News
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Kerry Washington
This week, Kerry Washington, star of ABC’s Scandal, wrote an op-ed piece for The Daily Beast about why she’s voting for Barack Obama. With the very high stakes for women in this election, more...
This is What You Don’t Want When Releasing a New Product
Go Ellen h/t Upworthy
Academy Award Winning Writer Callie Khouri Slams Movies About Women As Relegated to Trash Heap
Callie Khouri gave the movie business a lot of years of her life. It’s been an up and down relationship. The up — winning an Academy Award for writing Thelma and Louise. The...
Guest Post: Looking at Real Women With Real Life and Body Issues in Yogawoman
With the presidential debate including talk once again of women getting equal pay, it seems surreal to me that we are still having this discussion. In the 70’s, when I was a teenager reading books...
Change in Release Pattern for Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to her Oscar winning The Hurt Locker was supposed to open wide into the crowded Christmas market on December 19. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Sony is now...
Early Look at the WIGS Channel’s Celia Starring Dakota Fanning and Allison Janney
Premiering on You Tube’s WIGS channel this Friday is Celia — a short film about reproductive rights starring Dakota Fanning and Allison Janney. Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia (also a...
Trailer Watch: The Central Park Five — Co-Directed by Sarah Burns, Ken Burns and David McMahon
Recently nominated for a 2012 IDA Documentary Award for Best Feature and on the roster for the upcoming 2012 AFI Film Festival, The Central Park Five is based on Sarah Burns’ best-selling book. In...
Must Watch: Lana Wachowski Speaks About What It Means to Be Transgendered
What ever happens with Cloud Atlas (which opens this Friday) what Lana Wachowski has done in coming out as a transgendered person will go down as a seminal moment in Hollywood culture. She is a high...
Australia Launches Literary Award for Women — The Stella Prize
Australia has launched its first major literary award for women writers inspired by the UK Women’s Prize for fiction. The Stella Prize, named after author Stella Maria Miles Franklin who wrote...
Jane Fonda to Star in ABC Comedy Now What?
As reported by Deadline, Jane Fonda will be starring in her first series ever for ABC. After a guest spot on HBO’s Newsroom this season, Fonda is attached to star in ABC’s comedy Now What?...
Women Created and Centric TV Roundup
In women and television news, some more promising deals have been cropping up from NBC, The Hallmark Channel and MTV. NBC has picked up a drama from 9 To 5 writer, Patricia Resnick. Loosely...
Cross Post: Why The Twilight Saga Film Franchise Mattered, What it Accomplished, and Why its Legacy is Ultimately a Positive One
In just one month The Twilight Saga film franchise will come to an end. Oh sure we may see spin-offs, reboots (probably in a different medium) and/or quasi-sequels in some form in another, but the...
Women Nominees at the 2012 IDA Documentary Awards
The International Documentary Association announced their nominees for their 2012 IDA Documentary Awards. It’s really exciting to note that 4 of the 5 shorts are directed by women as well as 2 of...
Femme Celebs Croon You Don’t Own Me For Reproductive Freedom
Whom do you recognize in this video? I spy Mae Whitman, Miranda July, Natasha Lyonne, Lena Dunham. You Don’t Own Me.
Cross Post: I Was Hired Because I Was A Woman
Yep. You read correctly. I was hired because I was a woman. I’m not making assumptions. I was simply told that by the executive at Disney Animation with the cold blue eyes who sat behind his...
Liza Johnson Directing Kristen Wiig in Hateship, Friendship
Kristen Wiig will be starring in Hateship, Friendship which begins shooting next week in New Orleans. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Liza Johnson, director of 2011’s Return, will be...
A Tale of Two HBO Movies — The Girl and Ethel
There is not too much that The Girl and Ethel have in common except for the fact that they are both on HBO last week. The Girl is the story, untold publicly until now, that Alfred Hitchcock was a...
The Academy Celebrates the Career of Ann Roth
A couple of weeks ago I spent the weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival. I was able to catch up on a bunch of films and attend some really cool events including a tribute to the...
