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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...
We Are Mis-Represented
Great video from the folks at The Representation Project proving that there is still so much work to do. Here’s to a world with better media representation of women. It’s what we all need. Way...
Sundance US Competition List a Disappointing Tumble from Last Year’s Equality Benchmark
At last year’s Sundance Festival, the future looked rosy, with half of all U.S. narrative features and documentaries in the Park City lineup coming from female filmmakers. It was a promising...
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...
Chicken & Egg Pictures Helped Fund 23 Documentaries by Women Directors This Year
Chicken & Egg Pictures, the “only nonprofit film fund devoted solely to supporting women documentary directors,” announced last week that it would help support 23 nonfiction features...
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...
Clio Barnard Only Sight & Sound-Approved Woman Director
Director Clio Barnard must be tired of collecting awards by now. Here’s another for her scrapbook: her debut narrative feature, The Selfish Giant, landed on film magazine Sight & Sound’s...
Nikki Finke Gets the Last “Toldja” in Funny or Die video
When Nikki Finke started writing Deadline back in the days of the writers strike it was a revelation. Here was a woman pushing the envelope all across Hollywood — agitating and...
Why Big Weekend For Frozen And Catching Fire Is A Great Thing For Women In Hollywood
Latest piece for Forbes This past weekend was a record breaker at the box office for films starring female characters. Catching Fire from Lionsgate continued its march towards being one of the top...
Why is Everyone Pointing at Me?
2008 was a watershed year for me. I was nominated for my eleventh Emmy — for a composition I had created in three days for a science-fiction show. But what was most remarkable to me about the...
Women and Hollywood December 2013 Film Preview
With the exception of big showcases for Oscar favorites like Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts (August: Osage County) and Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks), December looks to be an anemic...
Teen Heroines Kick Box-Office Ass During Holiday Weekend
Move along, Black Friday. Thanksgiving weekend belonged to Katniss Everdeen and Frozen’s Anna, who helped propel female heroines to the top of the box office. Not only did The Hunger Games:...
A Frozen/Fire Holiday Weekly Update for November 27: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Frozen — Co-Directed and Written by Jennifer Lee: I was hugely surprised by how much I loved Frozen, which is written and co-directed by Jennifer Lee. It is about...
The Punk Singer Director Sini Anderson: “It’s Not Hard to be Drawn to Kathleen Hanna’s Story”
Sini Anderson has worked in film for over ten years as a producer, first assistant director, and creative consultant. The Punk Singer is Anderson’s first feature length documentary. She has served...
5 TV Women to be Thankful for This Thanksgivukkah
Writing about women and popular culture can be an exercise in enormous frustration, given how few women are in positions of power in the entertainment industry, how few of them get the funding and...
Black Nativity Director Kasi Lemmons Talks About Langston Hughes, Making a Musical
Kasi Lemmons adapts Langston Hughes’ musical retelling of the Nativity story in her new film Black Nativity, which features a superstar cast of Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson,...
Quote of the Day: President Obama to Hollywood “You Help Shape the World’s Culture”
President Obama went to Hollywood yesterday, and publicly, for the first time, spoke about what the entertainment business means to the US and to the world. From The Wrap Entertainment is one of...
Saving Mr. Banks Producer Alison Owen on Making a Film About Disney with Disney
Alison Owen is one of the most successful independent producers working in the UK. Her incredibly diverse list of credits includes Elizabeth, Shaun of the Dead, Jane Eyre (2011), and, most recently,...
Women Dominate First Feature, Documentary Categories in Spirit Awards Nods
Women directors outnumbered the men among the Independent Spirit Awards’ Best First Feature and Best Documentary nominees. Women writers were also well represented in the Best Screenplay and Best...
Infographic: Gender Inequality in Hollywood (It’s Worse than You Think)
In honor of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the blockbuster success of which should disprove every industry myth about women-led films being unprofitable, the New York Film Academy shares this...
With Frozen, Director Jennifer Lee Breaks the Ice for Women Directors
It has taken 53 films, starting with 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for theMagic Kingdom to reach this historic point. But Walt Disney Animation Studios hasfinally placed a woman in the...
Emma Thompson Calls Out Hollywood Sexism in Ten Different Ways at THR Actress Roundtable
One of the great things about this awards season is he re-emergence of Emma Thompson. We have got to say that she has been missed. We need to see her more because she is a rare, unfiltered, delight....
Katie Couric is the New Face of Tech
Silicon Valley is a boys’ club — some might even call it a Fortress of Boy-itude. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made herself one of the few female public figures in San Jose (AKA “Man...
Two Women Directors Nominated for Oscars’ Live-Action Short Category
The ten preliminary nominees for the Oscars’ live-action shorts category have been announced. Among the ten directors on the long list, two were women: Miranda de Pencier and Selma...
Despite the Lack of Opportunities UK Female Screenwriters and Directors Are Successful
In late July the BFI published their statistics yearbook for 2013, it sent an unwelcome call to women screenwriters and directors that their numbers were depleting. The bleak news was that only...
