News, Women Directors
On the hit show New Girl, Zooey Deschanel’s character Jess is finally embarking on responsible adulthood. In real life, though, the perpetually youthful Deschanel apparently stands at the...
Features, Weekly Update
Films About Women Opening Somewhere Slow “Overt femininity is sometimes just a wall to keep outsiders from peering in,” I wrote in my Los Angeles Times review. “That’s certainly the case...
Documentary, Festivals, Women Directors
Of the 115 features that will play at the South by Southwest Festival in March 7–15, women filmmakers will be represented in 20, or about 17%, of them. Two of the eight films competing for the...
Features, News, Television
As television’s revival hasreinvigorated the water-cooler discussion, many of the moments viewers have to talk about with someone have come fromcable. Hannah Horvath spends a sexy weekend with a...
News
On Wednesday, the New York Times published a necessary correction to the upcoming movie The Monuments Men, a goofy historical caper about a team of actual art scholars and curators whose Sisyphean...
News, Television
Few actresses are the target of as many comeback rumors as Meg Ryan. After 2003’s In the Cut, the Jane Campion thriller she had hoped would be her reinvention, Ryan disappeared into quickly...
Documentary, Features, Films, News
There’s only a smattering of films directed, written, and about women on offer this upcoming month, but there’s a few gems in the mix, as well as a great deal of variety in quality and...
Earlier this week, we reported that Homeland writer Barbara Hall was developing a political drama for CBS called Madam Secretary that would center on an “maverick” Secretary of State. The...
Good news continues to trickle in about the networks’ fall pilot season. In addition to new shows from Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Casey Wilson and June Raphael, we can now look forward to four...
News, Trailers, Videos
Is there a way to tell a romance involving a teenage cancer patient that isn’t cheesy, exploitative, or politically regressive? Author John Green certainly tried to find a way with his...
Features, News
Hear that “ouch”? It’s the sound of frustrated pundits pulling their hair as they attempt to divine the outcome of the Oscars’ best-picture race this year. Those of us who put our reps on...
Documentary, Festivals, News, Videos
Indiewire’s Thompson on Hollywood founder, Anne Thompson moderated a women’s director panel at Sundance, and a video of the discussion was released earlier this week by SundanceNOW’s Doc Club....
Documentary, Festivals, News
Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo’s Rich Hill was the nonfiction jury favorite at this year’s Sundance, but the documentary that’s arguably received the most Park City attention is...
Festivals, Interviews, News
Kate Barker-Froyland is the writer and director of Song One, her first feature film. Her short film “Match” screened at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New...
Tina Fey’s 30 Rock has only been off the air for a year, but it feels like a lot longer. TV has never been better, and yet nothing’s been able to replace the Lemon-sized hole 30 Rock’s...
Two weeks ago, we applauded Elizabeth Banks, Lead Comedic Actress. Now we celebrate Elizabeth Banks, Feature Filmmaker. The Hollywood Reporter revealed yesterday that Banks will make her...
Call it the Scandal effect. Or the Homeland effect. Or the Veep effect. Or the Parks and Recreation effect. There’s no denying that “women leaders in government” is a TV trend right now....
On Sunday, The New York Times published a great profile of Donna Langley, the Chairwoman of Universal Pictures. The article coincided with the announcement that Langley’s contract at NBCUniversal...
Three or four times a year (if that much), Hollywood seems to remember that women exist. Thus we get the occasional film that caters to female filmgoers, nearly always starring white actresses: the...
Festivals, News, Theater, Women Writers
The New York Times reports that 44 theater companies in Washington, DC, have joined forces to launch the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The inaugural event will take place over eight weeks...
Awards, Documentary, Festivals, News
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival came to a close yesterday, culminating in a two-hour awards ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. Women directors, editors, cinematographers, and...
Awards, News
Nary a week goes by at Women and Hollywood when we don’t devote a post to Shonda Rhimes. That’s because the Scandal showrunner is one of the few industry insiders with the courage and the...
News, Videos
“There is evil in this world. Hatred. Revenge,” Maleficent declares in the new Maleficent trailer. Then she giggles — not girlishly or coquettishly, but with ironic bemusement, like...
Music, Videos
To help get your work week off on the right foot, check out this inspirational performance from rock music legend (and recipient of the 2014 Music Cares honor) Carole King and the amazingly talented...
News, Women Writers
Who the hell knows what Mike Huckabee meant when he claimed that Republicans want to “empower [women] to be something other than victims of their gender” at a Republican National Committee...
