Features
May 2014 Film Preview
If you’re lucky enough to live in a city with several arthouse theaters, May is a veritable banquet of indie and foreign gems by and about women. And if your choices are limited to the multiplex,...
Weekly Update for April 25: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Bright Days Ahead — Directed by Marion Vernoux; Co-Written by Marion Vernoux and Fanny Chesnel For recent retiree Caroline (Fanny Ardant) a new life of freedom and...
Crosspost: What’s It Going to Take for Gender Equality to Come to Hollywood?
Crossposted with permission from Awards Daily. The WGA diversity report, released on April 15, delivered this rather devastating news about women screenwriters in Hollywood: While women and other...
Crosspost: The Time of Her Life
Crossposted with permission from DGA Quarterly. Lee Shallat Chemel was recently directing an episode of the critically acclaimed single-camera comedy The Middle when it suddenly dawned on her how...
Rape Culture Sidetracks Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones is a show full of violence, including sexual violence, but showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss generally tend to make that violence meaningful. The beheading of Ned Stark, the...
Weekly Update for April 18: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Gabrielle — Written and Directed by Louise Archambault Quebecois director Louise Archambault follows her smart and refreshing debut feature Familia with this tender...
Guest Post: Getting to the Finish Line
I’ve worked on Vanishing Pearls: The Oystermen of Pointe A La Hache for years — three and a half years, to be exact. During that entire time, I so desired to have a woman on my team. There...
Guest Post: Younger: From Novel to TV Show in 527 Easy Steps
Exactly two years ago today, I got an emailfrom my agent Melissa Flashman at Trident Media saying that Darren Star wantedto turn my novel Younger into the next Sex & TheCity. I, of course, said,...
Guest Post: Write What You Don’t See
I started screenwriting five years ago because I was angry. Every time I watched a movie or TV show geared towards women, it had female friends fighting over a man or being catty to each other,...
DVD Giveaway: Name Your Favorite Judi Dench Movie for a Copy of Philomena
The hilarious and heartbreaking Philomena, about an elderly Irish woman’s search for the son who was adopted against her will by the Catholic church, is finally out on DVD, Blu-Ray, VOD, and Pay...
Weekly Update for April 11: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Hateship Loveship — Directed by Liza Johnson After receiving rave notices for her feature debut Return, director Liza Johnson has followed up with a second film...
Guest Post: When Violence is the Answer
About 7 months ago, I was readingthe Times while working as a researcher for ascreenwriter when I suddenly felt sick. My hands started shaking. I realized I feltviolent. All of the articles I...
Cartoon: Who Will Take Letterman’s Chair?
Cross-posted from The Nib. Liza Donnelly is the author of the book Women on Men.
Dear Will Ferrell: Depicting Sexism Isn’t Enough
As the buffoonish Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell made the world laugh at sexist pigs who have trouble accepting the fact that women are pretty good at lots of things, including the arduous task of...
Weekly Update for April 4: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Frankie and Alice — Co-Written by Cheryl Edwards, Mary King, Anna Waterhouse Frankie and Alice is inspired by the remarkable true story of “Frankie” (Halle...
Special Report: Women Directors at the Box Office in March 2014
A much-needed profileof Anita Hill is one of the top-grossing films directed by women in March, withthe highest monthly gross of a female-directed documentary so far this year. Anita has made...
April 2014 Film Preview
The Big Dipper isn’t the only constellation of stars you’ll see this April — there’s a handful of actress-led vehicles on offer this coming month. By far the biggest is The Other Woman,...
Guest Post: The Celluloid Ceiling is Much Lower Than You Think
After many years working in the film industry, I am struggling in to find work. It’s hard for me to admit when I need help, and even harder to ask for it. I got into film so I could tell stories...
Weekly Update for March 28: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Refuge — Written and Directed by Jessica Goldberg When Amy’s (Krysten Ritter) parents head to Florida for a “vacation” without a return ticket, she is left to...
Can Women Drive Studio Movie Decision Making?
Yesterday, Amanda Hess at Slate’s XX Factor blog published a piece titled “Women Buy Half of All Movie Tickets. That Won’t Mean More Female Characters.” She responds to a couple of Women and...
