News
Goodbye to Strong Female Characters
We are so over Strong Female Characters. Strong Female Characters were useful a few years ago when there was a dearth of women on film and most were so rubber-limbed, glass-ankled, or prone to...
Pussy Riot No Longer a Band; First Russian Screening of Their Doc Canceled
Just a day after newly freed Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina announced the disbandment of Russia’s most important feminist punk group, the Putin administration...
Happy Holidays
We’re going to take some downtime this week. Hope you have a happy holiday.
Sarah Polley, Nicole Holofcener, Sandra Bullock Big Winners of AWFJ Awards
We previously wrote about the Alliance of Women Film Journalist (AWFJ) nominations, about which the big takeaway was that “female critics have more or less the same tastes as their male...
Ellen DeGeneres is Utterly Charming in the First Oscars Trailer
After last year’s Seth MacFarlane fiasco, the Academy apparently took a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and asked, “What the hell were we thinking?” because it wisely invited Ellen...
Rose Kuo Steps Down as Head of Film Society of Lincoln Center
In a surprise move earlier this week, Rose Kuo announced her resignation from her post as the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s executive director. Kuo has led the Film Society for the last...
Feminist Filmmaking Means NC-17 Rating from MPAA
Director Jill Soloway gave a wonderfully insightful interview to Flavorwire yesterday about the crude double standards at work at the MPAA. Soloway directed this year’s Afternoon Delight, a story...
TV Superlatives of 2013
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. See our previous posts on the...
Maria Friedman Talks Directing Merrily We Roll Along
Last summer when I was in London, I had the opportunity to see one of the most under-rated shows of Stephen Sondheim’s career, Merrily We Roll Along. It’s got some of his best songs, but as a...
The Big O: Looking at the Women of Oscars Past, Present, and Future
The Oscar derby often offers interesting, if disturbing, insights into how women are treated in the world of film. As the year draws to a close, let’s review what happened the last time Hollywood...
Blood-Boiler of the Day: TV Show Canceled for Having Too Many Smart, Interesting Girl Characters
Hollywood execs can get awfully creative when they need to come up with excuses for why film and TV should stay so male-centric. Boys won’t watch stories about girls? Wrong. Women and girls...
Most Popular Women and Hollywood Posts of 2013
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. See our previous posts on the...
Director Jasmila Zbanic Is Wary of Quotas for Women Directors
Quota is a dirty word in our supposed meritocracy. But it’s a less contentious, even normal, practice in other parts of the world. Sweden, for example, recently mandated that “funding shall be...
10 Films from Women Directors, Screenwriters, or Stars Added to National Film Registry
The National Film Registry has announced its 2013 list of “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films to be preserved by the Library of Congress, and 10 of its 25 selections...
Less Than 20% of Black List Scripts Are By Women Screenwriters
The 2013 Black List — Hollywood’s annual compilation of the industry’s “most liked” but as-yet-unmade scripts — was released yesterday. Of the 72 screenplays that made it on the...
Best Women-Centric Films of 2013
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. See our previous post on the...
Best Women Directed Documentaries of 2013
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. With Hollywood in the grips of...
Beyonce Caps a Banner Year for Pop Feminism
It’s been a great year for female empowerment in pop. Madonna and Lady Gaga became music’s top earners, Top 40 hosted ballads and art-dance songs about female strength, former riot grrrl...
Infographic: Women and Hollywood — Better Luck Next Year…Or Next Decade
Change is the keyword in Hollywood these days. A globalizing marketplace, the exportation of work from Los Angeles to every other corner of the world, the replacement of celluloid by digital, and the...
TV: New Black Comedienne to Join SNL (Finally)
Public protests from castmembers, widespread media scrutiny, and the existence of many talented black comediennes have finally convinced longtime SNL producer Lorne Michaels to add an...
EDA Awards Honor Women Directors and Writers, Names Actresses Who Need New Agents
The Alliance of Women Film Journalists, in which our own Melissa Silverstein is a member, has announced their Best-of-2013 list. The big takeaway? Female critics have more or less the same tastes as...
Geena Davis: “We Are Enculturating Kids to See Women and Girls as Not Taking Up Half the Space”
Geena Davis wrote a must-read essay for The Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100” issue, in which she notes that women and girls only make up 17% of all film characters over...
Forbes Releases Top-Earning Women in Music List
Madonna didn’t become the Material Girl for nothing. At 55, she’s still going strong — and making bank. After her last album, “MDNA,” debuted at the top of the pop charts, Madonna...
The Crash Reel Director Lucy Walker on Snowboarding and Simone de Beauvoir
British director Lucy Walker is best-known for her Oscar-nominated film Waste Land, a profile of artist Vik Muniz’s work with Brazilian catadores, or workers who collect recyclables from...
Quote of the Day: Manohla Dargis: “The Movie Industry is Failing Women”
There’s a sadly routine, but still important article, in Variety today about the lack of women-directed films this award season. Only two narrative features are being discussed at all, Nicole...
TV: Why You Should Watch Nashville
The ratings for Nashville, ABC’s drama about the personal and professional tribulations of artists on all rungs of the career ladder in the titular city’s country music scene, aren’t exactly...
THR Releases “2013 Women in Entertainment Power 100” List
The Hollywood Reporter released its annual “Women in Entertainment Power 100” ranking, which the publication described as a reflection of “a TV industry in flux, ongoing volatility at the film...
