ALL POSTS
What We’re Watching: Switched at Birth
The second season of ABC Family’s Switched at Birth returned recently and this is my pleading with you to watch it. Created by Lizzy Weiss and with a majority female writing staff, Switched at...
TIFF: Interview with Sally Potter — Writer and Director of Ginger and Rosa
After the dust settles, Ginger and Rosa is going to turn out to be one of my the highlights of the festival. Sally Potter, the brilliant director of Orlando has written and directed a truly...
TIFF: Interview with Judi Levine — Producer of The Sessions
The Sessions is a very lovely movie about Mark O’Brien, a writer with polio who has to spend most of his life in an iron lung and his quest to lose his virginity and find a new level of intimacy in...
Black Power Takes Center Stage at TIFF With Angela Davis Documentary
Sunday, a bit of history was explored here in Toronto. The festival premiered Shola Lynch’s documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners in one of its gala slots. For a festival that...
Interview with Sarah Koskoff — Writer of Hello I Must Be Going
Hello I Must Be Going is the coming of age story of a 35 year old woman who had been sleepwalking through her life until her whole world is shaken when her husband leaves her. With no skills, no...
A Chat with Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing: Directors of Detropia
Detropia is a very prescient film. It’s about what is going on in our country right now. It’s about how the middle class is disappearing. This is a painful movie to watch because it documents...
TIFF Preview: The Female Directing Masters Playing at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival
The Toronto Film Festival opens tonight. Over the next 10 days there will be a couple of hundred movies to be seen. This is one festival where you can make a decision to see films by women and see...
Guest Post: How Can We Get More Women In Power As Directors?
This is an expansion of the piece written for the NY Times forum: How Can Women Gain More Influence in Hollywood. Most directors work intermittently as free-lance employees and are far from rich or...
TIFF Preview: Women Directors to Watch
The Toronto Film Festival launches tomorrow and there are women directors all over the lineup. We reached out to a couple of directors whose careers are on the way up (we will have some of our...
Interview with So Yong Kim — Writer/Director of For Ellen
So Yong Kim’s For Ellen stars Paul Dano in a beautiful performance as a young father forced to make a life altering decision about his relationship with his daughter Ellen. Dano plays Joby a...
Cross Post: La Femme Telluride
William Blake once wrote that exuberance is beauty. Despite the success of Ben Affleck’s Argo here, this fest seems to be driven by women filmmakers. This is most surprising, since we just came...
Interview with So Yong Kim – Writer/Director of For Ellen
So Yong Kim's For Ellen stars Paul Dano in a beautiful performance as a young father forced to make a life altering decision about his relationship with his daughter Ellen. Dano plays Joby...
Guest Post: A Fan Speaks — Kristen Stewart and Our Miserable Failure
The media stoning of Kristen Stewart, of Twilight fame, has been going on for about four weeks now. About a month ago, she was pictured having a fling, which she called a “momentary...
Cross-Post The Winning Weirdness of ‘Bunheads’: The Case for Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Charming Dramedy
When the news came down the transom a few days ago that “Bunheads,” the new show from “Gilmore Girls” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, had received a back-order pickup for more episodes on ABC...
Piling on Kristen Stewart
It’s been a couple of weeks (in fact almost a month) since the world learned that Kristen Stewart made out with her Snow White and the Huntsman director and caused a total gigantic meltdown in the...
Interview with Linda Goldstein Knowlton — Director of Somewhere Between
Producer Linda Goldstein Knowlton who produced one of my favorite films ever — Whale Rider — steps behind the camera to direct a film for her daughter Ruby whom she adopted from China....
Guest Post: Nurture vs. Nuke
Four years ago, when Sarah Palin was nominated to the Republican ticket, columnist Sally Quinn famously asked, “When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick,...
Cross Post: Brenda Chapman on Writing BRAVE
Brave rocked the box office. Its themes of identity, responsibility, and family were equally appealing to boys and girls, adults and children. Its unique characters were memorable and brimming with...
Interview with Ann Dowd, Star of ‘Compliance’
If you’ve ever watched any of the Law and Order series you have seen Ann Dowd. She’s been on them all. She’s a journeywoman actress, one you have seen in many places, whose work you constantly...
Miley Cyrus Cuts Hair and the World Thinks She’s Gone Crazy
What is it about young Hollywood women and their hair? A couple of years ago I wrote a piece about the reaction to Emma Watson’s haircut that got page views for months and months. People were...
Our Unyielding Obsession with Jennifer Aniston
If you’ve been under a rock for the last couple of days I am here to inform you that we can all calm down now because Jennifer Aniston has finally gotten engaged. If you haven’t been under a...
Remembering Helen Gurley Brown: A Complicated Legacy
Like many feminists, I have some problems with Cosmopolitan. Growing up, it was always a kind of aspirational magazine to me. It seemed adult with its sexy headlines about sex with actresses and...
A Conversation with Livia Bloom and Macarena Aguiló, director of The Chilean Building
For the men and women in The Chilean Building, patriotic duty took an unusual form: childcare rather than warfare. While their parents battled the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, a group of 60...
Hope Springs Written by Vanessa Taylor
Here’s a confession. I got nervous when I saw the posters for Hope Springs. I am so used to seeing Meryl Streep play roles in which she seems larger than life that when I looked at the hairdo, the...
Remembering Judith Crist
Groundbreaking film critic Judith Crist died at her home on August 7 at the age of 90 after a long illness. Crist was truly a trailblazer, as she was the first full-time female critic at any major...
The Director of the “Greatest” Film of All Time Was A Sexual Harasser
Last week as the film world was celebrating the elevation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to the top of the once a decade Sight and Sound list of “Greatest Films of All Time”, the leading...