TV: Oprah Winfrey and Diablo Cody to Partner for HBO Comedy
In her last major role, Oprah Winfrey played against type as an alcoholic, adulterous housewife in The Butler. Winfrey will continue to show an edgier side with her most recently announced project,...
The Double Standards for TV’s Male and Female Politicians
Bad-boy politicians are nothing new in popular culture. Mr. Smith was lamenting the sorry state of our politics and Joe Tynan was getting seduced by a lobbyist long before I was born. And television...
Hunger Games Producer Nina Jacobson on Creating a Female-Centric Blockbuster
This weekend, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire became the highest-grossing November release ever with a box-office take of $161 million — $30 million over its production budget. Though star...
Catching Fire Does Super Hero Numbers and Becomes Highest Opening Weekend Starring a Female Lead
My latest Forbes piece: It’s been a big fall for movies starring women at the box office. First, Gravity starring Sandra Bullock broke all October records. That film opened at over $55 million...
TV Trailer Watch: Lena Dunham’s ‘Girls’ Season 3: “I’m Someone Who Can’t Keep My Mouth Shut”
“Everything that’s been so terrible and so painful in the last few months is leading me to this point. It’s amazing to realize I hold the keys to the prison that is my mind,” says Hannah...
Shonda Rhimes to Publish Memoir About TV Writing and Single Motherhood
If it wasn’t yet clear that Shonda Rhimes is totally a celebrity in her own right, here’s one more sign: the Scandal creator has signed a book deal, a la Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling, that will...
Latest Forbes Piece: A Female Revolution at the Box Office
When you spend your time writing about women and Hollywood there are many, many days when things seem bleak and downright depressing. But not this week. This week I am filled with hope, and that...
Weekly Update for November 22: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Weekend Philomena — The wonderfully fierce Judi Dench gives a masterful performance in the stolen-children drama Philomena. In The Village Voice, I described it...
Trailer Watch: Jessie McCormack’s Baby-Swap Dramedy ‘Expecting’
Thirtysomething friendship is the focus of first-time writer-director Jessie McCormack’s upcoming dramedy Expecting, which finds two gal pals (Michelle Monaghan and Radha Mitchell) in a fairly...
Guest Post: Turning My Camera on Detroit’s Arab Community
The metropolitan Detroit area, where I have lived for over fifteen years, is home to one of the largest Arab-American and African-American populations in the United States. The people of Detroit are...
Quote of the Day: Michelle Rodriguez Criticizes Guys Version of Strong Women
In a wide-ranging interview with Latina Magazine, Michelle Rodriguez proves yet again that she’s one of the gutsiest actresses in Hollywood by calling out the film industry’s skewed vision of...
TV Roundup: Kristen Schaal, Kate Walsh Get New Shows, ‘Homeland,’ ‘Rizzoli & Isles’ New Showrunners
The Daily Show’s Kristen Schaal and Private Practice’s Kate Walsh were among several women to sell network shows this week, while Showtime’s Homeland and TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles gained new...
Ava DuVernay on Directing Tonight’s Scandal Episode
Middle of Nowhere director and Women and Hollywood hero Ava DuVernay helmed tonight’s episode of ABC’s Scandal. DuVernay spoke to us (by email) about her own Scandal fandom, Shonda Rhimes’...
‘Variety’ Columnist: Female Comics Shouldn’t Tell Dirty Jokes
Sarah Silverman is arguably one of the most famous female comic working today. She’s a household name and can boast among her achievements an Emmy-nominated TV show, over two dozen film credits,...
Director Andrea Arnold On Her Next Film: “It’s Going to Involve Lots of Wild Kids, Rihanna and a Bear.”
Fish Tank and Wuthering Heights director AndreaArnold recently spent over a month in the U.S. as the first filmmaker-in-residence at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Her residency coincided...
In Praise of Hollywood’s Working Actresses
For years, when anyone asked whatadvice we had for aspiring actors, our knee-jerk response was, “Don’t do it!” But now, as we look back on careers that add up to almost four decades, we have...
The Hollywood Decision Makers
Hollywood is a town where many people can say no and few people can say yes. The Wrap did a studio by studio look at the people in the town who can say yes, and no surprise, there are just a few...
Madonna and Lady Gaga Are Music’s Top Earners
Pop is a woman’s game. And a pseudonym is apparently a girl’s best friend, since Forbes has named Madonna and Lady Gaga music’s first and second highest earners, respectively. Though Madonna...
Watch This: Anita Sarkeessian Posts Brilliant New Video about the “Ms. Male Character”
True Canadian-American Hero Anita Sarkeesian delivers another whip-smart, nuanced, and necessary critique of sexism in the gaming industry, this time about a trope she calls the “Ms. Male...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Laura Checkoway
Journalist Laura Checkoway has penned revealing celebrity profiles and investigative features for numerous publications and is the former senior editor of Vibe magazine. Her acclaimed first book, My...