#Feminism
Season of the Witch: Conjuring Strength Through Power
It’s the season of the witch, both in the sense that it’s Halloween, and that supernatural sisters are in the midst of a huge comeback. Meryl Streep’s playing the Witch in a movie adaptation...
Quote of the Day: Manohla Dargis Putting the Button on Blue
Manohla Dargis has had some issues with the film Blue is the Warmest Color (which did very well at the box office in the US where it opened this weekend) since she saw it back in Cannes in May. In...
We are the Weirdos, Mister: Revisiting The Craft
I was eight years old when The Craft came out in 1996. I remember seeing the VHS on the shelves of the video store for years and then finally picking it out when I was in sixth grade. There’s...
Quote of the Day: Diablo Cody on Writing Strong Female Characters
Film School Rejects does a really great interview with Diablo Cody on the release of her directorial debut Paradise. (Side note- Many of the interviews she has done for the release of this film have...
France Pushes for Gender Equality in the Film Industry
France is setting up a sex equality charter for improving the numbers of women working within the film industry. The five point charter was signed last week by Culture and Communications Minister...
LFF Women Directors: Meet Chika Anadu
Chika Anadu’s debut feature film, B For Boy, is in competition in the London Film Festival’s first feature section. Having delivered two ambitious and acclaimed short films on a similar subject,...
The 33rd Susan B. Anthony Awards
Last night I was one of four people who received a Susan B. Anthony Award from the NYC chapter of the National Organization for Women. It was a great event. I was really humbled by the other women...
The Horror of Coming-of-Age: Subverting the Teen Girl Experience in Film
Growing up can be a bit of a bloodbath for everyone, regardless of gender. And when it comes to how the actual gory details of the process are portrayed on film, young female characters don’t...
Ridiculous Comment of the Day: “It’s Harder to Animate Female Characters”
Earlier this week, MovieViral.com ran an article about the 50 Things You May Not Know About Frozen, the upcoming Jennifer Lee co-directed Disney animated feature based on The Snow Queen. The...
Nicole Kidman Goes All Feminist at Variety Awards
Nicole Kidman was honored at this year’s Variety Power of Women awards for her work with UN Women to advance the rights of women and girls across the world. Variety’s 5th annual Power of Women...
Introducing October’s Women and Horror Series
I grew up being deathly afraid of horror movies. I’d flip quickly through channels that had anything horror related on to prevent nightmares. As I grew up my taste for horror began to...
Jane Fonda Will Receive AFI Lifetime Achievement Award
Jane Fonda will be the 42nd recipient of the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest honor for a career in film. Fonda has appeared in over 40 movies since her debut in 1960’s Tall Story....
Quote of the Day: Jennifer Lawrence to Hollywood’s Diet Police “Go F*** Yourself”
In the upcoming November issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK, Jennifer Lawrence speaks about the time she was labeled as “fat” by producers and told that if she didn’t lose weight, she’d be...
Wonder Woman Fan Film Shows Up Hollywood
With superheroes dominating the box office and pop culture landscape, it’s simply astonishing that there hasn’t been a female-lead film added the mix yet. While Marvel has a dearth of male...
Natalie Portman Gives Some Real Talk About Feminist Portrayals in Hollywood
Natalie Portman, in an interview for Elle UK, gave some surprisingly blunt real talk about what Hollywood considers feminist portrayals of female characters. Portman has been outspoken about wanting...
Kimberly Peirce: “How Many More Movies Could I Have Made?”
Yesterday, the NY Times Magazine featured a profile of director Kimberly Peirce as she readies the release of the remake of Carrie starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore. This is a highly...
Guest Post: Let’s Change the Conversation About Women Directors
A few weeks ago, as Jane Campion’s TV series Top Of The Lake drew to a close, Marie Claire UK wrote an article entitled ’11 facts about the director that will blow your mind’ where the...
Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Goes on a Hunger Strike
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the jailed members of the band Pussy Riot, has gone on a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions in the work camp where she is serving her sentence. She was...
Dueling Skyfall Reviews: Feminist Mom Approved — Skyfall
Skyfall, the newest 007 blockbuster, is a fabulous, almost win-win-win for women! The film has three significant female characters and Bond himself is portrayed as a humbled, post-modern anti-hero...
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...
Cross Post: Hollywood’s New Feminists, Why the Old One Went Away and What’s Coming Next?
Women’s rights made a major impact on Hollywood in the 1970s. Feminism, now a dirty word, was such a force to be reckoned with that you didn’t dare depict a woman in a film who didn’t have, at...
Cross Post: Sexism in Hollywood: Where Are the Women in Argo?
Ben Affleck’s Argo is shaping up to be this year’s biggest success story. With a near-win for the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, stellar reviews across the board and an 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...
