News
Will be back after Labor Day.
News, Women Directors, Women Writers
Here’s a piece I wrote for this summer’s Human Right Campaign Magazine Equality on the film. You can tell from the piece how impressive a film it is. It is a change making film because it tells...
Women Directors
It’s tricky business when you make a movie about religion. Religion elicits such passion that it’s hard to get the nuance without sounding preachy or judgmental. But that is exactly what Vera...
Here’s the thing about Columbiana the new film that stars Zoe Saldana that opens tomorrow, the only thing that makes it different from any other action film is that the killer is a woman. That’s...
Forbes loves its lists. Its most recent list is the world’s most powerful women and it is of course dominated by female politicians with Angela Merkel topping the list. But there are many Hollywood...
Statistics
TV is supposed to be better than the movies for women creatives. It is supposed to be the place where women are taken seriously because we watch TV and we buy the things that are advertised on TV. TV...
Love this photo. The Debt tells the story behind the search for one of the Holocaust’s deadliest butchers and the secrets behind that search. Helen Mirren plays a Mossad agent and Jessica Chastain...
Yahoo! Video Player
Here is a piece I wrote on Circumstance written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz for the Human Right Campaign’s Equality Magazine, for their Summer 2011 Issue. Making an independent film is always...
I sold my home to make my feature film debut Dimensions: A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads. It’s a sci-fi love story that takes place in England in the 1920s and 1930s…a period-science...
Here are the teaser posters designed by Shepard Fairey for The Lady starring Michelle Yeoh about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi. Film will premiere at The Toronto Film Festival. I hope to see...
Check out this conversation of two female media icons from the Paley Center for Media. https://medium.com/media/4d27489cc07caf17804240a953eb5868/href
Women Writers
In the early 1960’s, even though I had an MA in English Lit, I was happy to get a job as a secretary at Universal studios. I had access to all scripts being shot on the lot. Using them, I taught...
The story with Hollywood movies is that films open big in their first weekend and then drop off precipitously in their second weekend as a film opening takes the box office crown. That is not the...
News, Women Directors
One Day directed by Lone Scherfig tells the story of Emma and Dex played by Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. Two people who become friends and who stick it out even though there are times when they...
This younger Olsen sister has a lot to say about about how Hollywood depicts young women onscreen. Here’s what she had to say: A lot of times with female relationships and young women [in the...
Women Directors, Women Writers
The Hedgehog is a very unexpectedly touching film. It starts off jarringly, with 11-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) sick and tired of watching her self possessed family decides she is going...
Opens in NY on September 23rd and LA on October 7. Here’s the description: “TOAST is the ultimate nostalgia trip through everything edible in 1960’s Britain. Based on the heart-wrenchingly...
15-year-old Marie Feret plays Nannerl Mozart the elder sister to Wolfgang in her father Rene’s Mozart’s Sister opening this week in the US. A prodigy in her own right, she was trained by her...
The Melissa McCarthy express is keeping on rolling. She has just signed up to host the 2nd episode of SNL, and she was signed on for a new film called ID Theft with Jason Bateman. The big news about...
Sponsored by the Writer’s Guild of America West, the Lab is taking place now through September 18 in LA. The mentors include Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body), Mary Sweeney (Baraboo), and Meg...
Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain — Interesting, since I’ve seen the movie, and I wouldn’t say that it is a movie that stars Helen Mirren or Jessica Chastain. It’s an action adventure...
Viola Davis fresh off her great and potential Oscar nominated performance in The Help is taking her “klout” score to the bank as she should. She’s started a production company and is getting...
The Toronto Film Festival added to its already impressive lineup with some women directed films that I’ve been waiting for. There is a long awaited film from Nancy Savoca and Lynn Shelton’s...
Film is about the development of the vibrator and will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.
Women Producers
There was a time when all I wanted to do was make my first movie. And when sweat, tears and a lot of luck turned into a movie, all I could think about was getting it out into the...
Film Opens in the UK in October and in the US in December h/t In Contention
The Help has stirred up many emotions since it opened on Wednesday. But that hasn’t prevented the film from becoming a hit. It grossed over $35 million since it opened and already made back its...
Does the world need a film magazine targeted at women? The women who created Studio Magazine in the UK believe we do. This is an online based subscription magazine and it definitely looks a bit on...
I’ve been called brave twice in my life. The first time, I left a comfortable, cushy lawyer job and followed my dream of becoming a filmmaker. The second time is after people watch this film. I...
I got one of those breaking releases this weekend and this alert told me that there were three actresses in the final running to play Tom Cruise’s star in his next film — One Shot. I usually...
This is Rooney Mara before she became The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Clothes desgined by Diane vo Furstenberg. Film opens September 9.
Women’s Films Opening This Weekend The HelpAfter a long summer of superhero dudes and exploding machines, women are finally getting a one for our team. Actually, a second one. Remember Bridesmaids...
One of my favorite EW issues is about to hit my mailbox — the fall film preview issue. Yum. Can’t wait to take a more in-depth look at all the films coming down the pike this fall. One of the...
If not for an invitation from Michelle Obama (you know, her people emailed my people) I might have missed seeing The Help. But a request for my presence in the White House screening room was too...
Next Monday night, HBO will end its great summer documentary series with Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words. It’s a film that really lets Gloria’s words throughout her life as a public figure to...
After a long summer of superhero dudes and exploding machines, women are finally getting a one for our team. Actually, a second one. Remember Bridesmaids from May? Doesn’t that seem sooo long ago?...
Mark down September 16 for this one. I really liked the book when I read it some years ago. Trailer below
Octavia Spencer has the breakout role of her lifetime as Minny Jackson in The Help. She talked about the film and how important it is for women to support women’s films. I have to say that even...
Whether known as the “duchess of dish” or a “gargoyle of gossip,” Hedda Hopper was a powerhouse of Hollywood’s golden age. Known mostly today for her famous hats — which led to titles...
When talking to the Salt Lake City News about the whole “it girl” thing: When women enter the scene, they’re a commodity, and when men enter the scene, they’re actors. She hit it right on...
It was announced in January that Kathryn Bigelow’s next film would be on the hunt for Bin-Laden. The story clearly changed when Bin Laden was killed. The ending was set and the stakes got higher....
News, Women Writers
Around seven years ago when I was a production company executive, producer Glendon Palmer and screenwriter Elizabeth Hunter pitched the idea of Jumping The Broom (JTB) to me. I loved it and told my...
Today is Lucy’s 100th birthday. While she wasn’t the first groundbreaking female TV star (that honor goes to Gertrude Berg, and if you want to learn about her see Yoo Hoo Mrs. Goldberg), she is...
Can’t pass up a chance to share a conversation with...
When I was growing up the thing that scared the crap out of me was nuclear war. For many years I was convinced that we were all going to radiated away. So when I saw Silkwood it resonated with me in...
Women and Hollywood: How did you come up with the idea for the film? Larysa Kondracki: I am a Ukrainian Canadian, and the issue of sex-trafficking was very much being discussed in my community. My...
In All She Can Luz wants to get the hell out of Benavides, Texas. The way she can get out is either through the Army or through a weight lifting scholarship to college. Her brother is in the Army and...
TIFF unveiled its doc program and I have to say there are not too many female directed films. Usually there are way more women directed docs in film festivals because there are way more docs made by...
I am so not buying the shit being shoveled out about how the new NBC show The Playboy Club is about women’s empowerment. I wish I were a good enough writer at this moment to pen one of the...
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