/covert agent whose daughter just happens to be in the same class as Beckinsale’s son.

The outing of Erica Van Doren has devastating consequences for both women in the workplace and at home, illuminating the struggle of working moms everywhere albeit a bit more complicated than usual. Beckinsale’s Rachel is pressed to reveal her source and with her paper’s backing, she refuses and is jailed. Her ongoing battle to get out of jail and keep her source protected takes up the second half of the film as Rachel becomes a pawn in the legal battles between the government and the press. Lately it seems that the press has been losing these battles. The film shows the personal toll on Rachel and her family.

Farmiga shows the fear and terror with subtlety when she is outed and in that scene you can see her brain working trying to figure out how to make the oncoming avalanche stop knowing full well that she can’t. She then gets pissed not only for the fact that her career is now irrevocable changed, but also thinks about protecting her young daughter and her already disintegrating marriage. It’s a mess for everyone and that’s also what I like about Lurie’s women. They’re not perfect by any means. I don’t need women onscreen to be perfect or above reproach, I like to see them as complicated and realistic and that’s what Lurie gives us.

Check out the trailer:

Film opens in Limited release this week and wider in January.
Nothing but the Truth

A woman has NEVER been nominated for the best cinematography Oscar. While that sucks one of the reasons is that there are so few female cinematographers at the top. The percentage is actually worse than female directors.

According to Martha Lauzen’s Celluloid Ceiling study, women make up only 2% of cinematographers on the top 250 grossing films (2007.)

Pathetic.

But it looks like this year we might break the jinx at least for a nomination. Both Maryse Alberti for The Wrestler and Mandy Walker for Australia are getting noticed for their work.

From a recent LA Times piece:

Alberti and Walker agree that gender has not affected their success, and, while women are rare in their field, their work has been judged on merit. Walker says that while “absolutely there would be something special” about being the first woman to win an Oscar for cinematography, she doesn’t dwell on being in a male-dominated profession. “I actually never think about it until someone asks me the question,” she says. “I just feel that I’m employed because I’m good at my job. I never took it on as a gender issue.”

While Alberti concurs, she admits at the beginning of her career there was sometimes the question of, “Can the little lady handle the big lights?” But she quickly formed a pragmatic comeback that proves success as a DP is more about brains than brawn. “I had to say, ‘The little lady doesn’t carry the big lights,’ ” she recalls with a laugh. “She points and the big guys carry the lights.”

A female cinematographer may vie for Oscar (LA Times)

Guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this by the opening night of South by Southwest next March is the latest version of a Judd Apatow comedy, I Love You, Man where Paul Rudd (who I love) goes on man dates to find a best man for his wedding since he has no real guy friends. The trailer even has a fart joke — that’s how mature this is. Does a mainstream film like this really need a film festival to kick off its release?

SWSX has become a big deal in film festivals recently…but I would hope this is not an indication of the rest of the films to be screened.

British actress Samantha Morton is making her TV directorial debut with “The Unloved,” about a girl growing up in a children’s home, for U.K. broadcaster Channel 4. (Variety)

Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi Lopez will star in Isabel Coixet’s “Map of the Sounds of Tokyo,” the Spanish director’s follow-up to Penelope Cruz starrer “Elegy.” “Map” based on an original screenplay by Coixet is about a solitary young Japanese woman who works in a fish market at night and occasionally as a hired killer. She’s contracted to assassinate a Spanish man, who’s blamed for the suicide of a rich businessman’s daughter. Meanwhile, a sound engineer, who’s fascinated by the woman and the sounds of Tokyo, tracks the girl through the city. (Variety)

Betty Thomas has signed on to direct “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel,” a follow-up to the surprise 2007 hit featuring the lovable CGI-animated singing rodents.

Helen Hunt will helm a 60-second snack food commercial for Frito-Lay, set to air during the Feb. 22 Oscar telecast. The actress will direct a short film of the most inspiring entry in a story contest for the company’s True North snacks. Frito-Lay will also pay the winner $25,000. Stories will focus on how the author or someone the author knows is pursuing a life’s passion. (Variety)

Both the Women’s Film Critics Circle (of which I am a member) and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists gave out their awards and surprise, some are quite different from the other lists.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 47 women film critics and scholars from around the country, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together five years ago to form the first women critics organization ever in the country, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in the country by far, and best reflecting the diversity of movie audiences.

