BY Women and Hollywood
Trailer Watch: The Other Woman
Natalie Portman is in a couple of movies early this year. This one has been on the shelf for a while and is based on Ayelet Waldman’s book Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Was released on demand...
Sexism Watch: The Black List
Once upon a time in Hollywood the black list was a very bad thing. If your name was on the black list (that supposedly never existed) you couldn’t get a gig in Hollywood. It was a sucky time and...
Helen Mirren Kicks Ass At the Women in Entertainment Breakfast
My day is made. You have to watch this video. I love this woman. Mirren received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award yesterday morning at the annual Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment...
Black Swan
Black Swan is director Darren Aronofsky’s homage to the ballet world. Yes, the film is beautiful to look at, but to me, it came off as a sad look at a young woman so dedicated to her craft that in...
Disney Swears off Princesses
In a move that should have progressive minded parents across the country and the world cheering, Disney last week said that they would no longer be producing fairy tale movies, and folks that means...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Ryan Gosling
The Weinstein Co. is taking on the MPAA for both Blue Valentine’s NC-17 rating and The King’s Speech R rating. They are so serious that they hired three top tier lawyers including David Boies to...
For Colored Girls — Review
The actresses who star in the new film For Colored Girls have been saying on the press tour that the film is not just for colored girls. I find it crazy that women have to stand up and say that a...
Jodie Foster Stands Up for Mel Gibson
Jodie Foster has made her first public statement about her friend Mel Gibson in light of the recent scandal involving his alleged abuse of his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. She told More Magazine...
Stephen Colbert Asks Aaron Sorkin About the Ladies in The Social Network
Guess I’m not the only one who noticed the fact that there are so few women in The Social Network. Stephen Colbert hit up Aaron Sorkin about the lack of women on his show last night. Colbert: Can...
The Social Network
If I take off my feminist hat, I am here to report that The Social Network is a very good movie. It will be at the top of the Oscar heap and might go all the way to the finish line. One reason is...
Eat Pray Love
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...
If Women Like It, It Must Be Stupid
That is the title of the accompanying piece that talks to best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert in this week’s Entertainment Weekly which has Julia Roberts and Eat Pray Love on the cover. That...
Leave Ellen Page Alone!
NY Mag’s Vulture (which by the way has some of the most provocative and great reporting about pop culture) pissed me off earlier this week with their piece on Ellen Page’s “asexual” wardrobe...
The Sylvia Chronicles: 30 Years of Graphic Misbehavior from Reagan to Obama by Nicole Hollander
I have been a big fan of Nicole Hollander’s for some time. Her Sylvia cartoons appear in 30 newspapers across the country including The Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle (online) The San Francisco...
Paramount Pictures Has a Gender (and Race) Problem
The folks at Racebending who advocate for just and equal opportunities in film and TV, have been tracking race issues related to the recently released film The Last Airbender. While doing their...
Winter’s Bone
Winter’s Bone is by far the best film this year, and while that might not be saying much this being June, any film coming in the fall had better be really, really good cause it’s going to be hard...
The Sex and the City Aftermath — Misogyny Unleashed
No matter whether or not you liked or even saw Sex and the City 2 what you can’t have missed is the cultural conversation that film has caused in all quarters. We’ve been talking about women...
Screenwriter John August Ponders the Bechdel Test
I haven’t written anything before about the Bechdel test which in a nutshell is a way of determining if women matter in a film. The test was designed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel and it has become...
Victoria’s Secret Congratulates Megan Fox’s Transformers Replacement
File this under yuck and gross. I guess this is what happens when you have a lingerie model get a gig in the movie. The company that she pitches for takes advantage of her new exposure. This video...
Fired for Being Too Skinny
The Megan Fox saga continues. The Wrap is reporting that the reason why Megan Fox was let go from Transformers 3 was because she showed up looking “pale,” “underweight” and “unhealthy”...
The Consequences of Speaking Out
The news last week was that Megan Fox is off the third Transformers movie. This being Hollywood both camps have differing responses to her departure. Her side told The Wrap that said she walked away...
When Woody Allen Is Defending You…
Roman Polanski’s name is in the news again. At the Cannes Film Festival another petition on Polanski’s behalf is being circulated by Bernard-Henri Levy, and directors like Jean-Luc Godard,...
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The Politics of Hit Girl
There aren’t many times when I go to a movie and I leave speechless. But that did happen to me recently when I saw the film Kick Ass. For those of you that don’t know, the film is about an...
Piling on Sandra Bullock
I feel so bad for Sandra Bullock that I can barely read another piece of news about Jessegate. It seems that this guy is rivaling Tiger Woods and John Edwards for dooshbag of the year. The Nazi...
Please Give Written and Directed by Nicole Holofcener
To me a new film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener is a reason to rejoice. One reason is because she unapologetically tells stories from a female perspective. But one would be remiss and quite...
Degenderizing Disney
I find it pretty hysterical that the folks at Disney are freaking out and changing the names of their movies so they don’t alienate boys who won’t come and see a movie with the name princess in...
Text of Theresa Rebeck Laura Pels Keynote Address
Last night I saw someone do something very brave. My friend, Theresa Rebeck, a very successful playwright, TV writer and novelist, got up in front of a group of theatre people and talked about...
Guess What? Women Buy More Movie Tickets Than Men
You know that whole conversation about how women don’t go to the movies and are not a film market? You know that conversation that we hear over and over as the big reason why we are inundated with...
TV’s Top Showrunners
Showrunners are at many times the people who create the TV shows. But at all times they are the ones who keep things moving forward and lay out the vision and run the writer’s room. They are...
Christina Hendricks Says, Hey Haters! Lay Off My Body
Gotta love that in NY during fashion week when the skinny girls are running around the runways that the woman who makes the cover of NY Magazine’s fashion issue is a normal sized woman. Let’s...
Sexism Watch: Vanity Fair’s New Hollywood Cover
It’s not the picture that bothers me (except the women do look really glassy eyed) as much as the tired bullshit teaser heading that accompanies the photo: Annie Leibovitz photographs the nine...
A Big Bold Crack in the Glass Ceiling — Kathryn Bigelow Wins DGA Prize
This is big. This is Sally Ride, first American woman in space big. This is Sandra Day O’Connor, first female on the Supreme Court big. This is Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs big. This is a...
Defending Mo’Nique
One of the ongoing narratives of this awards season has been about Mo’Nique. About how great her performance is, and also about how supposedly ungrateful she is because she hasn’t been...
Rachel McAdams — Maintaining Her Privacy With Her Success
I remember when I first saw her in Mean Girls. She was terrifically mean. She scared the crap out of my teenage self. Then she broke my heart in The Notebook. I have always admired her film choices....
The Women of Avatar
I totally LOVED Avatar. It was a great forward thinking film with tons of passion and made me excited to be in a movie theatre. I can’t wait to see it again (my friend and I tried several times...
Interview with Sandra Laing- Real Life Subject of Skin
Skin is the heartbreaking true story of Sandra Laing (played by Sophie Okonedo) as a woman with black skin born to white parents in apartheid S. Africa. She is a white girl who looked black. As a...
Fat Actors vs Skinny Actresses
The NY Times had a piece this weekend that echoes my piece in the Guardian last Friday — the double standard for female vs. male actors regarding weight. It’s pretty simple: Guys can be fat,...