Tag Archive for 'Drew Barrymore'

Just wanted to remind you all that the 6th Annual Bird’s Eye View Film Festival kicks off in London next month.

This is one of the most prestigious festivals that highlights films directed by women.

Here’s festival director Rachel Millward talking about why the festival is important:

Birds Eye View is the UK’s only festival celebrating international women filmmakers, founded as a positive response to the still startling fact that women make up only 7% film directors and 12% screenwriters. We passionately believe that a healthy culture requires a balanced perspective and we want to see that on screen. So, we celebrate the talented women making great work today, inspire, encourage and equip more women to make more films, and show the industry and our audiences that without a female perspective in cinema, they’re really missing out!

Birds Eye View keeps working all year round, with a First Weekenders Club, promoting the opening weekend of cinema releases written or directed by women, and bespoke training labs which hothouse exceptional female writers in order to get more commercial features from women into production.

They have a wide variety of films including: Amreeka directed by Cherien Dabis; and Lourdes by Jessica Hauser.

Director Susanne Bier (who directed Brothers which was remade into a horrible Hollywood version) will hold a masterclass, and the festival will close with the London premiere of Whip-It, directed by Drew Barrymore.

More from Rachel Millward:

This is the 6th Birds Eye View Film Festival and it’s a hum-dinger of a programme, celebrating such amazing women filmmakers as Drew Barrymore (Whip It), Jessica Hausner (Lourdes), Isabel Coixet (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo), Kim Longinotto (Rough Aunties), Wanuri Kahiu (From a Whisper) and Susanne Bier (with a retrospective and masterclass).

Plus Blonde Crazy: a celebration of dazzling iconic blondes from the silent era to the present day, and special live music commissions from female artists to silent film, including the first ever animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed from pioneering artist Lotte Reineger. All this with BEV’s usual sprinkling of celeb presence… It looks set to be one to remember.

Support women directed films by attending this festival.

PS- If anyone is planning on attending and wants to write a report for all of us, just get in touch with me. Thanks.

Bird’s Eye View Film Festival

Drew Barrymore debut at Birds Eye View Fest (Hollywood Reporter)

I am seriously sad.

Whip-It didn’t do well at the box office this weekend.  The chatter has started about how the future of young women’s movies.

Here’s what Cinetic Media’s Matt Dentler asks on Twitter: “After the very poor starts for Whip It, Jennifer’s Body, and Bright Star, what does that mean for the future of young women’s movies?” (h/t Thompson on Hollywood)

So now we won’t have movies about older women and we won’t have movies about younger women.  Great.

But let’s be real.  While I might put Whip-It and Jennifer’s Body in the same category, I wouldn’t put Bright Star in there.  First, because it’s a smaller movie not released by a big studio and secondly, because even though Fanny drives the story at times, this film is an artistic triumph and draws a very different type of audience than both Whip-It and Jennifer’s Body.   I really don’t want these trend stories to start happening especially when we have An Education opening this weekend and Precious coming soon.  Both those films (as well as Bright Star) are Oscar contenders and need to get some sort of box office traction is order to have legs for awards season.

The bigger story to me, which I find disturbing, is that all three of this so-called underperforming films (and keep in mind their budgets were very low so they will probably make money) are directed by women.

I hear from people that they want to see Bright Star.  I hear from people that they are going to see Whip-It.  Maybe because we are out of summer they will have time to develop some word of mouth.  One can only hope.  BTW, Julie & Julia has quietly amassed almost $100 million at the box office, it is still playing in places and has been open since August 7th.

Here’s some more box office info:

Box Office Mojo: According to distributor 20th Century Fox, the audience was 70 percent female and 52 percent 25 years and older.

From Thompson on Hollywood: “Women aren’t showing up,” said one studio marketing exec. “Girls don’t get into roller derby.” Searchlight downplayed that aspect in favor of the movie’s girl power theme.

More thoughts: What I find interesting about the numbers is not the 70% women, it is the 52% over 25.  (I really wish they broke down those numbers better for us in the public)  What this says to me is that they didn’t figure out how to get the young girls who live the “girl power” lives.  Maybe they couldn’t get their guy friends/boy friends to go, so they just acquiesced and went to see Zombieland.  Maybe the girl power message is a turn off to guys?  Maybe some of it is about how women’s sports is treated in the culture?

