The dynamic of the weekend was set up as adversarial all week.
Will the girls beat the boys? Will the boys punch the girls? No wonder we are still so fucked up about gender at the movies. If we didn’t set the movies up as an us vs. them dynamic maybe men would see more movies about women.
So the news is that The Expendables starring the 1980s scored $35 million and Eat Pray Love (EPL) grossed $23.7. The budget for The Expendables seems to be between $70 and 80 million and the budget for EPL is about $60 million.
I got an inquiry from a reporter at the Irish Independent asking me to talk about the Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography the new Andrew Morton book. The most important thing that I have noticed about the book is how little news it has made which is what I relayed to the reporter.
I think the main thing I have to say about the book (without having read it and I really could care less) is a big so what.
Here are my quotes:
“I think that Hollywood and the public have basically ignored the book,” Melissa Silverstein, author of the Women and Hollywood blog, told the Weekend Review. “The world has changed and nobody needs an unauthorised memoir to get information about celebrities any more.”
Elizabeth Gilbert was miserable. She crashed out of her marriage, careened into another relationship way too quickly and was just overwhelmed and seriously fucked up. She needed a change — not just a haircut or new clothes — a fundamental change to everything she knew.
Not many people have the guts and the money to make such a fundamental change. Smart girl that Gilbert is she sold a book proposal which allowed her to travel the world for a year to get her shit together. Out of that journey came the best selling book Eat Pray Love. If I was her publisher I would think that her advance was the best investment EVER.
Hey folks. Good news. If you scare the crap out of your ex-wife and then get arrested for beating your current wife you too can be the highest paid TV star by far.
Yes, Charlie Sheen a man with some serious anger issues (especially towards the women in his life) is the highest paid TV star making $1.25 million per 30 minute episode of Two and a Half Men. That’s almost $42,000 per minute (and I am including commercials.)
Hugh Laurie (House) is the highest paid person on the drama side with $400,000 per episode, but Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni of SVU are biting his heels each making $395,000. The women on Desperate Housewives are the highest paid women on TV with all four female leads making $400,000 each
A big Friday fuck you to Bill O’Reilly for calling Jennifer Aniston destructive to our society and diminishing the role of dads when making comments in promotion of her new film The Switch.
The film is about a woman who decides to get pregnant with a sperm donor and it turns out her best friend played by Jason Bateman switched the sperm when he knocked over the donor’s deposit. (Don’t they do these things in a doctor’s office and not a bathroom while you are giving an I’m going to get pregnant party?)
Actress Frances McDormand can add an new title to her resume – producer now that she has optioned two books.
The first is the Pulitzer Prize winning book Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. She purchased the book before it won the Pulitzer. Jane Anderson is writing the script (will she direct too?) that will hopefully be turned into an HBO series. McDormand will appear in the series. (HBO really needs some shows about women.)
The second is Every Secret Thing, the novel by crime writer Laura Lippman. The film was written and will hopefully be directed by Nicole Holofcener (she spoke about being excited to make a film based on someone else’s material when Please Give was released in April.) The film will star Diane Lane.
It’s great that McDormand is getting into producing. Both these properties sound really interesting.
Halle Berry hasn’t been in a movie in several years, hasn’t done an interview in over three, yet she could not resist the call that came in to be on the cover of September’s Vogue.
Halle is the first woman of color to be on the cover of a September issue of Vogue in over 20 years since Naomi Campbell was on the cover.
Here’s what she said about why she did it:
What that means for a woman of color and what that means in the fashion world, what that means to pop culture, there was no way I could say, No, I’m not going to be on the biggest issue of the year.
Today is my 43rd birthday. Hollywood wants to make you believe that 40 is old, passe. But I want to just say out loud that is bullshit.
And now maybe Hollywood is thinking that us 40 somethings are still worthy, at least of magazine covers. It seems that the September issues (you know the really thick ones that kick off the fall) of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle all feature 40 something movie stars on the covers. Vogue‘s got Halle Berry (when is she going to be in another film?), Bazaar‘s got Jennifer Aniston (who is about to release another clunker called The Switch), and Elle‘s got Julia Roberts who opens this weekend with Eat Pray Love.
The folks who run the Toronto International Film Festival turned down my request for credentials, so I will again be covering the events from afar. Their loss.
