ALL POSTS
Cross Post: Too Old?
DC playwrights are watching their "in" boxes this week, awaiting word about whether they've been accepted into Arena Stage's playwrights' group. Six locals will be invited to...
Newcomer Samantha Barks on Her Les Mis Experience
When Samantha Barks sings “On My Own” in the new film Les Misérables, it will be hard for anyone to ask why this virtual unknown was chosen to play the key role. Barks originally...
She Who Will Not Be Ignored
My fellow blogger Sasha Stone has another great piece (how do you write so much great stuff Sasha?) over on her blog Awards Daily called Female Trouble: Why Powerful Women Threaten Hollywood. ...
Interview with Abbie Cornish – Star of The Girl
Abbie Cornish is one of the most talented and interesting young women working in film today. She was introduced to the world in Cate Shortland's Sommersault but broke through in Jane...
Guest Post: From Film to Comics
The best career advice I got before graduating from film school (besides the cliché but true “It’s not a sprint it’s a marathon”) went something like this: You need to...
Anne Hathaway on Her Transformation in Les Mis
There’s a lot of Oscar buzz centered around the soon to be released Les Misérables, particularly for Anne Hathaway whose character, Fantine, is actually in the film the least amount of...
Guest Interview: ‘Flight’ Actress Kelly Reilly On Playing A Heroine On Heroin
Flight, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Denzel Washington, offers a harrowing and honest portrait of addiction. Washington stars as Whip, a brilliant airline pilot who suffers from a...
Interview with Nancy Buirski – Director of The Loving Story
The Loving Story is a powerful and beautifully wrought film about two people – Richard and Mildred Loving – who just wanted to be married and live in their home state of Virginia. ...
Cross Post: Okay, Jen. Here Goes: “Stop Being Mean To Women On The Internet”
My fellow comedian Jen Kirkman is boycotting Twitter until men stop using it as a medium to be awful to her because she’s a woman yet still has the audacity to express her views on occasion. Or...
Using Sundance to Shift the Narrative on Women Directors
The happy glow has still not worn off the news that women directors have achieved gender parity in the US dramatic and documentary competitions. (But we must also remember that women are still...
3 of 15 Documentaries on Oscar Shortlist Directed by Women
Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences released the 15 films on the short list in the Documentary feature category for this year’s Oscars. Only three films on the shortlist are...
Lena Dunham Named one of Entertainment Weekly’s Entertainers of the Year
Entertainment Weekly named Lena Dunham one of their 2012 Entertainers of the Year in their recent issue. Considering the massive success Dunham had this year, she's very deserving of this...
Is the Marketing for Starlet a Turn Off for Women?
It has become hard for me to go and see movies with my friends because I see so many of them ahead of time for work. During Thanksgiving week my friends and I were trying to find a movie we...
Interview with Liz Garbus – Director of Love, Marilyn
Liz Garbus takes a well worn subject — Marilyn Monroe — and brings a whole new substance and understanding to this woman through her own words. Using material that has never before...
Theresa Rebeck on Leaving Smash and New Play, Dead Accounts
Smash creator and former showrunner, Theresa Rebeck recently revealed some of the reasons why she stepped down as showrunner in March (replaced by Gossip Girl’s Josh Safran). Mind you...
Will Kathryn Bigelow Be a Two Time Best Director Nominee?
Right after Thanksgiving Kathryn Bigelow's long awaited follow-up to her Oscar award winning film The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty (which I will see next week) started screening and the word has...
Guest Post: 2012’s Best Actress Race: A History of Inequality
Capote. Ray. Malcolm X. Nixon. Milk. Ali. Chaplin. Do these ring a bell? They are the names of famous politicians, filmmakers, activists, authors and athletes who inspired biopics that were...
AFI Review: Ginger and Rosa – Directed by Sally Potter
In my favorite Anne Sexton poem “Rowing,” one line in particular always sticks out to me: “I wore rubies and bought tomatoes/and now, in my middle age/about nineteen in the head...
Dueling Skyfall Reviews: Skyfall: A Post-Election Conservative Wet Dream
FAIR WARNING: Do not read this if you don’t want to know how the new James Bond movie Skyfall ends. Although, if you were disappointed by last week’s election results, it might give...
Interview with Rose Bosch — Director and Writer of La Rafle (The Round Up)
I loved the book Sarah’s Key (the movie not as much) but it revealed to me another story of the Holocaust and World War Two that I knew nothing about — the Vel’ de’ Hiv’ roundup of...