Guest Post: Hello, Norma Jeane
* “Please don’t make me a joke.” — Marilyn Monroe Most surprising about Norma Jeane Baker’s grave is this: it does not exist. No tombstone, mausoleum or urn marks her final resting...
Guest Post: Should the Emmy Statue Get a Sex-Change?
Women are still going backwards and in high heels, but not in a good way. According to recent stats — women TV writers are losing ground. I just perused the Emmy website and counted only...
Cross Post: Sisters in Cinema: Where are the Black Women Film Directors?
Last week, the Twitterverse was gifted a priceless nugget when film director Ava DuVernay and her guild, AFFRM, released the second trailer for her anticipated movie, Middle of Nowhere. The...
Interview with Aurora Guerrero — Writer/Director of Mosquita y Mari
Mosquita y Mari writer and director Aurora Guerrero answered some questions (by email) fresh from the film recently winning Best Actress (Fenessa Pineda) and the Audience Award for Outstanding First...
Interview with Aurora Guerrero–Writer/Director of Mosquita y Mari
Mosquita y Mari writer and director Aurora Guerrero answered some questions (by email) fresh from the film recently winning Best Actress (Fenessa Pineda) and the Audience Award for Outstanding First...
In Appreciation: Lupe Ontiveros
Latina actress Lupe Ontiveros lost her battle with liver cancer last week at 69. She had a long a varied career in Hollywood beginning in 1976 when she appeared in an episode of Charlie’s...
Interview with Anne Emond and Catherine de Lean — Writer/Director and Star of Nuit #1
I met Anne last spring in Cologne, Germany at the International Women’s Film Festival where her film played. We were able to reconnect when she came to town to promote her provocative film,...
Interview with Anne Emond and Catherine de Lean – Writer/Director and Star of Nuit #1
I met Anne last spring in Cologne, Germany at the International Women's Film Festival where her film played. We were able to reconnect when she came to town to promote her provocative...
Guest Post: Why Catwoman is the Best Part of The Dark Knight Rises
I owe Christopher Nolan and Anne Hathaway an apology. Four years ago, I left The Dark Knight fuming at the death of Rachel Dawes and its utter predictability from Nolan, who likes to kill off his...
Producer Janet Yang to Receive 2012 Asian American Media Award
Tonight, on the opening night of the 2012 Asian American International Film Festival, Asian CineVision will award Janet Yang with the 2012 Asian American Media Award. Yang is a deeply respected...
Toronto 2012: Women Centric Galas and Special Presentations
Yesterday we listed the women directed galas and special presentations. Here are the women centric films that will premiere in Toronto. GALAS Dangerous Liaisons Hur Jin-ho, China North...
Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist to Open The Venice Film Festival
Mira Nair’s new film The Reluctant Fundamentalist will open the 69th Venice Film Festival on August 29th. It will screen out of competition. Festival director Alberto Barbera said this about...
Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist to Open The Venice Film Festival
Mira Nair's new film The Reluctant Fundamentalist will open the 69th Venice Film Festival on August 29th. It will screen out of competition. Festival director Alberto Barbera said...
Interview with Lauren Greenfield, Director of Queen of Versailles
In some ways this movie’s subtitle is revenge of the 99%. The film gives you a behind the scenes look of an absurdly wealthy couple — David and Jackie Siegel — who are building the...
Cross Post: Women Attend Comic-Con But Don’t Run the Show
This year, 40 percent of the attendees at the just completed annual Comic-Con were women. If only that percentage was reflected in the event’s programming. Instead, the majority of programming...
Cross Post: A Feminist Defense of Louis CK
This week, comedian Louis CK (of Louie fame) appeared on The Daily Show. I was actually watching The Daily Show for a change, and was excited to see Louis CK interviewed — he’s always funny...
Cross-Post: Dear Aaron Sorkin: Someone Please Fix You
I have now been caught in the ninth circle of Hell. When the bad reviews came out about The Newsroom I couldn’t believe how harsh the critics, especially The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum, had...
Remembering Nora Ephron: Talking About Women Directors
This is from an interview circa 1988 that Hollywood Reporter journalist Tim Appelo did for Savvy Magazine about the troubles Nora Ephron had in trying to get the film Cookie made. Fox put Susan...
Interview with Nancy Savoca — Co-writer and Director of Union Square
Women and Hollywood: This movie was born out of frustration of not being able to get financing for films, and then you made a movie that needed very little financing. Talk a little about the...
Guest Post: Pondering Nora Ephron, You’ve Got Mail: The Film That Made Me Love Film
“When I was a boy, I saw the first Star Wars in theaters and it changed my life,” our film professor told us. “I sat there in the dark theater and the sounds and images consumed me; it was the...
NBC Throws Ann Curry Under the Bus
In the days since Ann Curry departed as co-host of the Today show after a year in that position I have become more and more disgusted at her treatment in the press by the people who run NBC. Steve...
Cross-Post: Oscar Flashback — Nora Ephron
“It is true that you are wiser when you are older. That is true. The wisdom arrives at the same moment your mind is a blank. It’s a very ironic confluence of things. It’s kind of...
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild is the perfect example of how to make a movie in this new post recession world. Take a great script, make it for a price and then let the movie stand on its merits. And...
Interview with Amy Ziering — Producer of The Invisible War
The Invisible War continues its roll out this weekend. It should be on your must see list. Producer Amy Ziering who made this film with director Kirby Dick talked about the film with Women and...
Personal Reflections on Nora Ephron
When I heard that Nora Ephron passed away I sent an email out to a bunch of people in the business asking them to send me their thoughts. Some knew her, most didn’t, but still loved her. Here...