Women at the Box Office the Weekend of February 22

Since the Oscars are this weekend, the pickings are quite slim at the box office. I got Amy Heckerling's I Could Never be Your Woman from Netflix, so that's on my list this weekend. The Independent Spirit Awards air Saturday (5pm EST on IFC) and of course the Oscars are on Sunday, preceded by the Barbara Walters special (on the east coast) where three out of her four guests are women (Ellen Page, Vanessa Williams and Miley Cyrus).

There are still some gems in the theatres for your watching pleasure.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
A Walk to Beautiful (NY)
Juno
The Savages
Mad Money
Caramel
Persepolis
The Business of Being Born
Teeth
27 Dresses
Atonement
Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
Untraceable
P.S. I Love You
The Golden Compass
August Rush
How She Move

Also, the Oscar nominated shorts are playing in limited release around the country. Several are by and about women.

Live Action Shorts
AT NIGHT
TANGHI ARGENTINI

Animated Shorts
PETER & THE WOLF

For more details: http://www.magpictures.com.

Opening Next Weekend
Penelope
The Other Boleyn Girl

Oscar Predictions

Gotta say that this has been a petty lackluster Oscar season (some blame goes to the writers strike) but some of the blame has got to go to the types of films that are nominated. Violent, boy-centric and self-indulgent.

Here's to a better slate of films next year.

Some quotes from around the web on the Oscars:
from Kim Masters at Slate:

I'm amazed that Sarah Polley isn't the human-interest story of these Oscars: She's a 29-year-old knockout who just made an astonishingly mature, critically lauded debut as a writer/director. Is it because Away From Her's subject matter is so depressing (as opposed to the nonstop merriment of, say, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)? Is it a woman thing? A Canadian thing? Or is Polley just less savvy at self-packaging than, say, Diablo Cody?

I really think that it's interesting to talk about Sarah Polley and Diablo Cody. Both to me are strong female role models in very different ways. Sarah Polley is an artist who let's her work speak for herself. She comes off as shy and not interested in the publicity machine. Cody is just the opposite, very interested in milking the system (saying some great feminist bits) and riding her wave as far as it goes. She seems to have very few inhibitions (kind of makes sense since she worked the pole for a while).

But really, it just seems that Hollywood can't tell more than one "women's" story at a time. God forbid we should have read anything about Nancy Oliver nominated for Lars and the Real Girl. Come on, we must have read 400 stories about No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood.

The Oscars this year reflect an ongoing trend in the business -- women just don't matter.

from the Guardian:

Intelligent contemporary Hollywood has become very macho: a quality that I think is under-reported and under-analysed by the media, which arguably has just as much of a male bias as cinema. The Coens' No Country for Old Men and Anderson's There Will Be Blood are, I believe, superb: benchmarks for American movie-making. But, goodness, how that testosterone positively drips off the screen. These are movies about the sweat, the thrust, the growl, the facial hair - and the guns and the violence. No Country for Old Men might as well be called No Country for Women of Any Age, although it does have two excellent contributions from Kelly Macdonald and Tess Harper. As for There Will Be Blood, there are hardly any women at all.

That is why I think the remarkable young Canadian director Sarah Polley should have been given a director's nomination for her film Away from Her, starring Julie Christie. Hollywood has only just finished congratulating itself on finally giving acting awards to African-Americans. But it has an inbuilt assumption that the director's role is a man's job - and this assumption goes unchallenged with incredible regularity.

from David Carr aka the Carpetbagger at the NY Times:

Three women are in this category, which should tell Hollywood a story it needs to hear. The conventional wisdom wants Diablo Cody. Juno what? (Yes, the Bagger is a bit punchy by now, but bear with him.) Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right. She nailed something fresh, which even Hollywood can’t resist.

from Gold Derby at the LA Times:

When Oscar is not comforting the long-suffering wife, he can often be found in the arms of a young beauty.

