ALL POSTS
A Golden Globe Recap
I started out the day yesterday watching a town hall meeting on ABC’s This Week about the Tuscon shooting. It was an incredibly moving event that showed true humanity and humility. Needless to say...
Resources for Women and Film
Feminist Sites Blogher Broadsheet Cartoonist Nicole Hollander Change.org- Women’s Rights Echidne of the Snakes Everyday Goddess Feministe Feministing Global Sister Jezebel Ms. Magazine Paradigm...
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Female Producer to Finance Kathryn Bigelow’s Next Film
Kathryn Bigelow is getting ready to start shooting her next indie flick now that she has secured financing from Annapurna Pictures which is run by Megan Ellison. The pic written by Mark Boal will...
Fighting for Crumbs — Women Vying for Batman Roles
This is one thing I hate about Hollywood. There was a story that made its rounds in the blogosphere over the last couple of days about how top tier actresses like Keira Knightley and Anne Hathaway...
Sexism Watch: New Fox Pilot Title — I Hate My Teenage Daughter
The Television Critics Association meeting in going on in LA so there is a lot of TV news coming out. A new pilot script was just picked up by Fox entitled I Hate My Teenage Daughter. Here’s the...
Rooney Mara Pictures as Lisbeth Salander
In this great preview piece in W by Lynn Hirschberg on director David Fincher, there are some new photos of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. Some things to note: Fincher thinks of Salander as a...
Awards Watch: The DGA Doc Nominees — No Women Included
Isn’t it supposed to be better for women in the doc world? Haven’t there been extraordinary movies by women documentarians made this year? But still there are NO women included in the final five...
Miriam O’Reilly Wins Age Discrimination Suit Against the BBC
Miriam O’Reilly was a presenter on Countryfile on the BBC in 2009 when she was replaced. She claimed she was replaced because of her gender and her age. She was 51. She refused to settle and went...
Sexism Watch: ABC New Pilot Title
According to EW, ABC is about to pick up a new series entitled Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23. When Cougar Town acquired its unfortunate title it reflected the premise of the show, but this...
No Women Nominated for DGA Awards
My screen saver is a picture of Kathryn Bigelow holding her two Oscars. Each day when my computer boots up that is the first image I see. I never expected a woman to win best director and best...
The Hailee Steinfeld Nomination Debate
As the debate about Oscar nominations concludes this week, one interesting conversation that has been going on is the debate about whether True Grit actress Hailee Steinfeld should be placed in the...
Raven Symone on Her Recent Weight Loss
Raven Symone showed up last week at the People’s Choice Awards looking notable slimmer. Clearly, she was under pressure to lose weight because this is the comment she made when asked about...
The Bigelow Effect: Kathryn Bigelow Speaks Out In Support of Winter’s Bone
It’s been almost a year since Kathryn Bigelow made history winning the best director Oscar and in that time she directed a pilot — Miraculous Year — for HBO that did not get picked up,...
Kathy Bates Stars in New NBC Show — Harry’s Law
Some good news this January. On January 17th, Kathy Bates takes on the leading role in David E. Kelley’s new TV show Harry’s Law. She plays a long time patent lawyer who gets fired and remakes...
A Sad and Lonely Women Onscreen- Mary in Another Year
I saw Another Year over a month ago and when I walked out of the screening room there was steam coming out of my ears. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the film or the performances, I just was so...
Not Living Up to Expectations — The Development of The Dirty Girls Social Club
One thing that is always cool for an author is to have your book optioned to be a TV show or film. That is something that happened to Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez that author of several novels including...
While We Were Away
Here are some stories that I wanted people to see that ran during the holidays. Oscar Watch: Kids Are All Right Faces Academy Males (Thompson on Hollywood) What came after “the year of the...
2010 National Film Registry Films — One Female Director Included
At the end of last month the Library of Congress released this year’s list of 25 films that have been added to the National Film Registry. According to the Librarian of Congress James H....
Trailer Watch: The Other Woman
Natalie Portman is in a couple of movies early this year. This one has been on the shelf for a while and is based on Ayelet Waldman’s book Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Was released on demand...
Sexism Watch: The Black List
Once upon a time in Hollywood the black list was a very bad thing. If your name was on the black list (that supposedly never existed) you couldn’t get a gig in Hollywood. It was a sucky time and...
Helen Mirren Kicks Ass At the Women in Entertainment Breakfast
My day is made. You have to watch this video. I love this woman. Mirren received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award yesterday morning at the annual Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment...
Black Swan
Black Swan is director Darren Aronofsky’s homage to the ballet world. Yes, the film is beautiful to look at, but to me, it came off as a sad look at a young woman so dedicated to her craft that in...
Disney Swears off Princesses
In a move that should have progressive minded parents across the country and the world cheering, Disney last week said that they would no longer be producing fairy tale movies, and folks that means...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Ryan Gosling
The Weinstein Co. is taking on the MPAA for both Blue Valentine’s NC-17 rating and The King’s Speech R rating. They are so serious that they hired three top tier lawyers including David Boies to...
