BY Women and Hollywood
Dispatch from the Game Developers Conference: #1ReasonToBe a Woman in Gaming
Last week, I attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This is a yearlypilgrimage for most people in games. I love writing music for games,and I do at least one major game project a...
WGA Lobbying for NY Tax Breaks for Diverse Writers’ Rooms
The Writers Guild of America-East is currently lobbying the New York State legislature to receive tax breaks for diverse writers’ rooms. Of the $420 million in tax credits currently allocated to...
Trailer Watch: Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves
A French trailer has been released for Kelly Reichardt’s fifth feature, the eco-thriller Night Moves. Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg, and Peter Sarsgaard star as a trio of extreme...
Blockbusters with Young Action Heroines Mean Pink Weapons for Girls
Hollywood has been ridiculously slow to get the message that audiences want action heroines, but toy companies have received the message loud and clear. In a fascinating look at recent changes in...
TV: Alfre Woodard to Play First Black Female POTUS on NBC’s State of Affairs
The list of black actors who have occupied the Oval Office on the big and small screen is long: Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Blair Underwood, Jamie Foxx,...
Divergent Leaps to the Top of the Box Office; Sequel Planned
Another action-romance with a female hero has dominated the weekend box office. Critics may not have liked Divergent, but audiences sure did. In addition to the $56 million weekend haul, the...
Manohla Dargis Hits It on the Head (Again) With Her Review of Divergent
How could I love her even more? Is she reading my mind? This is from her review for Divergent. Women warriors are on the rise again in American movies, and so, too, are hopes that they’ll be able...
5 Reasons to Watch Broad City
Broad City, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s webseries-turned-Comedy Central show, wraps up its debut season next Wednesday. (Fret not: the Amy Poehler-produced series has already been renewed for...
Weekly Update for March 21: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (doc) — Directed by Grace Lee American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs plunges us into...
Jem and the Holograms Movie to Be Made Without Female Creator Christy Marx
Not being a child of the 80s the news that a live action movie was going to be out of the animated Hasbro series Jem and the Holograms passed me by yesterday. But I got an email this morning (thanks...
Will Divergent be the Next YA Phenom?
I wish people would stop calling Divergent a Hunger Games knock-off. Sure, the two franchises have some similar elements, like an ass-kicking teenage heroine struggling to survive in an improbable...
ND/NF Women Directors: Meet Jessica Oreck
Jessica Oreck makes projects large and small that instill a sense of wonder and invite viewers to question their relationship with the natural world. Her most recent feature-length documentary,...
Frozen Estimated to Become Highest-Grossing Movie in Disney History
Who knew that the best holiday gift Disney could give itself was turning its back on its past? Last November’s Frozen flipped the script on the passive-princess protagonists and...
Taylor Schilling and Wiebke von Carolsfeld on Selling Stories About Women
Actress Taylor Schilling (Orange is the New Black) and writer-director Wiebke von Carolsfeld (Marion Bridge) share a mutual passion: telling women’s stories. “I was really compelled by...
Review of Freida Mock’s Anita: The Story of a Hero
The following review was originally published as part of Women and Hollywood’s Sundance 2013 coverage. When I was a young woman just starting my career, I encountered sexual harrassment like so...
5 Reasons Why Those Star Wars Casting Rumors about Lupita Nyong’o Are Worth Celebrating
Let me put all my cards down on the table. I want Lupita Nyong’o to succeed beyond her wildest dreams. I want her to enjoy a career like Jessica Chastain’s — another actress who was...
AFFRM Acquires Nailah Jefferson’s Vanishing Pearls
Nailah Jefferson’s Slamdance documentary Vanishing Pearls, which profiles the devastation wrought by the BP oil spill on the tiny fishing community of Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana, has found...
Trailer Watch: Angelina Jolie Sprouts Wings in New Maleficent Spot
While previous trailers for Maleficent focused on the surrogate mother-daughter relationship between the titular sorceress (Angelina Jolie) and Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning), the newest video for...
Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda to Reunite in Netflix Sitcom from Friends Creator
It looks like Netflix learned the right lesson from the gangbuster success of Orange is the New Black Audiences want more stories about women — all different kinds of women. The subscription...
Interview with Freida Mock, Director of Anita
I was able to see the new documentary Anita at Sundance 2013. Here are my thoughts. The film opened the 2013 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in NYC and opens this week in NY and LA. The following...
Women Comprise Majority of WGA’s 2014 Writer Access Project Honorees
Since 2009, the Writers Guild of America has held the Writer Access Project (WAP) — a competition that discovers and awards mid-level players from one of five diversity categories: minority...
Wadjda Director Haifaa Al-Mansour Announces Next Project
After making history as Saudi Arabia’s first woman director, Wadjda helmer Haifaa Al-Mansour is in final negotiations for her follow-up film: a romance between writers Percy Shelley and Mary...
Sofia Coppola to Direct Live-Action Little Mermaid Movie
For her sixth movie, Sofia Coppola will be departing from the placid, meditative films that have defined her oeuvre thus far to make a live-action version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale....
TV: Melonie Diaz to Star in HBO Drama About PTSD
Fruitvale Station co-star Melonie Diaz is in talks to star as a PTSD-afflicted veteran in the HBO drama Laughs Unlimited (working title). Oren Moverman (Rampart, The Messenger) and Anthony Swafford...
Still No Plans for a Marvel Superheroine Movie
Here are all the upcoming movies that have been announced from Marvel from now until 2018: Captain America 2, Captain America 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 3, and The Amazing...
Women and Hollywood is Hiring New Columnists
Women and Hollywood is expanding. We are looking to add several columnists who will put together longer think pieces on a variety of topics of importance to the entertainment world. These pieces...