Last year's best actress winner, Helen Mirren ("The Queen") was the first leading woman older than 40 to take home an Oscar in a decade. Up until then, the list of recent winners looked like the lineup at a beauty pageant: Reese Witherspoon, Hilary Swank, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow. Personally, I think Mirren was able to overcome that trend by embracing it. At age 62, she's still quite sexy (remember her nude scene in "Calendar Girls"?) and she was brazenly frisky while out on the Oscar campaign trail last year, even appearing on the cover of Los Angeles magazine tugging at her bra.

Granted, the younger screen lovelies would often win acclaim and awards by deglamourizing themselves to show Hollywood that they were more than just pretty faces. But during Oscar campaign season, off came the false noses, boxing gloves and trailer-trash outfits, to be replaced by designer gowns and comely coifs.

This year, classic Gallic beauty Marion Cotillard turns from ugly duckling to swan and back playing tragic chanteuse Edith Piaf. With her head shaved and her eyebrows plucked, the French actress, 32, is transformed into the "little sparrow" at the end of her troubled life.

While 1960s siren Julie Christie, star of "Away From Her," still sizzles in real-life, like Mirren, for this 66-year-old to win would be to buck the trend. Though this age bias is less blatant in the category for supporting actresses, older gals still triumph there only now and then: Judi Dench once, Dianne Wiest twice in recent years, for example.

Pace University proved the obvious a few years ago when it conducted an Oscar study spanning the 25 years before 2000 and discovered that best actor winners were, on average, five years older than their female equivalents. And seven years separated male and female nominees.

In the last 15 years only two actresses older than 50 have won an Oscar in the lead or supporting races: Dames Mirren and Dench. Meantime, consider all of these chaps north of the half-century mark who've triumphed during the same years: lead actors Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Anthony Hopkins as well as supporting Alan Arkin , Morgan Freeman, Chris Cooper, Jim Broadbent, Michael Caine, James Coburn, Martin Landau, Gene Hackman, Jack Palance.

Here are all the nominees and Women & Hollywood's predictions (in the categories I have a clue about):

Best motion picture of the year
"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

Winner: No Country for Old Men

Performance by an actor in a leading role
George Clooney in "Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.)
Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
Johnny Depp in "Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount)
Tommy Lee Jones in "In the Valley of Elah" (Warner Independent)
Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern Promises" (Focus Features)

Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis- no one else has gotten any traction in this category. Hollywood is in awe of Day-Lewis.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Casey Affleck in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (Warner Bros.)
Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Charlie Wilson's War" (Universal)
Hal Holbrook in "Into the Wild" (Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment)
Tom Wilkinson in "Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.)

Winner: Javier Bardem

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (Universal)
Julie Christie in "Away from Her" (Lionsgate)
Marion Cotillard in "La Vie en Rose" (Picturehouse)
Laura Linney in "The Savages" (Fox Searchlight)
Ellen Page in "Juno" (A Mandate Pictures/Mr. Mudd Production)

Winner: Julie Christie- I think that while Ellen Page is getting lots of traction lately, she is going to have a career and will see her time come later. I'm betting that not enough people have seem La Vie en Rose so that hurt Cotillard's chances. Christie is a mythical character, she transcends film and has become an icon. She doesn't give a shit about the pomp and circumstance and her performance in Away from Her was transcendent.

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Cate Blanchett in "I'm Not There" (The Weinstein Company)
Ruby Dee in "American Gangster" (Universal)
Saoirse Ronan in "Atonement" (Focus Features)
Amy Ryan in "Gone Baby Gone" (Miramax)
Tilda Swinton in "Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.)

Winner- Ruby Dee. I'm not sure about this one. Amy Ryan had the early momentum as did Cate Blanchett, but Blanchett recently won and Ryan has faded as Swinton and Dee have gained. I just don't think that this will be the role Swinton will win for and Oscar always likes to honor a body of work and Dee has been around and is deserving.

Best animated feature film of the year
"Persepolis" (Sony Pictures Classics): Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
"Ratatouille" (Walt Disney): Brad Bird
"Surf's Up" (Sony Pictures Releasing): Ash Brannon and Chris Buck

Winner: It pains me to say that Ratatouille will be about the magnificent Persepolis.