For Colored Girls — Review
The actresses who star in the new film For Colored Girls have been saying on the press tour that the film is not just for colored girls. I find it crazy that women have to stand up and say that a...
Jodie Foster Stands Up for Mel Gibson
Jodie Foster has made her first public statement about her friend Mel Gibson in light of the recent scandal involving his alleged abuse of his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. She told More Magazine...
Stephen Colbert Asks Aaron Sorkin About the Ladies in The Social Network
Guess I’m not the only one who noticed the fact that there are so few women in The Social Network. Stephen Colbert hit up Aaron Sorkin about the lack of women on his show last night. Colbert: Can...
The Social Network
If I take off my feminist hat, I am here to report that The Social Network is a very good movie. It will be at the top of the Oscar heap and might go all the way to the finish line. One reason is...
Eat Pray Love
Elizabeth Gilbert was miserable. She crashed out of her marriage, careened into another relationship way too quickly and was just overwhelmed and seriously fucked up. She needed a change — not...
If Women Like It, It Must Be Stupid
That is the title of the accompanying piece that talks to best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert in this week’s Entertainment Weekly which has Julia Roberts and Eat Pray Love on the cover. That...
Leave Ellen Page Alone!
NY Mag’s Vulture (which by the way has some of the most provocative and great reporting about pop culture) pissed me off earlier this week with their piece on Ellen Page’s “asexual” wardrobe...
The Sylvia Chronicles: 30 Years of Graphic Misbehavior from Reagan to Obama by Nicole Hollander
I have been a big fan of Nicole Hollander’s for some time. Her Sylvia cartoons appear in 30 newspapers across the country including The Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle (online) The San Francisco...
Paramount Pictures Has a Gender (and Race) Problem
The folks at Racebending who advocate for just and equal opportunities in film and TV, have been tracking race issues related to the recently released film The Last Airbender. While doing their...
Winter’s Bone
Winter’s Bone is by far the best film this year, and while that might not be saying much this being June, any film coming in the fall had better be really, really good cause it’s going to be hard...
The Sex and the City Aftermath — Misogyny Unleashed
No matter whether or not you liked or even saw Sex and the City 2 what you can’t have missed is the cultural conversation that film has caused in all quarters. We’ve been talking about women...
Screenwriter John August Ponders the Bechdel Test
I haven’t written anything before about the Bechdel test which in a nutshell is a way of determining if women matter in a film. The test was designed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel and it has become...
Victoria’s Secret Congratulates Megan Fox’s Transformers Replacement
File this under yuck and gross. I guess this is what happens when you have a lingerie model get a gig in the movie. The company that she pitches for takes advantage of her new exposure. This video...
Fired for Being Too Skinny
The Megan Fox saga continues. The Wrap is reporting that the reason why Megan Fox was let go from Transformers 3 was because she showed up looking “pale,” “underweight” and “unhealthy”...
The Consequences of Speaking Out
The news last week was that Megan Fox is off the third Transformers movie. This being Hollywood both camps have differing responses to her departure. Her side told The Wrap that said she walked away...
When Woody Allen Is Defending You…
Roman Polanski’s name is in the news again. At the Cannes Film Festival another petition on Polanski’s behalf is being circulated by Bernard-Henri Levy, and directors like Jean-Luc Godard,...
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The Politics of Hit Girl
There aren’t many times when I go to a movie and I leave speechless. But that did happen to me recently when I saw the film Kick Ass. For those of you that don’t know, the film is about an...
Piling on Sandra Bullock
I feel so bad for Sandra Bullock that I can barely read another piece of news about Jessegate. It seems that this guy is rivaling Tiger Woods and John Edwards for dooshbag of the year. The Nazi...
Please Give Written and Directed by Nicole Holofcener
To me a new film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener is a reason to rejoice. One reason is because she unapologetically tells stories from a female perspective. But one would be remiss and quite...
Degenderizing Disney
I find it pretty hysterical that the folks at Disney are freaking out and changing the names of their movies so they don’t alienate boys who won’t come and see a movie with the name princess in...
Text of Theresa Rebeck Laura Pels Keynote Address
Last night I saw someone do something very brave. My friend, Theresa Rebeck, a very successful playwright, TV writer and novelist, got up in front of a group of theatre people and talked about...
Guess What? Women Buy More Movie Tickets Than Men
You know that whole conversation about how women don’t go to the movies and are not a film market? You know that conversation that we hear over and over as the big reason why we are inundated with...
TV’s Top Showrunners
Showrunners are at many times the people who create the TV shows. But at all times they are the ones who keep things moving forward and lay out the vision and run the writer’s room. They are...
Christina Hendricks Says, Hey Haters! Lay Off My Body
Gotta love that in NY during fashion week when the skinny girls are running around the runways that the woman who makes the cover of NY Magazine’s fashion issue is a normal sized woman. Let’s...
Sexism Watch: Vanity Fair’s New Hollywood Cover
It’s not the picture that bothers me (except the women do look really glassy eyed) as much as the tired bullshit teaser heading that accompanies the photo: Annie Leibovitz photographs the nine...