Talking with Maggie Gyllenhaal about Won’t Back Down
I’m a bit obsessed with this film. My obsession stems from the fact that we have a film with two previous women with Oscar nominations in it (three if you count Holly Hunter in her supporting...
Cross Post: Ry Russo-Young Discusses John Krasinski’s First Sex Scene and Collaborating With Lena Dunham for ‘Nobody Walks’
Ry Russo-Young may have worked with her highest profile cast to date for her third directorial offering Nobody Walks, but that doesn’t mean she’s softened up. Working off an incisive and...
Ava DuVernay Talks About The Gotham Nominations
I was in LA yesterday and already had a meeting set up with Ava DuVernay to just say hi in between her press appearances. I was able to chat with her a couple of hours after her two Gotham award...
Breakdown of Women Nominees for 2012 Gotham Independent Film Awards
The nominees for the 22nd Annual Independent Filmmaker Project’s Gotham Independent Film Awards were announced today. A total of 26 Films were nominated in six categories. Actress Marion Cotillard...
Interview with Coley Sohn — Writer and Director of Sassy Pants
Sassy Pants is, yes, a sassy movie starring the breakout star of MTV’s show Awkward Ashley Rickards. She plays Bethany Pruitt who is basically held prisoner in her home by her overprotective...
Trailer Watch: Starlet — Starring Dree Hemingway and Besedka Johnson
Starlet is about an unlikely relationship between a young woman, Jane (Hemingway) and 85 year old, Sadie (Johnson). After Jane purchases a thermos filled with money from Sadie’s garage sale, she...
Guest Post: Labor of Love: How Women are Changing Documentaries
In 2010, I finished my first feature documentary, Living Downstream. Based on the book by ecologist and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, the film follows Steingraber as she tries to ring the...
Trailer Watch: Carrie — Directed by Kimberly Peirce, Starring Chloe Grace Moretz
It’s a little hard not to be wary of a Carrie remake. The iconic 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek and a terrifying Piper Laurie is one of my favorite horror movies. But bring in acclaimed director...
Quote of the Day: “It’s a Bit Baffling As To Why Everybody Has To Be Treated As If They Were Five Years Old.”
So says Dame Maggie Smith while doing press for her new film Quartet at the London Film Festival. Smith who also stars in the highly addictive Downton Abbey was speaking at a press conference for...
Cross Post: Conflicts of Women: An Interview with Mary Ann Anderson About Her Dear Friend, Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino isn’t one for bullshit. She shoots straight, looks you in the eye and lays it all on the line with every acting performance and picture she directs. She is a street smart gal, wise to...
Women in Film Foundation Announces New Trustees and Film Finishing Fund Winners
Women in Film recently announced their new trustees and 2012 Film Finishing Fund winners. They have added 13 new trustees to their 30 member board. All are based in Los Angeles. They also...
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to Co-Host Golden Globe Awards
In contrast to the Oscars which went with Seth MacFarlane as its host, The Golden Globes went for peak vagina by announcing that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey will be hosting their 70th anniversary show...
Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere Has Big Opening Weekend
Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere opened with the top per screen average this past weekend. As Indiewire reports, opening on just 6 screens, the film made $78,030 — about $13,005 per theater....
Jodie Foster to Direct ‘Money Monster’
As we previously reported, Jodie Foster will be directing and executive producing, Angie’s Body, a new series for Showtime. According to The Playlist reports that Foster has also recently signed...
Lizz Winstead, Co-Creator of The Daily Show, Creates Lady Parts Justice
Co-Creator of The Daily Show and one hilarious lady, Lizz Winstead recently launched Lady Parts Justice, a website using comedy to bring awareness to women about just how much we have to lose in...
Women Directed 5 of 8 Documentary Shorts on Oscar Shortlist
Eight documentary shorts have been chosen for the 2013 Oscar shortlist. Between three and five will receive a nomination. Five of eight of the shorts are directed by women. Nominations will be...