So the people were adult women, ones who are comfortable saying I want to see women onscreen.  This shouldn’t be news.  We know that women over 25 go to see movies starring women, it’s just that not enough of them come out on opening weekends to make a dent in the box office except on the rare occasion.

Here’s your weekend assignment — get your ass to the theatre and see Whip-It.  Here’s my review from wrote earlier this week.  I am seriously impressed with Drew Barrymore and here are some quotes from her from the pre-release press.  Not to put too much on her shoulders, but to me, she is the future for women in this business.  She wants to direct more, wants to act more, and wants to produce more.

That’s great news.  But I also know that she is in a place of privilege in the film business.  Not many women get a $15 million budget for their first film.  But on the other hand she picked a really smart project, one that can resonate with a variety of audiences and is so positive and fun.

To the NY Times

I love girls who are fierce and capable…I could never just sit on the sidelines, I have to get in there. I could never be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know it’s scary, but just go for it, you’ll be fine.’ I wanted to get hurt and be afraid with them.

On learning from the films of the 80s:

Those were such insightful films — about people, about women, friendship, having a dream, love…Jodie Foster and Molly Ringwald were like young women. And the men who were leading and guiding them — the directors of these movies — had such gentle instincts. They saw their femininity, but they gave them a toughness too, a stoic backbone.

On directing:

Do you really think I haven’t been preparing for this my whole life? And I’m just going to try it once and then never do it again? It baffles me. And then I just think, Oh God, they just don’t know me

This is very personal for me…It’s been my dream my whole life to direct.

To the LA Times

My whole life I’ve been training to be a director. When I was 6 years old, I handed my godfather — Steven Spielberg — a script she’d written, which was, ironically, a mother-daughter love story.

Producing partner and best friend Nancy Juvonen smartly held Drew’s directing debut at bay until she thought she was ready:

so the first one isn’t the only one.

I can pretty much guarantee after seeing Whip It that this will not be the only film Barrymore directs.

Stepping Into the Skates of the Director (NY Times)

Drew Barrymore’s Calling the Shots Now (LA Times)

I needed a pick me up yesterday after way too much depressing reading on the Roman Polanski situation and as soon as I arrived at the theatre to see a bunch of awesome women on roller blades with names like Fisty Cuffs and Beatrix Strange skating around outside the theatre I knew that my day had improved.

And the better news is that the film totally rocked.  Whip It is exactly the perfect movie for our time.  It doesn’t hit you over the head with the feminism but it is there in every breath and every beat.  Ellen Page is adorable as Bliss Cavendar a Texas girl who just doesn’t fit in with all the pageant obsessed folks in her town which includes her mom played by Marcia Gay Harden.  She wants to to wear Doc Maartens instead of heels and really hates doing all the pageant crap but does it to please her mom.  Mom is desperate for her daughter to do something, to amount to something, but the only thing she knows is pageants so she points her in that direction. I love the class issues in the film.  Mom was pretty, not gorgeous, and she is now a mail carrier who channels everything into her 2 daughters.  I totally loved Daniel Stern as Bliss’ dad who just wants his daughter to be happy and could care less that she is in roller derby.  Actually, he does care.  He loves it.  He loves that his daughter is an athlete.  The most touching scene was when he proudly hammers her number sign into his yard as so many Texas dads of football players do.

But Bliss wants more for her life than pageants and working in a dead end job.  When she discovers roller derby she finds her tribe.  These women get her.  They get each other.  They kick the shit out of each other on the track and have a ton of fun at it.

Drew Barrymore not only directs, she produces the film and co-stars as Smashley Simpson one of the skaters who constantly gets thrown out of the matches for kicking the shit out of the other women.  It’s hysterical.  And the best news to me is the confidence and comfort that Barrymore shows as a director.  It’s just that good.  Barrymore has had a great year onscreen in Grey Gardens and now on and off screen in Whip It. I want her and her production company to keep making films like this instead of crap like He’s Just Not That Into Me.

Kristen Wiig is fantastic as Maggie Mayhem a doting mom who just loves skating.  But to me the revelation was Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven, a woman who took a long time to find out where she belonged and is going to hold onto it with every fiber of her being.

