BY Women and Hollywood
5 Things Melissa Rosenberg Should Do with Her Jessica Jones Show for Netflix
It was terrific to get the news last week that Marvel, which has devoted its big-screen franchises to the adventures of white dudes in Spandex and body armor, would not just be producing four new...
Friday Fun: Flash Mob Recreates ‘When Harry Met Sally’
No, not Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s chatty, batty twelve-year courtship. Twenty women from a performance group called Improv Everywhere, a “New York City-based prank collective that causes...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Merete Mueller
Merete Mueller is a writer and award-winning filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. With a background in fiction-writing and journalism, Merete has worked as the Managing Editor of elephant journal, a...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Suzan Beraza
Born in Jamaica and raised in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, social and environmental issues pervade Suzan’s work. Her films have appeared on National Public Television and on the...
Trailer Watch: Francesca Gregorini’s The Truth About Emanuel
Lots of people have from mommy issues, but none quite like Emanuel’s (Kaya Scodelario). In the dramatic thriller The Truth About Fishes (formerly Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes), the angry,...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Ky Dickens
Award-winning filmmaker Ky Dickens directed the documentary Fish Out of Water, which uses animation, LGBT narratives and historical analysis to deconstruct the seven Bible verses used to condemn...
The Big O: When it Comes to Oscar Dames, Dench Rules
According toRodgers and Hammerstein, there is nothing like a dame. According toOscar, few dames are grander than Judi Dench. Of the 14 Academy Award-nominated actresses who have held the lofty...
Lily Allen Calls Out Sexism in the Music Industry, Undermines Her Message with Questionable Video
Lily Allen has staked a claim in mainstream music as pop’s most adorable tomboy, first arriving on YouTube in a flouncy dress and mall sneakers. Her public persona balances the sweetness in her...
TV: Maya Rudolph to Return to NBC in Variety Show
SNL comedienne and Up All Night actress Maya Rudolph is the latest entertainer to attempt a resuscitation of the primetime variety show. She and SNL producer Lorne Michaels have sold a vehicle for...
A Report from the Diversify Summit
Screen International and Broadcast hosted a diversity summit at the BAFTA headquarters yesterday, Diversify — Improving Diversity in Film and TV. The event was sold out and attendees were...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Dawn Porter
DawnPorter is the founder of Trilogy Films and the director/producer of Gideon’s Army, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO. Before becoming a filmmaker, she was...
Judi Dench Releases Funny or Die Video in Ongoing Philomena Ratings Battle (UPDATED)
UPDATE: Hours after Judi Dench and Steve Coogan’s Funny or Die video was released, the MPAA backed down and lowered Philomena’s rating from R to PG-13. Read the original post below. Philomena...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Stephanie Martin
Born in Sao Paulo and raised mostly in Buenos Aires, Stephanie discovered her passion for film while at Wellesley College where she studied French and Political Science. Following graduation,...
Trailer Watch: Divergent
Teenage girls of the future continue to get the raw deal in Divergent, the big-screen adaptation of Veronica Roth’s best-selling YA trilogy. Shailene Woodley plays Tris, a “divergent” who...
Trailer Watch: Angelina Jolie as Maleficent
Angelina Jolie is all cheekbones and horns in the new teaser trailer for Disney’s Maleficent. The film follows the Wicked template of lending sympathy for the evil queen/stepmother/middle-aged...
Round-Up of October Movies Directed by Women
There areseveral milestones among the 22 films directed by women that were released inOctober. Among the ten features is Carrie,the first wide-release (3,157 theaters) studio film from a female...
Sunlight Jr. and Sherrybaby Director Laurie Collyer Shines a Light on the Unseen America
Laurie Collyer is best known for writing and directing Sherrybaby, for which actress Maggie Gyllenhaal received a Golden Globe nomination. She also directed the documentary Nuyorican Dream (1999)....