New Trailer: Zero Dark Thirty — Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
I love that they are keeping many details about this movie so closely held. It makes people even more excited. The fact that a woman directed film is one of the most anticipated of the awards season...
As If!: The A.V. Club’s Top 50 Films of the 90’s has No Women Directors
The A.V. Club recently published a three-part series listing their top 50 films from the ’90s. As expected the likes of Tarantino, Scorsese, Fincher and the Coen Brothers appear, several, multiple...
Middle of Nowhere Enters The Oscar Conversation
I’ve been talking about Middle of Nowhere since I saw it last June at the LA Film Festival. As I wrote in my piece Could Middle of Nowhere Be a Game Changer? this is a very special movie. I talked...
Another Day, Another Sexist Controversy
Alfred Hitchcock is having a renaissance this year. First, Vertigo was named the Greatest Film of All Time in Sight and Sound’s recent poll. And now not one, but two, films that deal with Alfred...
Woman to Watch: Issa Rae — Creator and Star of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
Issa Rae, 27, is beginning to make her mark in Hollywood. She recently sold with Shonda Rhimes a half hour comedy to ABC, I Hate L.A. Dudes, which is about a journalist who moves to Los Angeles to...
14 Women are in The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 50 Showrunners of 2012
The Hollywood Reporter recently named their Top 50 Showrunners of 2012 for both comedy and drama. 14 of the 50 showrunners named were women. And women made up 4 of the 11 on the Showrunners to Watch...
Rebel Wilson Sells Comedy to Universal
I’m sure you are thinking that Women and Hollywood has become Rebel Wilson’s unofficial fan page. We kind of are, but we can’t help but be super excited that Rebel Wilson is blowing up. The...
Lena Dunham Gets A Big, Big Book Deal
Current megastar Lena Dunham is smartly trading on her success and wide name recognition and sold her first book, a book of advice to young women, entitled Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells...
Must Watch: Nashville-Created by Callie Khouri
For me Connie Britton can do no wrong. She was phenomenal as one of my all-time favorite TV characters, Tami Taylor in Friday Night Lights, and on top of that she’s an outspoken advocate for...
Anne Hathaway to Star in Mindy Kaling’s The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie
Mindy Kaling’s Black List script The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie now has Anne Hathaway attached to star. Co-written with Kaling’s former The Office co-worker Brent Forrester, Gillespie...
Women Donors Save the Orange Prize for Literature
A group of female donors including Cherie Blair, Martha Lane Fox and the novelist Joanna Trollope have come in at the last minute to keep the Orange Prize for women’s fiction in existence. The...
New TV Projects From a Host of Women Including Elizabeth Banks, Reese Witherspoon and Amy Poehler
If all this television news continues, we are in for a lot of promising sounding female centric, female produced and female written shows. This time around Elizabeth Banks, Reese Witherspoon and Amy...
Kelly Marcel Writing Fifty Shades of Grey Screenplay
As we previously reported, 3 female screenwriters, Karen Croner, Veena Sud and Kelly Marcel were in talks to adapt Fifty Shades of Grey. The golden ticket goes to Kelly Marcel for the...
Hollywood Stars Stand Up for Reproductive Freedom
Love this. Sign the petition Draw the Line from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
11 out of 71 Academy Foreign Language Film Submissions Are Directed by Women
For the 85th Academy Awards, a record-breaking 71 countries have submitted films to compete in the Foreign Language Film category. However, according to our research, only 11 of those 71 films are...
Interview with Liv Ullmann and Dheeraj Akolkar — Star and Director of Liv & Ingmar
When you are given an opportunity to meet a legend in the film business you don’t turn it down. So I headed to meet Liv Ullmann who has appeared in more movies than I can count and as of late has...
Hamptons Film Festival: Catching Up With the Very Busy Producer Amy Hobby
Apologies for the background noise. Gayby opens in NY this Friday. Making a Comedy About Friends Making Babies (NY Times)