Women and Hollywood Summer 2014 Preview
Mark Wahlberg gave us all something to laugh about when he declared the Transformers movies to be “the most iconic franchise in movie history” at this year’s Cinema Con, the annual convention...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
Special Report: Women Directors at the Box Office in February 2014
Opening onValentine’s Day, the teen romance EndlessLove was the first wide release (2,872 theaters) from a female director in2014. The original, starring teen queen Brooke Shields, was released in...
War Zone/ Comfort Zone: Confronting the Issue of Homeless Women Veterans
Making a movie is like walking across a tightrope. It requires balance, will and muscles you never even knew you had. I’ve spent the last few years making a documentary about homeless women...
Weekly Update for March 7 Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Honey — Directed by Valeria Golino; Written by Valeria Golina, Francesca Marciano, Valia Santella Irene lives alone on the coastline outside Rome. To her father and...
TV: How House of Cards’ Claire Underwood Stacks Against Other Anti-Heroines
House of Cards, Netflix’s buzzy political drama, started life as a remake of a British miniseries. Starring Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, an amoral, ambitious member of Congress, it also felt...
Weekly Update for February 28: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Bottled Up — Written and Directed by Enid Zentelis In this modern day drama, Oscar-winner Melissa Leo beautifully conveys the heart-wrenching struggle that comes...
The Big O: Who Will Win the Oscars This Sunday — And Who Should
As Oscar watchers count down the minutes to the 86th edition of the Academy Awards this Sunday, those of us who care about promoting women in the film industry have several reasons to count our...
March 2014 Film Preview
This year’s March Madness comes courtesy of the Veronica Mars movie, which will receive a day-and-date release on March 14. Kristen Bell’s noir detective, now a decade out of high school,...
The Big O: In Praise of the 10 Actress Nominees
It is all too easy at this late point in the Oscar season to only focus on the shifting standings in the 24 categories and to ignore the big picture of what this collection of contenders actually...
The Web is a Great Place for Women
Leena Pendharkar: I moved to LA in 2005, armed with severalfeature-film screenplays like any other aspiring writer. But I learnedsomething really strange once I got here: Hollywood isn’t always...
Special Report: Women Directors in January 2014
While Frozen continues its box-officedominance (with over $360 million in domestic grosses and a new sing-along version intheaters), the Mickey Mouse short that accompanies it, “Get a Horse!,”...
Weekly Update for February 14: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Adult World Adult World is a satirical comedy about an eccentric young woman, Amy Anderson (Emma Roberts), who has just come out of university convinced she’s going to...
Real Talk on the Women of True Detective
It’s impossible to deny the pleasures of watching long-time friends and sometime acting partners Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson onscreen together. Currently, the two men are starring in...
Of Animal Crackers and Mr. Bojangles: When I Got to Talk to My Idol, Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple, one of the biggest — and littlest — stars that Hollywood ever produced, and who raised the spirits of a nation through the Great Depression and mine throughout childhood,...
Weekly Update for February 7: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening The Pretty One — Written and Directed by Jenee LaMarque Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks) stars as a pair of identical twins in this pleasantly quirky dramedy. As much a...
The Big O: What’s at Stake for Cate in the Woody Debate?
[Editor’s Note: The opinions in this piece belong solely to the author, a columnist hired to assess the Oscar race from the female perspective. Women and Hollywood also published a piece earlier...
I Believe Dylan Farrow
There are a few fundamental beliefs that I hold, and one of them is that I believe women. We live in a world that does everything to protect the powerful, and when the powerless speak up, against...
Weekly Update for January 31: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Somewhere Slow “Overt femininity is sometimes just a wall to keep outsiders from peering in,” I wrote in my Los Angeles Times review. “That’s certainly the case...
TV: Why Parenthood Is One of Television’s Best Shows About Marriage
As television’s revival hasreinvigorated the water-cooler discussion, many of the moments viewers have to talk about with someone have come fromcable. Hannah Horvath spends a sexy weekend with a...
Women and Hollywood February 2014 Film Preview
There’s only a smattering of films directed, written, and about women on offer this upcoming month, but there’s a few gems in the mix, as well as a great deal of variety in quality and...
The Big O: Which of the 3 Best-Picture Frontrunners Is Female-Friendliest?
Hear that “ouch”? It’s the sound of frustrated pundits pulling their hair as they attempt to divine the outcome of the Oscars’ best-picture race this year. Those of us who put our reps on...