Trailer Watch: Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep Season 3
In the third season of HBO’s Veep, Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) will run to become the first female president of the United States of America. If you think there’s anything remotely...
Reese Witherspoon Bets on Kimberly McCreight as Next YA Sensation
Can’t decide on next month’s book club selection? Let Reese Witherspoon help. For nearly a decade, Witherspoon has been producing adaptations of novels with complicated female protagonists...
Women in Film’s Finishing Fund Application Process Now Open
Women in Film is currently accepting applications for its Film Finishing Fund. Projects that are by, for, or about women and have completed 90% of principal photography with a rough cut on hand are...
Rated SR for Socially Relevant: The Birth of a New NYC Film Festival
The inaugural edition ofRated SR Socially Relevant Film Festival New York (March 14–20 at New York’sQuad Cinema) assembles 55 films from 18 countries, offering an uplifting,enlightening, and...
Petition Launched to Include Katniss Among MTV Awards’ Heroes
The MTV Awards raised the Internet’s hackles last week by snubbing The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen from its Best Hero category. Sure, the awards are “little more than a corporate-sponsored...
Weekly Update for March 14: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Veronica Mars — Co-Written by Dianne Ruggiero A new case draws Veronica Mars back to her hometown of Neptune, CA, just in time for her ten-year high school reunion....
Trailer Watch: Kristen Wiig in Hateship Loveship
Kristen Wiig helped launch the female buddy comedy with Bridesmaids, but the former SNL star has been skewing toward dramatic roles since her breakout hit. Wiig has already received great notices...
Trailer Watch: Mia Wasikowska in New Tracks Video
The Aussie travel-by-camel adventure Tracks still hasn’t found a U.S. release date, but it does have going for it a newly cut trailer. Everyting we previously wrote about the film still holds...
Trailer Watch: Nicole Kidman as Grace of Monaco
If there’s one thing Game of Thrones has taught us, it’s that being a princess really, really sucks. Grace of Monaco makes the same point with a drama set in an era closer to our own time. The...
Guest Post: Pass the Bechdel Test — A Grassroots Campaign Aimed at the Film Industry
The marginalization of women at the movies hasn’t changed since the 1940s. That’s what Dr. Martha Lauzen’s latest research paper, “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” for the Center for...
Why Shailene Woodley is Wrong to Blast Twilight
Shailene Woodley’s Divergent opens next week, which means the Descendants and Spectacular Now actress has been making the media rounds. Woodley certainly gave bloggers a lot to talk about on...
Trailer Watch: Juliette Binoche in A Thousand Times Goodnight
Emotional detachment is a career advantage for journalists and photographers, but less welcome within the demanding confines of domestic life. That’s what war photographer Rebecca (Juliette...
New York Indian Film Festival to Salute Gurinder Chadha
On the 20th anniversary of Bhaji on the Beach, her BAFTA-nominated dramedy about a group of South Asian women who take a day trip to the British seashore, Indian-British director Gurinder Chadha...
Reinventing A Life: Lies I Told My Little Sister
I’ve been a nonfiction writerall my life. I write books and humor essays. I never envisioned becoming ascreenwriter. But at age 60, I seem to have rewritten my obituary. I am ascreenwriter now,...
A Woman Astronaut: Life as a Woman Composer in Hollywood
When I first arrived in Hollywood, I had a Ph.D. in music composition, a keyboard, and one connection. While that might not seem like much, it was more than I had when I moved to the United States...
TV: Trailer Watch: Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black Season 2
The clone drama Orphan Black, starring Golden Globe nominee Tatiana Maslany as seven different women (and counting!), helped put BBC America on the must-see map. Maslany plays seven...
Trailer Watch: Catherine Deneuve in On My Way
After opening the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema film festival (March 6–16), the Catherine Deneuve vehicle On My Way will be released on March 14. Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot, On My Way is a...
Women-Directed Films Win Top Prizes at SXSW
Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers’ hipster comedy Fort Tilden and Margaret Brown’s Gulf-spill documentary The Great Invisible took home the top prizes at SXSW this year. In an interview...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Sarah-Violet Bliss
Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers are filmmakers based in Brooklyn who met at NYU Graduate Film school. They have each written and directed award-winning short films that have screened at...
Anne Sweeney: Leaning in by Leaning Out
Yesterday, Anne Sweeney — the Co-Chair of Disney Media Networks, President of Disney/ABC Television Group, Bob Iger’s Number Two, and the most powerful woman in Hollywood according to The...
Should We Have Higher Expectations of Mindy Kaling and Other Women in Charge?
Mindy Kaling has every right to be mad that she’s reminded of her gender and race pretty much every time she’s asked a question in public. “One of the things that has been helpful to me is...
Lena Dunham’s Feminist Week: From SNL to SXSW
Girls’ fictional protagonist Hannah Horvath proclaimed she was “the voice of my generation” in a fit of self-delusion and opium tea, but her creator Lena Dunham is proving she has a lot of...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Doris Dorrie
Doris Dorrie has made more than 30 feature films since 1976 to become one of the most famous filmmakers in her native Germany. Her films include Bliss, How to Cook Your Life, Naked, and Am I...
Lynne Ramsay and Jane Got a Gun Producers Settle Lawsuit
Screen Daily reports that director Lynne Ramsay and the producers of Jane Got a Gun have reached a settlement. Ramsay signed on to helm the 2011 Black List action western in March 2012, but...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Iva Radivojevic
Iva Radivojevic is a NYC-based filmmaker who explores themes of identity, migration and immigrants. Her films have screened at various venues, including Rotterdam, HotDocs, PBS, Documentary Channel...