Achievement in directing
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Miramax/Pathé Renn), Julian Schnabel
"Juno" (A Mandate Pictures/Mr. Mudd Production), Jason Reitman
"Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.), Tony Gilroy
"No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage), Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
"There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax), Paul Thomas Anderson

Winner: Joel and Ethan Coen- whatever

Best documentary feature
"No End in Sight" (Magnolia Pictures) A Representational Pictures Production: Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience" (The Documentary Group) A Documentary Group Production: Richard E. Robbins
"Sicko" (Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company) A Dog Eat Dog Films Production: Michael Moore and Meghan O'Hara
"Taxi to the Dark Side" (THINKFilm) An X-Ray Production: Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
"War/Dance" (THINKFilm) A Shine Global and Fine Films Production: Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine

Winner: No End in Sight- great doc

Best documentary short subject
"Freeheld" A Lieutenant Films Production: Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth
"La Corona (The Crown)" A Runaway Films and Vega Films Production: Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega
"Salim Baba" A Ropa Vieja Films and Paradox Smoke Production: Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello
"Sari's Mother" (Cinema Guild) A Daylight Factory Production: James Longley

Winner: Haven't seen any but I'm pulling for Freeheld

Achievement in film editing
"The Bourne Ultimatum" (Universal): Christopher Rouse
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Miramax/Pathé Renn): Juliette Welfling
"Into the Wild" (Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment): Jay Cassidy
"No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage) Roderick Jaynes
"There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax): Dylan Tichenor

Winner: Roderick Jaynes (he'll ride of the No Country like sweep)

Best foreign language film of the year
"Beaufort" Israel
"The Counterfeiters" Austria
"Katyn" Poland
"Mongol" Kazakhstan
"12" Russia

Winner: Since they didn't nominate 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or Perspepolis, I could care less about this category.

Adapted screenplay
"Atonement" (Focus Features), Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
"Away from Her" (Lionsgate), Written by Sarah Polley
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Miramax/Pathé Renn), Screenplay by Ronald Harwood
"No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage), Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
"There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax), Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson

Winner: Joel & Ethan Coen, but wouldn't it be great if Sarah Polley won?

Original screenplay
"Juno" (A Mandate Pictures/Mr. Mudd Production), Written by Diablo Cody
"Lars and the Real Girl" (MGM), Written by Nancy Oliver
"Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.), Written by Tony Gilroy
"Ratatouille" (Walt Disney), Screenplay by Brad Bird; Story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird
"The Savages" (Fox Searchlight), Written by Tamara Jenkins

Winner- Diablo Cody. This will be Juno's award.

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
"Atonement" (Focus Features) Dario Marianelli
"The Kite Runner" (DreamWorks, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Participant Productions, Distributed by Paramount Classics): Alberto Iglesias
"Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.) James Newton Howard
"Ratatouille" (Walt Disney) Michael Giacchino
"3:10 to Yuma" (Lionsgate) Marco Beltrami

Winner: Dario Marianelli

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
"Falling Slowly" from "Once" (Fox Searchlight) Music and Lyric by Glen Hansard and: Marketa Irglova
"Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted" (Walt Disney): Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
"Raise It Up" from "August Rush" (Warner Bros.): Music and Lyric by Jamal Joseph, Charles Mack and Tevin Thomas
"So Close" from "Enchanted" (Walt Disney): Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
"That's How You Know" from "Enchanted" (Walt Disney): Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz

Winner: Since hardly anyone in the Academy will have seen August Rush or Once (both those songs are great), I'll give it to Enchanted- don't know which one, don't really care.

Achievement in makeup
"La Vie en Rose" (Picturehouse) Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald
"Norbit" (DreamWorks, Distributed by Paramount): Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (Walt Disney): Ve Neill and Martin Samuel

Winner: La Vie en Rose

Achievement in visual effects
"The Golden Compass" (New Line in association with Ingenious Film Partners): Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (Walt Disney): John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and John Frazier
"Transformers" (DreamWorks and Paramount in association with Hasbro): Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier

Winner: The Golden Compass

Achievement in cinematography
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (Warner Bros.): Roger Deakins
"Atonement" (Focus Features): Seamus McGarvey
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Miramax/Pathé Renn): Janusz Kaminski
"No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage): Roger Deakins
"There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax): Robert Elswit

