BY Women and Hollywood
Maggie Smith Gets the Star Treatment for Quartet
77 year old Maggie Smith has had a great year in TV and film. She rocks in Downton Abbey and she has a shot at a supporting nod for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Now it looks like...
9 Women Included on The Hollywood Reporter’s 25 Most Powerful Authors
The Hollywood Reporter announced their inaugural list of Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. They based the selection of living authors on how successful they’ve been in getting their...
Kathryn Bigelow Becomes First Woman to Win Two Best Director Nods from New York Film Critics Circle
Yesterday, the New York Film Critics Circle, a group of 35 critics (but just 8 women) named Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty the best film of the year. Bigelow also picked up the best...
Lena Dunham Named one of Entertainment Weekly’s Entertainers of the Year
Entertainment Weekly named Lena Dunham one of their 2012 Entertainers of the Year in their recent issue. Considering the massive success Dunham had this year, she's very deserving of this...
Sight & Sound’s Best of 2012 Includes No Women Directed Films
Sight & Sound released their Best of 2012 list over the weekend. In similar fashion to the summer rage over the update of their top 50 list and then the expansion of that to 250 films,...
Is the Marketing for Starlet a Turn Off for Women?
It has become hard for me to go and see movies with my friends because I see so many of them ahead of time for work. During Thanksgiving week my friends and I were trying to find a movie we...
Jennifer Lee Named Director of Disney’s Frozen
Last week, Disney announced that Jennifer Lee, writer of the hit Wreck-It Ralph, will be co-directing their 53rd full length animated feature film, Frozen. Lee will become the 2nd woman to helm...
Women in Film International Chapters Hit DC
I'm here this weekend.
Interview with Liz Garbus – Director of Love, Marilyn
Liz Garbus takes a well worn subject — Marilyn Monroe — and brings a whole new substance and understanding to this woman through her own words. Using material that has never before...
The Hollywood Reporter’s Director Roundtable Omits Women
Yesterday was a good day with the Sundance numbers news. But we were reminded not to get overexcited about those numbers since women directors only made up 17% of the worldwide competition and...
Theresa Rebeck on Leaving Smash and New Play, Dead Accounts
Smash creator and former showrunner, Theresa Rebeck recently revealed some of the reasons why she stepped down as showrunner in March (replaced by Gossip Girl’s Josh Safran). Mind you...
Sundance Lineup is a Win for Women Directors and for Everybody Who Cares About Movies
For the last couple of years (the time that I have written this blog) I have lived in a world full of disappointment when it comes to film festivals which you can also extrapolate to a world full of...
Women Make Movies Up for $1,000,000 Prize from American Giving Awards
Women Make Movies, an incredible New York based non-profit that supports and distributes women directed documentaries from around the world, is one of the 25 finalists for the 2012 American Giving...
Stacie Passon Wins Two Women Directing Awards
Stacie Passon has had a big couple of weeks. First on November 20 she won this year’s IFP Labs/Adrienne Shelly Foundation Director’s Grant for her film Concussion at the...
Athena Film Festival Honors Gale Anne Hurd with The Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award
The third annual Athena Film Festival, co-founded by our own Melissa Silverstein, has announced the recipients for this year’s Athena Film Festival Awards, which honor actors, directors,...
The Hollywood Reporter 2012 Actress Roundtable: Addressing Sexism, the Fight for Parts and Creating Media
Last week, The Hollywood Reporter released their annual Actress Roundtable issue. This year the list was all white and included Sally Field, Anne Hathaway, Naomi Watts, Marion Cotillard, Helen Hunt,...
Women Nominees from 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards
The 28th Annual Film Independent Spirit Award nominees were announced yesterday. And while some of the results are less than stellar (zero women directed films for best feature (seriously!), no women...
Trailer Watch: Love Is All You Need – Directed by Susanne Bier
We saw Susanne Biers' follow-up film to her Academy Award winning In a Better World at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival where we interviewed the director. Here is a new trailer. As of...
Kathryn Bigelow Talks Making Zero Dark Thirty with Martha Raddatz
Kathryn Bigelow talked with Martha Raddatz of ABC News about the making of her new film Zero Dark Thirty. Bigelow and screenwriter, Mark Boal, discussed how the project originally focusing...
Cross Post: Extreme Weight Loss for Roles is Not “Required” and Not Praiseworthy
Kale and dust. Hummus and radishes. Two squares of dried oatmeal paste a day. If you recognize any of these phrases, then you've probably been hit by the Anne Hathaway...
Trailer Watch: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones – Written by I. Marlene King
We have another contender to add into the post-Twilight YA film adaptation pool. This time it's Cassandra Clare's insanely popular The Mortal Instruments series. Adapted by Pretty Little...
Will Kathryn Bigelow Be a Two Time Best Director Nominee?
Right after Thanksgiving Kathryn Bigelow's long awaited follow-up to her Oscar award winning film The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty (which I will see next week) started screening and the word has...
Guest Post: 2012’s Best Actress Race: A History of Inequality
Capote. Ray. Malcolm X. Nixon. Milk. Ali. Chaplin. Do these ring a bell? They are the names of famous politicians, filmmakers, activists, authors and athletes who inspired biopics that were...
Cross Post: How To Audition Internationally
Wake up and smell the latte. Opportunity knocks all over the world, and the common passport is talent. We live in an era where casting directors can cast internationally from their own laptops and...
Watch This: See Jane Trailer from Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Geena Davis's commitment to gender in the media is truly inspiring. See Jane, an affiliated program with her Institute on Gender in the Media, focuses specifically on making sure that...