AFI Women Directors: Meet Patrice Toye
Patrice Toye was born in 1967 and studied film in Brussels. She has made several short films, documentaries and television programs. In 1995, she wrote the feature Tin Soldier with the support of...
My Latest Forbes Column: A Closer Look at the Bechdel Rating
Last week four non-profit movie theatres in Sweden (yes, Sweden again) released a ratings system named after the Bechdel Test. For those uninitiated, to pass the Bechdel Test, a film has to have two...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Karlyn Michelson
Karlyn Michelson is an Emmy Award-winning multimedia producer and video journalist. (AFI) Charlie Victor Romeo is playing AFI as part of the American Independents program. Women and Hollywood:...
Quote of the Day: Shonda Rhimes
Today in “duh tinged with schadenfreude,” Shonda Rhimes reveals that gray-haired male ABC execs have no idea what women are like or what they want to watch. In an interview to NPR,...
Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling Talk Feminism, Role Models, and Being the Boss
Yesterday, RollingStone.com published a revealing excerpt from Rookie: Yearbook Two, the second book from Tavi Gevinson’s teen site, in which Lena Dunham (HBO’s Girls) interviewed Mindy Kaling...
Study: PG-13 Movies Have More Gun Violence than R-Rated Ones; Sex Still Taboo
On the heels of yesterday’s story about Judi Dench and Harvey Weinstein’s battle against the logo-phobic pearl-clutchers at the MPAA comes another example of the rating board’s skewed...
Nancy Meyers and Reese Witherspoon to Team Up for Workplace Comedy
Actress Reese Witherspoon is in talks to star in writer-director Nancy Meyers’ next project, a workplace comedy currently titled The Intern. (The name will probably be changed so as to avoid...
(You Oughta Know) There Will Be an Alanis Morisette Musical on Broadway
Alanis Morisette is riding the current wave of nineties nostalgia to Broadway. Her 1995 alt-rock album Jagged Little Pill, which helped usher angry rock chicks into mainstream radio and led to a...
Actresses Tackle a Difficult Subject in The Book Thief
Hereis a small fact: You are going to die. Witha first line like that in a novel, you know it’s going to be serious. Andimportant. The Book Thief,based on the book by Martin Zusak, opened...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Jillian Mayer
Jillian Mayer steeps her artistic practice in the verisimilitude of a generation that came of age in the 1980s. Her video works have premiered at galleries and museums internationally and at film...
TV Roundup: Patricia Cornwell, Zooey Deschanel, and Nahnatchka Khan Sell Shows to Networks
Bestselling author Patricia Cornwell, New Girl star Zooey Deschanel, and Don’t Trust the B — — in Apt 23 creatorNahnatchka Khan are among several women who recently announced...
Jennifer Lynch, Mary Harron to Contribute to All-Female Horror Anthology
There’s no shortage of women in horror — on screen or in theater seats, that is. “We know that women make up about half of the audience for horror films, and yet the female creative voice...
Judi Dench takes on the MPAA for ‘Philomena’
In the superb upcoming drama Philomena, where an elderly woman embarks on atrans-Atlantic search for a son who was adopted against her will fifty years previously, star Judi Dench doesn’t kill...
Trailer Watch: ‘Veronica Mars’ Looks like ‘Choosing Boyfriends: The Movie’
VeronicaMars is one of the best female characters to arrive on the pop culturallandscape in the past decade. Played with indelible humor by Kristen Bell,Veronica was a too-smart-to-be-cynical teen...
Directors Susanne Bier and Clio Barnard Nominated by European Film Awards, British Indie Awards
Award season is often the most frustrating time for Women and Hollywood, with so many nominations and prizes distributed to the same stubbled faces we see every few years. The European Film Awards...
The Strong Women in Thor The Dark World
We’restill a long way off from a female-led superhero film. There’s just no wayaround it — even if the studios started working on it now, it would be pushingit to get it out by 2015. So...
