Features, News
I have always been a list-maker. After all, they come in handy when it comes to remembering what groceries to buy, what clothes to pack and what chores to nag my husband about. But unlike many film...
Features, News, Women Directors
This was a very interesting year for writing about issues related to women in entertainment. On the one hand, I feel very hopeful and think we may have hit a tipping point with the box-office...
News
We are so over Strong Female Characters. Strong Female Characters were useful a few years ago when there was a dearth of women on film and most were so rubber-limbed, glass-ankled, or prone to...
Documentary, News
Just a day after newly freed Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina announced the disbandment of Russia’s most important feminist punk group, the Putin administration...
News, Television
We’re going to take some downtime this week. Hope you have a happy holiday.
Features, Weekly Update
Films Directed by and About Women Opening Let’s Ruin It with Babies — Written, Directed, and Starring Kestrin Pantera Channing has it all: a beautiful home, a rock-star lifestyle, and a...
Awards, News
We previously wrote about the Alliance of Women Film Journalist (AWFJ) nominations, about which the big takeaway was that “female critics have more or less the same tastes as their male...
Awards, News, Videos
After last year’s Seth MacFarlane fiasco, the Academy apparently took a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and asked, “What the hell were we thinking?” because it wisely invited Ellen...
In a surprise move earlier this week, Rose Kuo announced her resignation from her post as the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s executive director. Kuo has led the Film Society for the last...
Director Jill Soloway gave a wonderfully insightful interview to Flavorwire yesterday about the crude double standards at work at the MPAA. Soloway directed this year’s Afternoon Delight, a story...
Features, News, Television, Women Directors
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. See our previous posts on the...
Interviews, News, Theater, Women Directors
Last summer when I was in London, I had the opportunity to see one of the most under-rated shows of Stephen Sondheim’s career, Merrily We Roll Along. It’s got some of his best songs, but as a...
Features
Awards, Features, News
The Oscar derby often offers interesting, if disturbing, insights into how women are treated in the world of film. As the year draws to a close, let’s review what happened the last time Hollywood...
Hollywood execs can get awfully creative when they need to come up with excuses for why film and TV should stay so male-centric. Boys won’t watch stories about girls? Wrong. Women and girls...
Awards, News, Women Directors
Quota is a dirty word in our supposed meritocracy. But it’s a less contentious, even normal, practice in other parts of the world. Sweden, for example, recently mandated that “funding shall be...
Awards, News, Women Directors, Women Writers
The National Film Registry has announced its 2013 list of “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films to be preserved by the Library of Congress, and 10 of its 25 selections...
News, Women Writers
The 2013 Black List — Hollywood’s annual compilation of the industry’s “most liked” but as-yet-unmade scripts — was released yesterday. Of the 72 screenplays that made it on the...
Awards, Women Directors
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have released their list of films eligible for the 2014 Oscars, and of the 289 films that qualified for Oscar consideration, a paltry 25, or 8.6%,...
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. See our previous post on the...
Documentary, Features, News
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. With Hollywood in the grips of...
Music, News
It’s been a great year for female empowerment in pop. Madonna and Lady Gaga became music’s top earners, Top 40 hosted ballads and art-dance songs about female strength, former riot grrrl...
Change is the keyword in Hollywood these days. A globalizing marketplace, the exportation of work from Los Angeles to every other corner of the world, the replacement of celluloid by digital, and the...
Change is the keyword in Hollywood these days. A globalizing marketplace, the exportation of work from Los Angeles to every other corner of the world, the replacement of celluloid by digital,...
Films About Women Opening Saving Mr. Banks — Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith A perfectly cast Emma Thompson plays Mary Poppins writer P.L. Travers, who is locked in a epic, 20-year...
Awards, Documentary, Features
It’s at times like these that twenty-six letters seems awfully few. Not that this list is intended as an encyclopedia. Instead, please see it as a mere sample of the films worth seeing, the...