No Women Nominated for European Film Awards in Major Categories
Last week The European Film Awards announced their nominees for their annual awards. Michael Haneke’s Amour and Steve McQueen’s Shame picked up a majority of the nominations. But how did women...
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...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Kerry Washington
This week, Kerry Washington, star of ABC’s Scandal, wrote an op-ed piece for The Daily Beast about why she’s voting for Barack Obama. With the very high stakes for women in this election, more...
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...
From the Mouth of Girls
Women Moving Millions, a community of women who have donated $1 million or more to organizations that support women and girls, have launched a video with Global Girl Media asking a group of young...
As If!: The A.V. Club’s Top 50 Films of the 90’s has No Women Directors
The A.V. Club recently published a three-part series listing their top 50 films from the ’90s. As expected the likes of Tarantino, Scorsese, Fincher and the Coen Brothers appear, several, multiple...
Call Me Maybe — Feminist Ryan Gosling Edition
Who says feminists have no sense of humor? This is from the folks at the School of Social Work at Portland State U. h/t Sandy Leotti
Cross Post: She has a name. Her name is Sharon Carter!
One of the big would-be stories this week was the announcement of five actresses apparently on the ‘short list’ to play Sharon Carter in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Such stories are...
Guest Post: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret
According to the latest “Boxed In” report compiled by Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, Executive Director at The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, released...
Guest Post: We Came! We Saw! We Threw Bananas! WE WERE THEATRE!
Since 2001 Guerrilla Girls On Tour! have staged an annual protest around the time of the Tony Awards to highlight sexism in theatre. We chose the Tony Awards because we wanted people to think about...
The Academy Names All Male Recipient List for the Governors Awards
Yesterday, the Academy named their 2012 recipients of the Governors Awards. As Deadline reports, the Academy will be presenting Honorary awards to stunt performer, Hal Needham, documentary...
Funny Video of the Day: Wing it Parenthood with Connie Britton
Outspoken Planned Parenthood supporter, Connie Britton appears in this Funny or Die video about Planned Parenthood’s budget cuts. Britton, best-known for playing the amazing and feminist Tami...
Guest Post: The Strong Women of Copper
BBC America is premiering its first original series Copper this week. The story follows Kevin Corcoran, an Irish-American boxer-turned-cop (played by Tom Weston-Jones) who returns to New York from...
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...
Feminist Pussy Riot Band on Trial in Russia
Something horrific is going on in Moscow that needs a lot more attention. Three women who are members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot were jailed several months ago for “hooliganism” and...
Sexism Watch: Emma Stone Calls Out Sexism
Love this. You can check out the full version here. Cross posted with permission from Upworthy (a site you should check out.) The Adeventures of Emma in Hollywoodland (Upworthy)
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: 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: Late-Night TV Stand-Up Demographic Scorecard: First Half, 2012
Remember when The New York Times profiled Eddie Brill into a corner and caused an uproar both within CBS and Late Show with David Letterman — which took away Brill’s power to book stand-up...
Guest Post: Until the Fat Girl Swims
Many filmmakers talk about how their vocation is a “labor of love.” For most of us, the “labor” can frequently exceed the “love.” However, when we release our films out into the world it...
Feminist Dad of the Day: Christian Bale
I was reading the Batman cover story in EW and I wanted to shaare this quote from the interview with Christian Bale. What was the last great kids’ film you saw? I have a daughter, so it becomes...
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...
Lisa Cholodenko And Kathleen Kennedy Elected to Academy’s Board of Governors
Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences elected new members to the board of governors. There are two new members, director Lisa Cholodenko and producer Kathleen Kennedy. Kathleen...
Hollywood Feminists of the Day: Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith
After the KONY 2012 video went viral this past spring and its subsequent fallout, much of the celebrity community has quieted down about human trafficking and modern slavery. But the video inspired,...
Great Piece at the Women’s Media Center: If Women Ran Hollywood
Here’s a piece from Dr. Martha Lauzen — the guru of Hollywood stats — that appeared on the Women’s Media Center site. She pulls a gender reverse on how Hollywood is run. Here are...
Will Catwoman Be a Breakout Feminist Character?
As The Dark Knight Rises hits fever peak I’ve been wondering about Anne Hathaway’s character of Catwoman. Will she be like Michelle Pfeiffer’s in Batman Returns who as I recall was a bit...
The Social Network Team to Produce Fifty Shades of Grey
Universal Pictures and Focus Features have picked The Social Network producers Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti to shepherd E.L. James’ huge bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey to the...
Sexism Watch: Another Movie List Leaves Off Women
So tired of reading these lists that don’t include any women. This time it is AMC’s film site which offers up a list of the 50 top directors of all time. There is not one single woman who could...