Lynne Ramsay Responds to Jane Got a Gun Lawsuit
Lynne Ramsay issued a short statement this weekend in response to the lawsuit filed last week by the producers of Jane Got a Gun. Here’s the short statement: Lynne Ramsay has not been served with...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Kasia Roslaniec
Kasia Roslaniec was born in Poland in 1980. She graduated from Warsaw Film School and also studied at the Wajda School. Her graduation film, Mall Girls, won Best Debut Director at the Polish Film...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Jenni Toivoniemi
Jenni Toivoniemi studied screenwriting in several international workshops, including Torino Film Lab’s Script & Pitch and Berlinale Talent Campus Script Station. She is about to complete her...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Katrin Gebbe
Katrin Gebbe attended the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Arts and Design in the Netherlands and received her master’s degree in directing at the Hamburg Media School. Her short, Sores &...
Weekly Update for November 8: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women OpeningThis Weekend Ass Backwards — Written byCasey Wilson and June Diane Raphael Two best friends (Kate andChloe) embark on a cross country trip back to their hometown to...
The Big O: Natalie Portman Swings the Hammer When it Comes to Her Post-Oscar Career
NataliePortman is in the midst of a very important performance, one that could decideher future in the movie industry. And, no, it isn’t her return to the bigscreen after a two-year break as Jane...
Miranda Otto Talks About Playing Elizabeth Bishop in Reaching for the Moon
Reaching for the Moon tells the story of the explosive love affair between Pulitzer Prize winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (Mirnada Otto) and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloria Pires) in...
Marvel Introduces Kamala Khan, a Muslim-American Superheroine
You’d never know it from Marvel’s (white)sausage-fest movies, but the comic-book company has reinvented itself in recentyears as Team Diversity. Vulture noted last month that, “in a cheeky bit...
All Five Docs Nominated for Cinema Eye’s Top Prize Directed or Produced by a Woman
Nonfiction filmmakingtends to be the one bright spot for women in Hollywood, with female documentarydirectors nearing parity with their male counterparts. The nominations forCinema Eye’s 7th...
Director Joan Carr-Wiggin Shooting Female Friendship Film
Femalefriendship is the subject of writer-director Joan Carr-Wiggin’s fourth film, If You See Her. Carr-Wiggin’s follow upto this year’s romantic comedy If I WereYou will star JanetMontgomery...
Caitlin Moran and Mary Beard Join Award Panel for Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Since1996, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Orange Prizefor Fiction, has awarded “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’swriting from throughout...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Michelle Morgan
Michelle Morgan is sick of being just a screenwriter, even though she writes scripts for major studios. Most recently, her screenplay Imogene was brought to life by the talents of Kristen Wiig and...
Producers of Jane Got a Gun Sue Lynne Ramsay
The saga of Jane Got a Gun and Lynne Ramsay continues and it’s not pretty. If you recall, Lynne Ramsay left the production right before the start of production. Reports were that Ramsay never got...
Navigating Hollywood’s Cutthroat Corners with Ms. in the Biz
Helenna Santos-Levy launched her online magazine, Ms. in the Biz, just six months ago, with thesimple goal of connecting women working in Hollywood with one another. Today ithas 61,000 readers in...
Trailer Watch: Maidentrip
In 2010, Laura Dekker made history by becoming the youngest person to sail around the world. She was 16, though she might have been even younger were it not for the interference of the Dutch...
Essence Magazine Launches Short Film Competition
In the November issue of Essence, the magazine published a study on how black female audiences viewed their counterparts on the big and small screens. Unsurprisingly, the results were dispiriting....
Director John Sayles: “I Don’t Think There’s an Independent Movie Business Anymore”
Between superhero fatigue, the low cost of digital filmmaking, and the new distribution medium of video on demand, we’re supposed to be living in the Golden Age of indie cinema. But director John...
Two Woman Directors Eligible for Next Year’s Animation Oscar
Among the 19 animated features submitted for the Oscar consideration yesterday, two were directed or co-directed by women. Both Nancy Savard, who helmed the Canadian production The Legend of...