For those of you who follow this issue and who read Women and Hollywood, a blog post from director Lexi Alexander caused a viral sensation last week. Her post An Oscar-Nominated Director Gets Real...
Films About Women Opening Run and Jump — Directed by Steph Green and Written by Ailbhe Keogan Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s feature debut is the first great film of 2014....
Interviews, News, Women Directors
The January doldrums are over. The first great movie of 2014 has arrived: Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s Run and Jump, her feature debut. Run and Jump centers on an Irish woman named...
In the past year, Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas’ procedural about a high-school girl (Kristen Bell) who became a private investigator, has been back in the news cycle repeatedly. That’s not...
Festivals, News
Alix Madigan has produced some great (female-centric) films: the Anna Faris stoner vehicle Smiley Face, Debra Granik’s Jennifer Lawrence-launcher Winter’s Bone, and Lynn Shelton’s new comedy...
Documentary, Festivals, Interviews, News
Born and raised in New Orleans, Nailah Jefferson created the production company Perspective Pictures in March 2010 to tell stories that shed light on little known issues. A month later, the BP oil...
Tracy Droz Tragos won an Emmy Award for her first documentary, Be Good, Smile Pretty, which aired on PBS’s Independent Lens and chronicled her journey to know her father, who was killed in...
Some deals for women directors coming out of Sundance. Sony Pictures Classics is the new home of Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz’s Land Ho! In her interview with Women and Hollywood, Stephens...
There’s a small but crucial scene in Frozen that’s merits some discussion. It occurs early in the film during Anna’s song “For the First Time in Forever,” when she imagines she might meet...
In commemoration of yesterday’s 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the United States, Mark Ruffalo has released a video with the Center for Reproductive...
Awards, Features, News
When this year’s Oscar nominations were announced, there were a few surprising omissions on the ballot, especially in the acting categories. You wouldthink, for instance, that the 6,000 or so...
When Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones announced last year that she’d be leaving America’s most civic-minded sitcom, she had her choice of projects to choose from. Deadline reports that,...
Features, Festivals, Women Directors
Though the 2014 lineup at the Sundance was disappointingly low on women directors, the festival remains committed to advancing the ranks of women directors in the industry. Two years ago, Sundance...
Features, Festivals, News, Women Directors
The story of how I found my way to film is a funny one. I was living in Paris, and I had no money. I was working as a waitress and a babysitter, pretty much doing everything I could to feed myself....
Festivals, Interviews
Drunktown’s Finest is Sydney Freeland’s feature film debut and her response to a news story that characterized her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, as “Drunktown, USA.” She has worked for a...
PBS will air six documentaries about women’s progress in the divergent fields of war, space, comedy, business, Hollywood, and politics starting in June. Oscar-nominated filmmakers Rachel Grady...
Geetu Mohandas is a filmmaker based in India. In 2009, along with her director/cinematographer husband Rajeev Ravi, she formed Unplugged, which produced her first short fiction film, “Kelkkunnundo...
Documentary, News, Videos
“Once I got subpoena’d, I knew what I had to do. I’m gonna tell what happened to me.” Directed by Oscar nominee Freida Mock, Anita focuses on the Clarence Thomas hearings, particularly the...
Actress-turned-director Rose McGowan (Grindhouse, TV’s Charmed) was born in Italy and raised on a steady diet of pasta, European cinema, and classic films. Along with her cinephile father, she...
The One I Love producer Mel Eslyn began working on films and music videos in the Midwest in her teens, working her way up through the set hierarchies. Years later, she relocated to Seattle,...
Just a couple of days after it acquired Lynn Shelton’s Laggies, A24 (which has a good track record for releasing women directed films- last year they released Sally Potter and Sofia Coppola) has...
Amy Poehler is flexing her producer’s muscles. We announced earlier this year that the Parks and Rec star was producing Broad City, a Comedy Central vehicle for comediennes Ilana Glazer and Abbi...
Listen Up Philip producer Katie Stern grew up in New York City. At a young age, she started making movies with her older brother, many of which have appeared on public access television. She has...
Madeleine Olnek is a writer and director who honed her skills in New York venues with more than 20 produced plays, all comedies. Her Sundance Film Festival shorts “Countertransference” (2009)...
It hasn’t been Emma Thompson’s year. Despite being feted by Meryl Streep early this awards season for her performance in Saving Mr. Banks, Thompson was snubbed for an Oscar nomination and has...
There was apparently one running theme at the eighth Women in Film panel hosted by the Sundance Film Festival: entrenched industry sexism. Six women directors and producers, representing five...
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