The news of today is that they added Canadian films to the lineup today.
Of the 24 films added, only 4 are directed by women. (I picked up the new films from the press release on the TIFF site.)
That 16.7%. Not. Too. Good.
Also, I have to mention that not ONE Gala or Masters presentation includes a female director. WTF? The galas get a high level of visibility. How could not a single woman be included?
Kudos to Eva Longoria-Parker and Rosario Dawson for standing up and using their voices to protest the new immigration law in Arizona.
Here’s what Longoria-Parker said to Us Magazine:
I haven’t made it a secret that I’m strongly opposed to the Arizona law and I’ve been pretty vocal about it…I think the biggest misconception is that everybody who is dark or of color is from somewhere else. I’m ninth-generation American. I’m more American than a lot of my Anglo friends. If my father got pulled over because of the color of his skin, I could guarantee you I would be outraged.
We recognize that this isn’t just a Mexican issue or a Latino issue… There are people blogging and Tweeting for everything, from the BP spill to education and healthcare…We’re all buzzing about these things, but unless we’re actually marching to the polls, nothing is going to actually change.
Looks like Reese Witherspoon will be singing again now that she has secured the rights to Peggy Lee’s life story after meeting with her granddaughter. She then approached Nora Ephron and got her to agree to write and direct.
I like how Reese is taking an active role in the films she makes. She belongs at the center of a story, not as a sidekick to someone like Vince Vaughn. I know that she wants a varied career but the problem with women and comedies, is that the comedies pretty much suck for the women.(You all know what I mean.)
If you remember, Witherspoon won an Oscar playing June Carter in Walk the Line.
It seems that Megan Fox is not the devil woman. Not that I ever believed that myself. But you would think that she is related to satan with all the nastiness that is written about her.
Maybe now its time that people cut her a little slack.
She appeared in Eminem’s new video “Love the Way You Lie” and has donated her fee for the video to Sojourn a shelter for abused women.
The song is about an abusive relationship and also features Rihanna.
How may actresses in Hollywood (or anywhere for that matter) would get dressed up looking like Nanny McPhee, when you have no chance to win an Oscar for that performance. Not many women would don that attire even for Oscar bait, but Emma Thompson is on her second run as Nanny McPhee. The film opens here in the US in two weeks and Emma is not only the star, but she is also the screenwriter. The film also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal is directed by Susanna White and produced by Lindsay Doran. Girl power everywhere.
Emma was in Hollywood at the end of last week to get her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was accompanied by Gyllenhaal and her good friend Hugh Laurie (House.)
I am a seriously big fan of Patricia Clarkson. I’ve seen her in countless movies going all the way back to High Art and she has never once hit a false note. Not once. She is always good (even if sometimes the material does not rise to the occasion.)
But for some bizarre reason for over 20 years she has never been the lead, the driver of the story. I am happy to report that the drought is over and Patricia Clarkson at 50, has her first romantic lead in Ruba Nadda’s Cairo Time.
The film is about a Juliette, a woman who goes on vacation to Cairo to meet her husband who is working for the UN in Gaza. Her kids are out of the house, she edits a small but prestigious magazine and works too hard. She is content, yet not happy.
I’m at my annual jaunt with other women bloggers. This year I am at Blogher business and will also check out the Blogher and White House Project training session for women bloggers later today.
Tomorrow over 2,400 women bloggers will be here in NY learning from each other.
I am moderating a panel (Friday afternoon right after lunch):
Change Agents: Creating Tangible Social Change: How to Move People to Action
You’ve gathered a group and started a passionate conversation – but you still want more. Maybe you want to get a company to change a policy. Maybe you want to affect local, state, or even national politics. You can do it: Your tools are your voices, your blogs, your Twitter streams, your e-mail accounts, your Facebook pages and your YouTube channels. Let’s discuss how to use those tools to engender social change.
We’ll talk to Beth Terry from Fake Plastic Fish, who corralled her community into specific actions that instigated a corporate policy change at Brita; Gina McCauley from What About Our Daughters and Blogging While Brown, who creates simple, achievable quarterly activism goals for her community; Stephanie Himel-Nelson, the Director of New Media at Blue Star Families, who is working to change the national conversation about this country’s military and military families; and Melissa Silverstein, who founded the site Women and Hollywood, which chronicles the TV and film industry’s treatment toward and focus on women.
