ALL POSTS
Guest Post: Premiering Yelling to the Sky at the Berlin Film Festival by Victoria Mahoney
The freakiest thing about indie filmmakers is that we are bred and conditioned for harsh news. We wake up to 32,000 “nos” a day, and self-preservation protects us from the ambush of let down. We...
The Dirty Little Secret in Hollywood
There is a power disparity in Hollywood. A big one. The men have got it. It is never more evident when one of the most high profile people exhibits behavior that makes the whole country and society...
Tina Fey Stands Up for Working Moms (and Working Women) in Hollywood
I know that I am late to the game on this piece but I just read it over the weekend and there are some interesting things to discuss. First, I don’t think I can remember a woman as visible (in the...
Guest Post: Women of Cinematic Arts Inaugural Film Festival by Katherine Bowman
Women of Cinematic Arts held its inaugural film festival on February 5 at the Ray Stark Family Theatre at the University of Southern California. The festival featured new and upcoming filmmakers with...
The Bigelow Effect — Why We Care
Why do we care about women’s presence in the awards race? Specifically, why do we care so much about a woman getting nominated for best director? That is a great question raised in an very...
Interview with Feo Aladag — writer and director of When We Leave
When We Leave, Germany’s entry for the Academy Awards, is written and directed by Feo Aladag. It is a powerful film that tells the story of a young Turkish German woman who leaves her unhappy and...
The Game on BET Changes the Game for BET
The Game, created by Mara Brock Akil as a spin off from Girlfriends, languished with low ratings in its three years on the CW. It never was able to connect with a decent size audience and the CW...
A Look at the Oscar Nominations
I held my breath this morning as the best picture nominations were read. It wasn’t until I heard the 10th, the one that named Winter’s Bone as a nominee that I was finally able to exhale. If I...
Interview with Lynn Hershman Leeson Director of !War: Women Art Revolution
Lynn’s film Women Art Revolution played at Sundance last night. I was able to interview her when the film premiered last fall at the Toronto Film Festival. Women and Hollywood: This is the most...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
A Big Bold Crack in the Glass Ceiling — Kathryn Bigelow Wins DGA Prize
This is big. This is Sally Ride, first American woman in space big. This is Sandra Day O’Connor, first female on the Supreme Court big. This is Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs big. This is a...
Defending Mo’Nique
One of the ongoing narratives of this awards season has been about Mo’Nique. About how great her performance is, and also about how supposedly ungrateful she is because she hasn’t been...
Rachel McAdams — Maintaining Her Privacy With Her Success
I remember when I first saw her in Mean Girls. She was terrifically mean. She scared the crap out of my teenage self. Then she broke my heart in The Notebook. I have always admired her film choices....