The script is terrifically written by Shauna Cross and is based on her novel of the same name which is based on her own experiences as part of the LA Derby Dolls.  This is a seriously talented woman and the film gave me a sense of hope because it was able to get the tone of girl power/feminism and realism just right.

Here’s what Barrymore says about the film:

This film is really personal and important to me because it’s about a girl finding out who she is, going after what she believes in and bringing out the best in herself  It’s set agains tthe world of roller derby, which is about grit and toughness, but there’s also this great winnk and celebration and fun to it.  It’s feminine on its own terms, it’s about power without anger and it’s exhibitionism that entertains.  It’s a world where you get to be your own hero and find your own tribe.

Whip It proves that films can be feminist and fun.  That in itself is worthy the price of admission.

The Festival just keeps getting more and more loaded.  (Descriptions are by the festival)

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch but here are some highlights of films by women and some not by women but about women.  Hopefully we will be able to see most of them in the near future.  Some already have releases scheduled.

Midnight Madness

Jennifer’s Body written by Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama

According to Jennifer’s Body, high school isn’t the best time of one’s life. It’s actually hell on earth, awash with teenage angst, hormones and fountains of blood. Penned by Juno scribe Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama (responsible for the acclaimed Girlfight), Jennifer’s Body is the shocking flipside to Cody’s slacker teen romance.

Contemporary World Cinema

Lourdes directed by Jessica Hausner

In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life-changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.

My Year With Sex directed by Sarah Watt

A tender story from Australia highlights the realistic ups and downs of an Australian family in the year following a parent’s emergency medical procedure.

Discovery

The Angel directed by Margareth Olin

A young mother (played brilliantly by Maria Bonnevie) struggles with a history of drug abuse in this exquisitely rendered and deeply compassionate piece, the first fiction film from one of Norway’s most respected documentary filmmakers.

Applause directed by Martin Pieter Zandvliet

Paprika Steen delivers a tour-de-force performance in this devastating drama about an alcoholic actress trying to put her life back together.

Beautiful Kate directed by Rachel Ward

In order to make peace with his combative, dying father, a writer must return to his childhood home and confront long suppressed memories of the mysterious deaths of his brother and twin sister.

The Day Will Come directed by Susanne Schneider

Thirty years after giving her daughter up for adoption to join the terrorist underground in Germany, Judith is tracked down by her nowadult daughter Alice to a vineyard in the Alsace where she is living with a new family and a new identity.

A Brand New Life directed by Ounie Lecomte

Impressive debut by French-Korean filmmaker Ounie Lecomte who, inspired by her childhood, recounts the emotional journey of a little girl abandoned by her father in an orphanage.

Eamon directed by Margaret Corkery

A family holiday brings to a head the destructive love triangle between Eamon, a little boy with behavioural problems, his selfish mother Grace and his sexually frustrated father Daniel.

The Happiest Girl in the World directed by Radu Jude

Family conflict produces comedy in this story of a young girl who wins a car in a lottery and her scheming parents who insist on selling it.

My Dog Tulip directed by Paul Fierlinger | Sandra Fierlinger

Christopher Plummer and Isabella Rossellini voice this vividly animated, touching tale of friendship between an elderly bachelor and his German shepherd.

La Pivellina directed by Tizza Covi | Rainer Frimme

A small abandoned girl is sheltered by a circus woman in this tale of courage, loss and togetherness.

Shirley Adams directed by Oliver Hermanus

Intimate, precise portrait of a “coloured” mother in Cape Town, South Africa whose son is disabled in a neighborhood shooting.

The Unloved directed by Samantha Morton

Morton shifts from actor to director in this stark, intimate portrait of a young British girl thrown from an abusive family into the hands of government care.

Special Presentations

Bright Star- Jane Campion

A drama based on the secret love affair between 23-year-old English poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an outspoken student of fashion. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted. Only Keats’s illness and untimely death proved insurmountable.

An Education- Lone Scherfig

A coming-of-age story about a teenaged girl in 1960s suburban London and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age. Torn between her parents’ dream of going to Oxford University and a more tempting kind of life, she must decide if the new path is one that will trap her or set her free.

Glorious 39- Stephen Poliakoff

This tense conspiracy thriller set on the eve of World War II and based on disturbing real events, focuses on a young woman who stumbles across evidence of a sinister Nazi appeasement plot. As her close friends begin to die in suspicious circumstances, she finds her own life in danger from an increasingly menacing and powerful enemy.