Winner: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Achievement in costume design
"Across the Universe" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Albert Wolsky
"Atonement" (Focus Features) Jacqueline Durran
"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (Universal) Alexandra Byrne
"La Vie en Rose" (Picturehouse) Marit Allen
"Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount) Colleen Atwood

Winner: Elizabeth: The Golden Age- bad movie, great costumes

News from the Week

Some tidbits I picked up over the week:

• The great Christine Ebersole will star in a Lifetime pilot Libertyville, written and executive produced by Tom Saunders. Show is set in Libertyville, Ohio, and centers on Susie (Ebersole), a divorced mother fearful of dating whose life is complicated by her lazy 22-year-old daughter and cantankerous father who live with her.

• Sarah Polley will receive the Claude Jutra Award (an award for a first-time feature director) at the Genies, the Canadian version of the Oscars on March 3.

• Mandate Pictures has acquired an untitled romantic comedy from "The Devil Wears Prada" scribe Aline Brosh McKenna. Story centers on Maya, a young and highly successful businesswoman who has devoted her life to working for her legendary businessman father. But when Mr. Right enters her life and proposes to her, her father's disapproval of her new fiance leads Maya to devise a mischievous ploy to change Dad's mind. Debra Martin Chase ("The Princess Diaries," "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") will produce.
  

• Helen Hunt will receive the breakthrough director of the year award at ShoWest on April 25th.

• Edie Falco will star in a Showtime comedy about a New York nurse juggling the frenzied grind of an urban hospital and an equally challenging personal life. Pilot was written by Liz Brixius, Linda Wallem and Evan Dunsky. Wallem and Brixius will serve as executive producers.
  
  

Diablo Cody, Hollywood Feminist

There has been much conversation about Juno and the reality (or lack of reality) it shows about teenage pregnancy. Many experts on the issue have criticized the ending of the film where Juno is playing guitar and hanging out with her boyfriend as if nothing happened. The reality is that an unwanted teenage pregnancy is most often a devastating experience for a young woman and that the film really glosses that over.

I am still impressed that Diablo Cody still speaks out about women's roles in Hollywood. Here is a short interview from January 2008's Glamour.

Q: You write great female roles. Do you feel like a spokesperson for actresses?

A: I feel like I am one of them. There are women who've played girlfriends for years, and it's unjust.

Q: Yeah, they either play the girlfriend or the bitch. Which is most annoying?

A: The girlfriend! It says women are secondary. At least the bitch gets to be an attorney or in the CIA.

Q: Unlike other teen girls in film, Juno's smart.

A: I've met so many girls who are articulate. It's infuriating when they are portrayed as airhears.

Q: Who got it right?

A: My So-Called Life, and Clueless's Cher is saavy. I'm doing what I can to unravel the dumb-girl stereotype.

Amen, Diablo.

Why Isn't This a Bigger Issue?

For those of you who are familiar with the blog, you know that I am constantly harping on the lack of roles for women in Hollywood. Let's face it women are missing not only from the big mainstream big budget films (unless you are the young girlfriend who likes to scream in peril) as well as smaller movies that get the most recognition this time of year in anticipation of the Oscars.

There have been a couple of articles this season about how the top Oscar nominees (No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood) are devoid of women except in minor roles (No Country).

The Telegraph had a great piece on this over last weekend. My question is, why don't we think this is a problem? There are so many good lines in the piece that I've wound up copying most of it.

Casting your eyes over this year's roster of film award contenders, you'd be forgiven for wondering why women, more than ever, have been relegated to the margins. The stories Hollywood wanted to tell last year were about fathers and sons, the American west, and machismo run amok.

Where are this year's The Queen, Erin Brockovich, Far From Heaven, The Hours? Even this year's Chicago? Oscar-watchers can only point to the best picture nominees Atonement and Juno as examples of female-led cinema, and neither of these will quite do.

