News
Cultural historian Lori Rotskoff talks with Holly Rosen Fink about her new anthology, co-edited with Laura L. Lovett, When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the...
The Librarian of Congress, James Billington, picked the next batch of 25 films to be inducted into the National Film Registry. 3 of the 25 films chosen by Billington are directed by women. There are...
Angelina Jolie is set to direct Unbroken, her first major studio film. The film is for Universal and Walden Media. Based on Laura Hillenbrand’s best-selling 2010 book, Unbroken looks at...
Martha Nelson has just been named the new Editor-in-Chief of Time magazine. Nelson, will be the first woman to hold the post in the 70 plus years that the weekly has existed. Nelson, who has been...
Features
DC playwrights are watching their "in" boxes this week, awaiting word about whether they've been accepted into Arena Stage's playwrights' group. Six locals will be invited to...
The Women’s Film Critics Circle have announced their 2012 picks. And as she continues to sweep the awards circuit, Kathryn Bigelow and Zero Dark Thirty won several awards including Best Movie...
The Sundance Institute has picked 12 projects to participate in their January Screenwriters Lab. The workshop provides writers the opportunity to find financing and other resources for their films....
The folks at The Black List, which recently launched a paid script service, yesterday revealed the names of the top unproduced scripts according to 290 experts in the film business. Another...
I hadn’t heard of Mark O’Brien before I saw The Sessions. I only knew that the film starred John Hawkes (of Deadwood, Winter’s Bone, and Martha Marcy May Marlene fame) and Helen...
Zero Dark Thirty hits theatres in NY and LA tomorrow. In anticipation here is the final trailer for the must talked about (even before it is released) film. I got the chance to see Zero...
On Friday the Academy released the list of the 282 films that have qualified for best picture. Animated, Documentaries and Foreign language films are also eligible for best picture if they meet...
When Samantha Barks sings “On My Own” in the new film Les Misérables, it will be hard for anyone to ask why this virtual unknown was chosen to play the key role. Barks originally...
The African-American Film Critics Association announced their best of 2012 yesterday. Leading with 4 awards is Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere. Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty was...
Chicken & Egg Pictures, one of our favorite nonprofits supporting women filmmakers, announced $220,000 in grant funds to 25 documentaries directed by women. And while we usually...
My fellow blogger Sasha Stone has another great piece (how do you write so much great stuff Sasha?) over on her blog Awards Daily called Female Trouble: Why Powerful Women Threaten Hollywood. ...
Abbie Cornish is one of the most talented and interesting young women working in film today. She was introduced to the world in Cate Shortland's Sommersault but broke through in Jane...
The best career advice I got before graduating from film school (besides the cliché but true “It’s not a sprint it’s a marathon”) went something like this: You need to...
I kind of think that the awards will be the after story of this year's Golden Globe ceremony which is scheduled for Janaury 13. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are already acting as awesome golden...
The 63rd annual Berlin International Film Festival has just announced the first six films in their competition line up. Thus far, it’s not looking good for women. Of the 7 films announced...
Spain's Oscar submission, Blancanieves, is a revisioning of the classic fairy tale Snow White. This iteration set in 1920's Spain, centers around a young female bullfighter, Carmen (Macarena...
Dear Nominators of the NAACP Image Awards: With all due respect, what the fuck were you thinking? It's 6am here on the east coast and I am finally getting to read the nominations for the 44th...
There’s a lot of Oscar buzz centered around the soon to be released Les Misérables, particularly for Anne Hathaway whose character, Fantine, is actually in the film the least amount of...
Flight, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Denzel Washington, offers a harrowing and honest portrait of addiction. Washington stars as Whip, a brilliant airline pilot who suffers from a...
Abbie Cornish stars in The Girl, as a young mother, Ashley, who loses custody of her young son because of a lack of money. When she decides to smuggle immigrants over the border for money, things...
Sony is reportedly negotiating with Becky Johnston to take over writing duties for Salt 2. Jolie has been in talks to reprise her role as a CIA agent turned Russian sleeper cell agent. In 2011,...