London River- Rachid Bouchareb

This intimate drama tells the story of two people, a Muslim man and a Christian woman, who are immediately affected by the July 2005 London bombings. Both of them are drawn to the British capital when their children go missing on the day of the attacks. Putting aside their cultural differences, they will give each other the strength to continue the search for their children and maintain their faith.

Mother- Bong Joon-ho

A unique noir thriller that digs into the secrecy surrounding a terrible murder and the mystery of a mother’s primal love for her son. The films of director Bong Joon-ho regularly, and brilliantly, break with convention, thanks to an imagination that is not confined to the accepted parameters of humour, suspense or horror – Mother is no exception.

Partir- Catherine Corsini

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a well-to-do married woman and mother in the south of France. Her idle bourgeois lifestyle gets her down and she decides to go back to work as a physiotherapist. Her husband agrees to fix-up a consulting room for her in their backyard. When Suzanne and the man (Sergi López) hired to do the building meet, the mutual attraction is sudden and violent. Suzanne decides to give up everything and live this all-engulfing passion to the fullest.

The Vintner’s Luck- Niki Caro

Set in early 19th century France The Vintner’s Luck tells the compelling tale of Sobran Jodeau, an ambitious young peasant winemaker and the three loves of his life—his beautiful and passionate wife Celeste, the proudly intellectual baroness Aurora de Valday and Xas, an angel who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Sobran. A fantastical creature with wings that smell of snow, Xas turns out to be an unconventional mentor. Under his guidance Sobran is forced to fathom the nature of love and belief and in the process, grapples with the sensual, the sacred and the profane—all in pursuit of the perfect vintage.

Whip-It- Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut stars Ellen Page (Juno) as Bliss, a rebellious Texas teen who throws in her small-town beauty pageant crown for the rowdy world of roller-derby. Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River, Pollock) plays Bliss’s disapproving mother, while Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig (Saturday Night Live) and Juliette Lewis (Old School) play roller-derby stars. Whip It also stars Eve, Jimmy Fallon, Daniel Stern, Alia Shawkat, Ari Graynor, Andrew Wilson, Zoe Bell and singer-songwriter Landon Pigg.

Women Without Men- Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat’s first feature-length film is based on a magic-realist novel written by Iranian author Sharnush Parsipur. The narrative interweaves the lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953, a pivotal moment in Iranian history when an American led coup d’état brought down the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah to power. The film chronicles each woman’s quest for change and their mysterious encounter in a magical orchard.

Vanguard

Fish Tank- Andrea Arnold

Andrea Arnold’s assured follow-up to Red Road is a taboo-breaking love story about a violent teenaged girl transformed by desire for her mother’s new boyfriend.

My Queen Karo- Dorothée van den Berghe

A young girl witnesses the moral dilemmas of free love when her parents join a squatter community in 1970s Amsterdam.

Here are a bunch of films that I am excited about: Whip-It, Fame, An Education and The Countess. Enjoy.

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip-It starring Ellen Page looks awesome. It opens October 9. Think Juno on skates and without the pregnancy.

Fame was one of those movies I loved when I was a teen. it’s being remade and will be released this fall. I AM THERE.

An Education

I am excited for this one directed by Lone Scherfig starring Carey Mulligan that will open on October 2.

h/t Awards Daily

Coco Before Chanel directed by Anne Fontaine opens in the US on September 25

The Countess directed by Julie Delpy- doesn’t have a release date here yet in the US

Co-posted on wowOwow.com

“Grey Gardens” premieres April 18 on HBO, and before you watch it, read what Executive Producer Rachael Horovitz says about stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, the Kennedy family and the enduring women behind the legacy. Horovitz, whose film-producing credits include the movies About Schmidt, State and Main and Next Stop Wonderland opens up to Melissa Silverstein, wowOwow’s correspondent and founder of the website Women & Hollywood.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: You use the Maysles’s 1975 cult documentary “Grey Gardens” as the frame for this version. Can you explain why it was so important?