Yesterday I published, If Women Like It, It Must Be Stupid building on the EW piece where Elizabeth Gilbert is quoted. Now, I am a bit late to the Elizabeth Gilbert game having not read Eat Pray Love until now (I am a third of the way in and am enjoying it.)
But this woman has seriously stirred up a shitstorm among women. Wow.
I emailed Elizabeth yesterday after I wrote the post and clearly she feels beaten down. Now I know she doesn’t need me to defend her, but I did (as I hope someone would defend me when I publish a book that sells millions of copies.)
Here’s what she said back to me (in 2 different emails):
THANK YOU, MELISSA.
Thank you.
(Did I mention: Thank you?)
Thank you so much again, and thank you for beating the gong to try to drive away at last this old, hoary, worn-out, threadbare old chestnut of a question: whether or not women’s tastes are actually worthy.
For god’s sake.
Carry on!
♡LG
Personally, I am going to go to the mat to defend a woman to express her opinion just as much as I going to go to the mat for a woman director to make a film in her own vision.
I might not like the film. I might not like the book. That’s my prerogative. This is a free country. If you don’t want to see a movie or don’t want to read a book – just don’t go and see it or read it. End of story.
But just remember, this is not about Elizabeth Gilbert. This is about women and how society values our opinions, desires and tastes. Gilbert is just the face of it this week. Next week will be someone else.
With all the discussion going on about whether the Oscars should air earlier in 2011 than last year, it should be noted that the good news is that we currently have a true feminist role in the movie theatres worthy of an Oscar nomination.
I am speaking of Rachel Weisz in Alejandro Amenábar’s riveting Agora which is set in ancient Alexandria. As the wise and sophisticated philosopher Hypatia, Weisz portrays a woman who prefers to teach and discover the mysteries of the sky than to marry and raise children. And this sole conceit of pursuing knowledge is her modus operandi throughout the entire film to its tragic conclusion.
The Toronto Film Festival has announced 25 documentaries that will screen at this year’s festival.
While I won’t pretend that this site or any other has influence on the decisions that are made on what films to screen, I couldn’t help but smile when I read the following quote from Thom Powers who programs the docs for the festival:
But there’s a few different streams that are notable. For one, there’s a very strong representation of women, both films by and about them.
The dynamic of the weekend was set up as adversarial all week.
I got an inquiry from a reporter at the 
Elizabeth Gilbert was miserable. She crashed out of her marriage, careened into another relationship way too quickly and was just overwhelmed and seriously fucked up. She needed a change — not just a haircut or new clothes — a fundamental change to everything she knew.
Hey folks. Good news. If you scare the crap out of your ex-wife and then get arrested for beating your current wife you too can be the highest paid TV star by far.
A big Friday fuck you to Bill O’Reilly for calling Jennifer Aniston destructive to our society and diminishing the role of dads when making comments in promotion of her new film The Switch.
Actress Frances McDormand can add an new title to her resume – producer now that she has optioned two books.
Halle Berry hasn’t been in a movie in several years, hasn’t done an interview in over three, yet she could not resist the call that came in to be on the cover of September’s 
Today is my 43rd birthday. Hollywood wants to make you believe that 40 is old, passe. But I want to just say out loud that is bullshit.
Kudos to Eva Longoria-Parker and Rosario Dawson for standing up and using their voices to protest the new immigration law in Arizona.
Looks like Reese Witherspoon will be singing again now that she has secured the rights to Peggy Lee’s life story after meeting with her granddaughter. She then approached Nora Ephron and got her to agree to write and direct.
I am a seriously big fan of Patricia Clarkson. I’ve seen her in countless movies going all the way back to High Art and she has never once hit a false note. Not once. She is always good (even if sometimes the material does not rise to the occasion.)
Yesterday I published, 
With all the discussion going on about whether the Oscars should air earlier in 2011 than last year, it should be noted that the good news is that we currently have a true feminist role in the movie theatres worthy of an Oscar nomination.
The Toronto Film Festival has announced 25 documentaries that will screen at this year’s festival.