Death Walks in High Heels: The Silent Avenger of Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45
In recent years there has been a surge of renewedappreciation for the rape-revenge film and, surprisingly, most of thesechampions have been women. The genre was validated to some extent (albeit...
Ava DuVernay to be Honored by Adrienne Shelly Foundation
Ava DuVernay will receive the Adrienne Shelly Foundation’s Third Annual Woman of Vision Salute. Named after actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, the non-profit organization helps support women...
When Does a Fluke Officially Become a Trend?
My latest piece from Forbes: The big news last week was rightfully the passage of a towering figure in history, Nelson Mandela. So it’s not surprising that most people — including...
Trailer Watch: The Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending
The Wachowski siblings are back with a new film, Jupiter Ascending, that looks much more conventional in form than their last project, the time-shifting Cloud Atlas. Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones,...
Melissa Leo Steps Up to Fund Women Screenwriters
Actress Melissa Leo has already proven her awesomeness in The Fighter, Frozen River, and one very special, very scary episode of Louie. (If you’ve seen it, you definitely know which one I’m...
Few Women-Directed Films to Premiere at Sundance
A disappointingly few number of women-directed narrative and nonfiction features will debut at Sundance. Only three women filmmakers from a total of sixteen will enjoy the prestige that comes with...
Bette Midler to Play Mae West in HBO Film
HBO bucked the general biopic trend of focusing on a subject’s early struggles this year with Behind the Candelabra, which explored the last years of Liberace’s life. Now the studio will do the...
Women-Centric TV Shows Dominate WGAs
If the so-called Golden Age of Television — a cultural epoch that deconstructed traditional masculinity while reveling in violence and guilt (The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad...
RogerEbert.com Devoting This Week to Women Critics
Gender gaps don’t just plague the film industry, but the field of film criticism too. As we reported earlier this year, the numbers are pretty dire: The study took a look at the 2,000 reviews...
Sherri Lansing, Keri Putnam, Callie Khouri, Kasi Lemmons to be Honored at Athena FF
The Fourth Annual Athena Film Festival will present former Paramount and 20th Century Fox chief Sherry Lansing with the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as salute Sundance Executive...
Rashida Jones Speaks Out Against the “Pornification” of the Music Industry
Near nudity is the new normal. The race to the skimpiest bottoms among female pop stars (and video vixens in the background) arguably began in the eighties, when Madonna writhed around on a MTV VMA...
Awards Roundup: Europe, Boston, LA, NY Online, British Indies, and IDAs
The first major award weekend yielded honors for directors Susanne Bier (Love is All You Need), Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda), Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell), Jehane Noujaim (The Square). Results from...
Trailer Watch: Mia Wasikowska Seeks Adventure and Meaning in ‘Tracks’
Few actresses can get me as instantly excited about a film as Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska. I’ll see almost anything she’s in, though I’ll admit to being turned off her...
Happy Friday: Listen and Watch Idina Menzel Sing the Hell Out of Let it Go
If you haven’t seen Frozen yet and you needed something to tip you towards the theatre, Disney has released the most powerful sequence and centerpiece of the film — Idina Menzel as Elsa...
Judy Blume and Lena Dunham on What It’s Like to be Pioneers in Sexual Frankness
Lena Dunham and Judy Blume interviewed each other for a book called Judy Blume and Lena Dunham in Conversation: Two Cultural Icons Discuss Writing, Feminism, Censorship, Sex, and a Sixth-Grade...
Sarah Polley, Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour Among National Board of Review’s Best-of-Year Picks
Directors Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell) and Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda) and actress Adele Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Color) were the only awardees among the National Board of Review’s...
Wonder Woman Casting Suggests Hollywood’s Never Giving Diana Prince Her Own Movie
I don’t want to see a Wonder Woman movie, but I desperately want one to exist. As a child of the eighties and nineties who grew up on TV rather than comic books and only knew Lynda Carter from...
Hillary Clinton Biopic in Talks to Shoot Next Year
It’s hard to believe any bio of Hillary Clinton could have more flair or be more inspirational than the one the former Secretary of State wrote for her Twitter account: “Wife, mom, lawyer, women...
Director Anna Condo: “Cosmetic Surgery is Ruining Cinema”
Casting is key. Without great characters, there can be no great story. And without great actresses, there can be no great films. I remember clearly the day I watched an actress “act.” Icould...
Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers to Receive DGA Diversity Award
Sometimes it feels like Women and Hollywood is really just a Shonda Rhimes fan club in disguise, but we can’t help getting excited everytime the Scandal creator is recognized for being the force...
Sarah Polley, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence Are NYFCC Picks
The New York Film Critics Circle released their best-of list yesterday, and director Sarah Polley was the sole female awardee in a non-acting category. Polley’s meta-memoir Stories We Tell was the...
Five Women Directors Make the Documentary Oscar Shortlist
Once again, the Oscar documentary shortlist for the 2014 ceremony, announced yesterday, is an idiosyncratic mix of crowd favorites and obscure titles. Women directors were behind the camera on five...
Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch: A Glimpse of the Future We’re Fighting for
Not too long ago, it seemed as though Variety had never heard of a woman director other than Nicole Holofcener. But its “10 Directors to Watch” list for 2013 gives female filmmakers a much...
Gotham Shows Brie Larson Some Love for ‘Short Term 12’
Brie Larson won the IFP Gotham Awards’ Best Actress Prize for her luminous performance in the social-work drama Short Term 12, beating out seeming front-runner Cate Blanchett as a modern-day...