Trailer Watch: The Heat – Written by Katie Dippold, Starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy
The Heat, written by Katie Dippold and directed by Bridesmaids director Paul Feig brings together two stars Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock as a tough Boston cop and uptight FBI agent...
Guest Post: Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks: The Parallels between Children’s Brains and the Global Brain of the Internet
We’re constantly striving to push ourselves further. When we couldn’t see far enough, we invented the telescope. When we needed to speak with people who weren’t within shouting...
Cross Post: What Is Feminism?
Women are not yet on equal footing with men politically, financially, or culturally. If you have a pulse and a sense of right and wrong, there is a moral imperative to do something about this,...
Link Roundup: TV Edition- November 2012
There has been a ton of women centric TV news, some of which we haven't had the chance to cover. Here's a round up of some recent women in TV news. Diablo Cody Developing Romantic Comedy...
Hunger Games Catching Fire Teaser Poster Revealed
The Hunger Games franchise is taking up the Thanksgiving slot now vacated by the Twilight saga. One year from today the second film – Catching Fire – will be released. Here's the...
A Conversation with Melissa Rosenberg – Writer of the Twilight Series
I had the opportunity to speak with the hugely successful and very interesting screenwriter and TV writer Melissa Rosenberg last week while she was on the set of her new show Red Widow. Women...
Emotional Creature Celebrates Girls Lives
There have been so few shows and events that truly reveal what it is like to be a girl that when you see truth – the good and the bad – you immediately know that you are seeing something...
Trailer Watch: Admission Written by Karen Croner, Starring Tina Fey
Tina Fey stars in Admission, adapted by Karen Croner from a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, a film that looks to be more of a dramatic foray for Fey. She plays a college admissions officer who receives...
Bryce Dallas Howard and Ron Howard Launch Short Film Contest
Bryce Dallas Howard is following in her dad's footsteps and getting into directing. The two teamed up when Dallas Howard directed the short film, when you find me based on eight user...
Sexism Watch: The Hollywood Reporter Writer’s Roundtable 2012
I’m a scriptwriter who writes scripts that tell stories about women. Scriptwriting’s a solitary activity most of the time and it’s arduous, but the voices of other scriptwriters...
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Crushes the Box Office
Unsurprisingly, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 killed it at the box office this weekend. Overseas it grossed $340.9 million, making it the best global opening of the franchise. Back on US shores it...
Guest Post: Bella Swan and Me
This weekend, the fifth and final installment of the Twilight franchise opened, and to no one’s surprise, killed at the box office. Conversations about the film will undoubtedly focus on the...
Link Roundup: Film Edition
Here's some recent women in film news. Emmy Rossum to Star Opposite Hilary Swank in 'You're Not You' (The Hollywood Reporter) Jennifer Garner Near Deal To Star in Drama...
Watch This: Restless – Starring Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Dockery and Hayley Atwell
Well, this looks amazing. Restless, stars Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) as Ruth, a woman who discovers that her mother, Sally (the iconic Charlotte Rampling) was a spy during World War II....
Guest Post: Loaded Questions
I started working on my first feature film Fully Loaded in 2007. It was like climbing a mountain four times as high as it says in the damn guidebook. It was like changing churches. It was...
Guest Post: Backwards: Can Women Have It All? A Filmmaker’s Perspective
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s controversial article, “Why Women Can’t Have it All,” discusses the challenges facing working women and moms. While I do not yet have children, having...
A New Post Twilight Hollywood
We have finally reached the end of an important moment in film history. I know that many people dismiss the Twilight saga for a multitude of reasons – it's about vampires, it is...
Guest Post: Wanted: Female Astronauts: Geena Davis Celebrates “Add Female Characters” Month at Third Symposium on Gender in the Media
Did you know that November is Add Female Characters Month? It is according to Geena Davis, who took over the back page of Variety to declare it such. The ad ran on Tuesday, November 13, the...
Women Win Big at the National Book Awards
Let’s celebrate the female winners of the National Book Award. Louise Erdrich won the fiction award for The Round House, her fourteenth novel, about a teenage boy’s effort to...
AFI Review: Ginger and Rosa – Directed by Sally Potter
In my favorite Anne Sexton poem “Rowing,” one line in particular always sticks out to me: “I wore rubies and bought tomatoes/and now, in my middle age/about nineteen in the head...
Trailer Watch: The Host – Based on Stephenie Meyer’s Novel
The Host is not Twilight and that might be a good thing. Based on Stephenie Meyer's novel, the film follows Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), who is inhabited by an alien. Set in the future, this alien...
Apply for This Athena Film Festival Workshop — Crafting a Short: How to Find Your Story and Make It a Movie
We are gearing up for the 3rd Athena Film Festival from February 7–10, 2013. We are very excited to be partnering with the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women for a day of...
Dueling Skyfall Reviews: Feminist Mom Approved — Skyfall
Skyfall, the newest 007 blockbuster, is a fabulous, almost win-win-win for women! The film has three significant female characters and Bond himself is portrayed as a humbled, post-modern anti-hero...
Dueling Skyfall Reviews: Skyfall: A Post-Election Conservative Wet Dream
FAIR WARNING: Do not read this if you don’t want to know how the new James Bond movie Skyfall ends. Although, if you were disappointed by last week’s election results, it might give...
Alexandra Wallace Becomes First Woman in Charge of the Today Show
Alexandra Wallace, senior vice president of NBC News, was just announced as the new executive in charge of the Today show. At a whopping four hours, the program is one of the most profitable of...
Sexism Watch: Popular Media is Dominated By Men
As consumers of media we know that things are biased. That's why it is so important that we have data to backup what we are seeing and feeling. And it's great that we have people...