DOC NYC Opens Its Third Annual Festival
As readers of this site will know the documentary world is full of women. The folks running DOC NYC sure know that as their program is full of women directed films. (Also check out the poster.) The...
Guest Post: Coming Up Roses Or Bust…
“You’ll never get this made,” was the blunt and firm response from a well-regarded producer after reading my screenplay synopsis. The central theme of my film — a woman desperately...
Guest Post: Why Make Babies When You Can Just Make Documentaries?
Being a woman, I was told since I was a teenager, “just wait, it’ll hit you — you’ll suddenly be overcome by the rash, ridiculous desire to have kids.” This was presented as a...
This Woman Is Too Fat for Hollywood?
I love Romola Garai. First, she’s a good actress. She’s just so excellent in The Hour which is written by Abi Morgan. Second, she knows that she needs to be in magazines and make appearances in...
Book Excerpt: Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It
From the Introduction: Welcome to the Twilight Zone As I sit attentively in the lecture “So Many Species, So Little Time: The Men of Twilight,” a teenage girl wearily plunks herself down beside...
Guest Post: An Epoch of Parity for Women Directors?
It seems like everyone’s talking about women right now. With the 2012 presidential election just a day away with a demographic breakdown of male to female voters at 48% to 52%, women’s voices...
Guest Post: Cinema Eye Honors 2013 Nominations
In her latest research, Independent Women: Behind-the-Scenes Representation on Festival Films (2011–2012), Martha Lauzen found that in selected film festivals 39% of documentary directors were...
Chatting with Keenan Novi — Student at Temple University
I don’t get to talk about the big picture very often and I am always happy to talk with a student. I also love to talk with men who are interested in the topic. Keenan Novi got in touch with me...
Interview with Vamps Director Amy Heckerling
This was originally posted on April 9, 2012. Vamps is in theaters now. Amy Heckerling has made some serious classic films in her career namely Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless. She was in...
Off Topic- The New New York City Normal Post Sandy
I just want to thank people for all their concern in the wake of Sandy. I am fine. I am lucky. My neighborhood escaped with relatively little damage. I went to bed on Monday night with my...
2012 Houston Cinema Arts Festival Focuses on Women Directors
The Houston Cinema Arts Society recently announced their lineup for the 2012 Houston Cinema Arts Festival. This year in honor of the 40th anniversary of Women Make Movies, the festival is...
TIFF: Interview with Margarethe von Trotta and Barbara Sukowa — Director and Star of Hannah Arendt
Last, but not the bit least is a conversation with master director Margarethe von Trotta along with actress Barbara Sukowa who bring us the story of Hannah Arendt one of the first highly visible...
Interview with Julia Loktev — Writer and Director of The Loneliest Planet
Women and Hollywood: Where did you get the idea for this film? Julia Loktev: I was actually traveling in Georgia with my boyfriend at the time when I remembered this short story I had read by Tom...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Cross Post: How To Build Gender Parity Initiatives and Influence Theatre
The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a grassroots advocacy group of women and men whose mission is to promote female theater artists in LA and beyond. We’ve been around for two and a...
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...
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...
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...
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: 10 Reasons to Love Emma Thompson
Having previously examined the downside of being of a star actress, it seemed time for a corrective tonic. Not that I feel any A-list actress particularly needs to be acclaimed a heroine. Actors...
Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, America Ferrera and Gabrielle Union Join The Respect Challenge
Some of our favorite actresses have joined The Respect Challenge, a campaign created by the non-profit Futures Without Violence. The campaign is designed to celebrate everyday heroes — someone...
Talking to Penny Marshall
A new memoir by actress and director Penny Marshall hit bookstore last week. Marshall was a big star in the 70s and 80s appearing on multiple TV shows and hanging out with the rest of Hollywood TV...
TIFF: Interview with Cate Shortland — Director and Co-Writer of Lore
Lore is Cate Shortland’s second film after the exciting Somersault. It is a bold look at a young girl who lived her whole life in the belly of the Nazi beast and had no perspective on anything...
TIFF: Interview with Shola Lynch — Director of Free Angela & All Political Prisoners
On the day of the premiere of her documentary at the Toronto Film Festival, director Shola Lynch answered some questions about the film. Here is a look at the importance of the film — Black...
TIFF: Interview with Susanne Bier — Director of Love Is All You Need
At the Toronto Film Festival you see a lot of heavy movies really early in the morning. Love is All You Need was a most welcome respite from the intensity that was around at the festival. Academy...
TIFF: Interview with Deepa Mehta — Director of Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children is literally an epic movie. It tells about the birth and development of India through the eyes of children born the moment the country declared its independence. Deepa Mehta...