The iconic “Free to Be You and Me,” from Marlo Thomas is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The song, TV show and book was a staple for many growing up, celebrating our differences and to...
A.O. Scott in the lead story of the NY Times Magazine this past weekend wrote a very interesting piece on how Hollywood has finally embraced women, well not exactly women, heroines. The piece...
Shonda Rhimes got asked this question from a clearly idiotic viewer and being Shonda Rhimes she took the opportunity to use the question to answer a much larger societal question. Question: love...
We are officially in the center of awards season and yesterday both the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association and the American Film Institute announced their winners in film (AFI also...
Based on the novel by Elsa Lewin, I, Anna follows Anna (the great Charlotte Rampling) who gets entangled in the middle of a murder case and falls for the lead detective (Gabriel Byrne). I, Anna is...
Variety announced 10 directors and screenwriters to watch for the upcoming year. Out of the 20, 4 women were included, 2 for each. The directors will be profiled in the January 3rd issue of...
The year end awards keep rolling in. The Boston Film Critics, New York Film Critics Online and Los Angeles Film Critics all announced their winners over the weekend. Kathryn Bigelow and Zero Dark...
At the U.K.’s 22nd annual Women in Film and Television Awards, fifteen women were honored from all aspects of television and film. Amongst the winners were Clare Balding, a sports presenter,...
Here's some of the women-centric television news that we didn't get the chance to cover last week. Molly Ringwald Developing John Hughes–esque Lifetime Drama...
Here's some of the women-centric film news that we thought people should know about: Jane Goldman to Write 'Pinocchio' for Robert Downey Jr. and Tim Burton (The Hollywood...
If women ran Hollywood is a question worth pondering and one we often do here at Women and Hollywood. Apparently it’s been a question on the minds of those over at The Hollywood Reporter, so...
The Loving Story is a powerful and beautifully wrought film about two people – Richard and Mildred Loving – who just wanted to be married and live in their home state of Virginia. ...
My fellow comedian Jen Kirkman is boycotting Twitter until men stop using it as a medium to be awful to her because she’s a woman yet still has the audacity to express her views on occasion. Or...
The New York Times awarded their 2012 Outstanding Playwright Award to Amy Herzog for her play After the Revolution. After the Revolution, an off-Broadway hit, follows an extremely...
Festivals
As we previously reported, The Athena Film Festival (co-founded by our own Melissa Silverstein) is gearing up for its third year. Here’s where you come in! If you are in the New York...
Kathryn Bigelow is on a roll. After receiving Best Director, Best Film and Best Cinematography (for Greig Fraser) for Zero Dark Thirty from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday, the film...
The happy glow has still not worn off the news that women directors have achieved gender parity in the US dramatic and documentary competitions. (But we must also remember that women are still...
In a ploy to make himself relevant again after being turned down to write the screeplay for 50 Shades of Grey, Bret Easton Ellis took to twitter and slammed director Kathryn Bigelow. Here's the...
Canada’s 12th Annual Top 10 Film list was announced this week. Films by Sarah Polley, Deepa Mehta and Nisha Pahuja were included on the list. TIFF will screen the films in Toronto from...
The first time I told some friends that I was working on a film about a man in an iron lung trying to lose his virginity, I got looks that were somewhere between incredulity and pity. I could tell...
Los Angeles’ AFI Film Festival gave me the chance to see two documentary films directed by women: The Central Park Five co-directed by Sarah Burns, Ken Burns and David McMahon and West of...
The Hollywood Reporter has unveiled the top ten of their 21st annual Top 100 Women in Entertainment. The honorees will join one another at a breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which will honor...
Sundance announced the films in their Premieres and Documentary Premieres categories. With films directed by Jane Campion and Naomi Foner amongst many women-centric films and a documentary...
Black Rock, directed by Katie Aselton (who also stars), is a thriller about three best friends (Lake Bell, Kate Bosworth and Aselton) who take a weekend together to revisit a childhood getaway that...
You can't watch Hitchcock without thinking what life would be like had Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife lived today. From the film you see how much a partner she is in life (expected) and...
Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences released the 15 films on the short list in the Documentary feature category for this year’s Oscars. Only three films on the shortlist are...
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