Rachael Horovitz and Michael Sucsy (writer-director, Grey Gardens)

RACHAEL HOROVITZ: I feel like I was completely raised on that film. My mom had gotten me to see it when it came out and she had a great sense of irony. She passed away over 20 years ago and it was one of these things that we shared. It was completely her idiom, as far as the poetry of it, the humor and the zaniness. And my brothers and I really grew up knowing lines from the movie, and quoting them to one another. The documentary was just a beloved favorite film.

The backstory on this film starts with Michael Sucsy (the film’s director) who had written a script that predated my knowing him. It was a chronological, very rich, very ambitious period piece that started with the ’30s and went in order through Big Edie’s death. It included the full debutante ball, and the Inauguration of JFK in Washington. It would have definitely cost a lot of money. Also [Michael] hadn’t gotten the rights to the documentary, and so his script skirted the documentary. Coincidentally, I was trying to get the rights to the documentary. I knew Albert Maysles and we were talking very seriously about making a deal together to do a film based on the documentary, when I learned about the other project.

MS: OK.

RH: So we decided — in the aftermath of the two Capote films and the terror of having that same experience — to “get married.” I brought the documentary rights and they brought their script and we redesigned his script by patching the documentary into it.

MS: Did you have any intentions of having it be a theatrical release?

RH: Many. That was the plan, but we felt that either way we would be very, very lucky. Unfortunately, the theatrical arm (of HBO), Picturehouse, was shut, as was Warner Independent, which was the in-house Time Warner company. I actually started my studio-career working at Fine Line, which was the precursor to Picturehouse. I definitely brought to this production team almost too much knowledge of how easy it is to flame out in the specialized theatrical market. And I was really, really pushing for making the film with HBO, because I thought that if we did have to give up theatrical, that the trade-off would be fantastic.

MS: That’s very smart.

RH: And probably more people — and this has now become a cliché to say this — but more people would see it on HBO than would see it in five or six art-house cinemas around the country.

MS: What is it about these women that is so endearing?

RH: Well, I don’t know that I can answer it for everyone. But if I answer it for myself maybe it’ll be universal. They really feel like family. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a relative whom they dearly love, who also embarrasses them and who’s painfully at odds with the outside world. And if not a relative, then a friend or an in-law. I think a lot of people relate to this story directly. And while I don’t feel that I relate to it directly, it’s not an accident that my mother adored this movie. She had a lot of the Edies in her. She never had a job. She was a true artist in her soul.

She was incredibly intuitive, verbal and clever, and she was actually a very talented painter. I think that what makes the documentary so irresistible and so memorable is that they’re just completely charming and unique characters. And the words that come out of their mouths are as sophisticated and entertaining as anything in theater — and I go all the way to Shakespeare now.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Rachael Horovitz, Executive Producer of Grey Gardens’

This is cross posted over at wowOwow.com

A Jessica Lange sighting on TV or film has sadly become a rare occurrence. The good news is that this weekend, on HBO, Lange is out in full force as “Big Edie Bouvier Beale” in the drama “Grey Gardens.” She co-stars with Drew Barrymore as her daughter, Little Edie, in the film version of the women’s lives, which previously were immortalized in Albert and David Maysles 1975 documentary.

Interweaving pieces from the documentary and adding a longer timeline and context dating back to “Little Edie’s” aborted debut as a young woman, this film depicts the intense and special and at-times toxic relationship between mother and daughter. Lange’s “Big Edie” ages from 40 to an unrecognizable 80 as a woman with spirit and spunk who hosted parties at her East Hampton mansion — where she was the entertainment. But “Big Edie” was born in a time when women followed the rules, and she got stuck in a loveless society marriage. Yet, instead of trying to spare her daughter the same plight, she initially pushed her to find a rich man who would give her a long leash, even though that leash was chafing her own neck. These women were not meant to be caged, and while trying to break free from societal conventions and live by their own rules (“Little Edie” also was bit by the performing bug) they wound up imprisoned together in isolation and squalor in their East Hampton mansion.

The movie is a unique character study and the performances are mesmerizing. But it’s also sad. Sad that these women felt forced to distance themselves from society to be free. Sad because women who didn’t “fit in” were made to seem crazy and then actually became crazy due to the isolation. “Grey Gardens” on the surface comes off as a love story between a mother and daughter — yet don’t miss the unique lessons on class and gender roles that still seem to stick with us.

Film airs tomorrow night on HBO.