Comedy, News, Television
Public protests from castmembers, widespread media scrutiny, and the existence of many talented black comediennes have finally convinced longtime SNL producer Lorne Michaels to add an...
The Alliance of Women Film Journalists, in which our own Melissa Silverstein is a member, has announced their Best-of-2013 list. The big takeaway? Female critics have more or less the same tastes as...
Awards
Ifthere’s a lesson to be learned from likely multiple-Oscar nominee Saving Mr. Banks — other than, grammatically speaking, the climatic Mary Poppins song “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” should...
Geena Davis wrote a must-read essay for The Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100” issue, in which she notes that women and girls only make up 17% of all film characters over...
Madonna didn’t become the Material Girl for nothing. At 55, she’s still going strong — and making bank. After her last album, “MDNA,” debuted at the top of the pop charts, Madonna...
Documentary, Interviews, News
British director Lucy Walker is best-known for her Oscar-nominated film Waste Land, a profile of artist Vik Muniz’s work with Brazilian catadores, or workers who collect recyclables from...
Awards, Television
The 2014 Golden Globe Awards have us excited about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s return to hosting duties and… that’s about it. With no women directors (minus Frozen co-helmer Jennifer Lee) or...
There’s a sadly routine, but still important article, in Variety today about the lack of women-directed films this award season. Only two narrative features are being discussed at all, Nicole...
The ratings for Nashville, ABC’s drama about the personal and professional tribulations of artists on all rungs of the career ladder in the titular city’s country music scene, aren’t exactly...
The Hollywood Reporter released its annual “Women in Entertainment Power 100” ranking, which the publication described as a reflection of “a TV industry in flux, ongoing volatility at the film...
In recent years there has been a surge of renewedappreciation for the rape-revenge film and, surprisingly, most of thesechampions have been women. The genre was validated to some extent (albeit...
Ava DuVernay will receive the Adrienne Shelly Foundation’s Third Annual Woman of Vision Salute. Named after actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, the non-profit organization helps support women...
Box Office, News
My latest piece from Forbes: The big news last week was rightfully the passage of a towering figure in history, Nelson Mandela. So it’s not surprising that most people — including...
News, Trailers, Videos
The Wachowski siblings are back with a new film, Jupiter Ascending, that looks much more conventional in form than their last project, the time-shifting Cloud Atlas. Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones,...
Festivals, News
Actress Melissa Leo has already proven her awesomeness in The Fighter, Frozen River, and one very special, very scary episode of Louie. (If you’ve seen it, you definitely know which one I’m...
Documentary, Festivals, News
A disappointingly few number of women-directed narrative and nonfiction features will debut at Sundance. Only three women filmmakers from a total of sixteen will enjoy the prestige that comes with...
Comedy, News
HBO bucked the general biopic trend of focusing on a subject’s early struggles this year with Behind the Candelabra, which explored the last years of Liberace’s life. Now the studio will do the...
If the so-called Golden Age of Television — a cultural epoch that deconstructed traditional masculinity while reveling in violence and guilt (The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad...
Gender gaps don’t just plague the film industry, but the field of film criticism too. As we reported earlier this year, the numbers are pretty dire: The study took a look at the 2,000 reviews...
The Fourth Annual Athena Film Festival will present former Paramount and 20th Century Fox chief Sherry Lansing with the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as salute Sundance Executive...
Near nudity is the new normal. The race to the skimpiest bottoms among female pop stars (and video vixens in the background) arguably began in the eighties, when Madonna writhed around on a MTV VMA...
Awards, Documentary, News
The first major award weekend yielded honors for directors Susanne Bier (Love is All You Need), Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda), Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell), Jehane Noujaim (The Square). Results from...
Few actresses can get me as instantly excited about a film as Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska. I’ll see almost anything she’s in, though I’ll admit to being turned off her...
News, Videos
If you haven’t seen Frozen yet and you needed something to tip you towards the theatre, Disney has released the most powerful sequence and centerpiece of the film — Idina Menzel as Elsa...
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