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2008

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Changeling

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Frozen River

BEST STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
Jennifer Lumet: Rachel Getting Married

BEST ACTRESS:
Melissa Leo: Frozen River

BEST ACTOR
Mickey Rourke: The Wrestler

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS:
Abigail Breslin: Kit Kittredge and Definitely Maybe

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS: *TIE*
Sally Hawkins: Happy-Go-Lucky
Meryl Streep: Mamma Mia!

BEST FOREIGN FILM
I’ve Loved You So Long

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE:
The Secret Life Of Bees

BEST UNRELEASED MOVIE:
How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES:
Nothing But The Truth

BEST MUSIC:
Cadillac Records

BEST ANIMATED FEMALE :
Eve: WALL-E

BEST FAMILY FILM
WALL-E

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:
Meryl Streep

ACTING AND ACTIVISM: Natalie Portman

**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women:
Changeling

**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America:
Ballast

**KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity:
Battle In Seattle

COURAGE IN ACTING:
Deidra Edwards in DisFigured: For redefining conventional standards of female physical beauty and pride on screen, and promoting positive images of big bodied women.

BEST DOCUMENTARIES:

GROUNDBREAKER:
A Walk To Beautiful: Mary Olive Smith

ABOVE AND BEYOND:
Wings Of Defeat: Risa Morimoto

COURAGE IN FILMMAKING:
Traces Of The Trade: Katrina Browne

MOST OFFENSIVE MALE CHARACTERS
Aaron Eckhart: Towelhead
Sam Rockwell: Choke
Larry Bishop: Hell Ride
Paul Rudd, Sean William Scott: Role Models
Jason Mewes: Zack And Miri Make a Porno

TOP TEN HALL OF SHAME
Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired
House Of The Sleeping Beauties
The Women
The Life Before Her Eyes
The Hottie and the No ttie
Savage Grace
Made Of Honor
The Family That Preys
Hounddog
Zack And Miri Make A Porno

**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower20rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD; The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

**KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for f emale stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

Alliance of Women Film Journalists

EDA ANNUAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

Best Film
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Direction
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire

Best Screenplay Original
Wall-E – Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Jim Reardon

Best Screenplay Adapted
Frost/Nixon – Peter Morgan

Best Documentary (Tie)
Man On Wire – James Marsh
Trouble The Water – Tia Lessen, Carl Deal

Best Actress (Tie)
Sally Hawkins – Happy-Go-Lucky
Kate Winslet – The Reader and Revolutionary Road

Best Actress In Supporting Role
Viola Davis – Doubt

Best Actor
Sean Penn – Milk

Best Actor in Supporting Role
Heath Ledger – Dark Knight

Best Ensemble Cast
Rachel Getting Married

Best Editing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall

Best Foreign Film
Tell No One

EDA FEMALE FOCUS AWARDS

Best Woman Director
Courtney Hunt – Frozen River

Best Woman Screenwriter
Jenny Lumet – Rachel Getting Married

Best Breakthrough Performance
Sally Hawkins – Happy-Go-Lucky

Best Newcomer
Misty Upham – Frozen River

Women’s Image Award
Kristin Scott Thomas

Hanging in There Award for Persistence
Melissa Leo – Frozen River

Actress Defying Age and Ageism
Catherine Deneuve – A Christmas Tale

2008 Outstanding Achievement By A Woman In The Film Industry
Sheila Nevins, Producing/Programming at HBO

Lifetime Achievement Award
Catherine Deneuve

AWFJ Award For Humanitarian Activism
All of the Women in Pray The Devil Back To Hell

EDA SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS

AWFJ Hall Of Shame Award
27 Dresses

Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent
Kate Hudson

Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn‘t (Tie)
Mamma Mia!
The Women

Best Of The Fests
Hunger

Unforgettable Moment Award (Tie)
Dark Knight: Joker’s first scene
Slumdog Millionaire: Young Jamal jumps into the poop

Best Depiction Of Nudity or Sexuality (Tie)
Elegy
The Reader

Best Seduction
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Sequel That Shouldn’t Have Been Made Award (Tie)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Saw V

The Remake That Shouldn’t Have Been Made Award:
The Women

Cultural Crossover Award
Slumdog Millionaire

Bravest Performance Award
Mickey Rourke – The Wrester

Best Leap from Actress to Director Award
Helen Hunt – Then She Found Me

Most Egregious Age Difference Between Leading Man and Love Interest
The Wackness – Ben Kingsley and Mary-Kate Olsen