The marginalisation pattern rears its head again in best supporting actress. Ruby Dee gets nominated for a single scene slapping Denzel Washington in the entirely phallocentric American Gangster. Blanchett is in for playing a man - but more on that in a minute. And Tilda Swinton, superb in Michael Clayton, makes a virtue of being the only gal in her own otherwise male-dominated ensemble. Her performance as the morally decentred opposition lawyer Karen Crowder is a brilliant reproach to a frankly wretched part: the role is tinged with misogyny, but Swinton makes Karen, with all her neurosis and terror, seem like the stricken victim of a man's world.

It does seem that Hollywood has been overwhelmingly working out maleness issues, rather than feminine ones - whether it's rampant capitalism (There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton) or essays on violence (No Country For Old Men, Jesse James) or paeans to male solitude (Into the Wild).

Even in traditionally female-targeted genres, such as the romantic comedy, there has been a shift in focus: the rise of producer-director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad) has seen date movies go out of their way to attract a more male demographic. Noticeably, women in Apatow's films don't get to have much fun - they're dealing with the responsibilities of childbirth while the men are off getting wasted.

I'm also tired of women getting pegged only as people interested in watching romantic comedies. Women are way more diverse than that.

I don't deplore this as an ongoing trend so much as call attention to it as a curious blip.

I deplore it and believe it is an ongoing trend and not a curious blip!

But why is Hollywood so scared of women's stories right now? Even a Devil Wears Prada has its place, but we didn't get one last year. We had to console ourselves with Hairspray.

Really, what is so scary about women?

The odds so often seem stacked against women's pictures at the multiplexes, not to mention the careers of any number of female directors, who manage to have one breakout success (Boys Don't Cry, Girlfight, Monster) and then struggle for years to get their next film funded.

This guy gets it. How come the powers in Hollywood don't?

Full Story:Why Is Hollywood Going for Bloke?

Reese Witherspoon- Hollywood Feminist

On vacation I read that Reese Witherspoon will be speaking at UNIFEM's Global Summit for a Better Tomorrow next month to coincide with International Women's Month. She is also acting as Avon's Global Ambassador and will be talking about many issues affecting women including domestic violence in this role.

Penelope, the film she produced through her Type A Films company finally opens opens on February 29th. (I will see it next week). If I was more conspiratorially minded I would think that the folks in Hollywood really want women's films not to succeed because for some bizarre reason Penelope is opening on the same day as The Other Boleyn Girl. (This also happened last month with Mad Money and 27 Dresses.) So there has basically been no movies targeted at women all month and now at the end of the month there are two. What's up with that?

Here is a great exchange from Reese about Penelope from the February issue of Marie Claire:

MC: What drew you most to the zany story of Penelope?

Reese Witherspoon: The ability of this young woman to supersede social expectations of what she should look like and learn to love herself for who she is- including her pig nose. This is a film that lets people know it's ok to be unique. It's ok to be different- it's actually better! I felt I could really speak to people, particularly young women, about self-acceptance.

Interview with Abby Epstein, Director of The Business of Being Born

The Business of Being Born, the new documentary produced by Ricki Lake and directed by Abby Epstein has been playing in limited release in several cities across the country. For information on where the film is playing: The Business of Being Born

Here is my review: Review of The Business of Being Born

Women & Hollywood: How did you become involved with this film?

Abby Epstein: Ricki Lake and I became friendly when I directed her in "The Vagina Monologues" Off-Broadway. We stayed in touch and I knew that she was planning a homebirth for her second child, although at the time I thought she was completely nuts! A few years later, Ricki had finished her talk show and relocated to LA so I stopped by to see her new house and have a visit. I had just completed my first doc "Until the Violence Stops" about the worldwide V-Day movement and Ricki was looking to start a "dream" project about midwives and birthing. I was completely ignorant on the topic but intrigued by Ricki's passion, so I asked her for some reading material and she gave me a book called "Spiritual Midwifery" by Ina May Gaskin. Then Ricki showed me the home video footage of her homebirth (which we use in the film) and I was completely blown away. We began from there.

W&H: How did your involvement with the film effect your own birth experience?

AE: On the one hand, I was very fortunate having spent 2 years researching birthing options in NYC before I became pregnant. I was not only a highly informed customer, but I had attended several births and did not have any more fear about the birth process. So, I felt like I had all these amazing people to choose from when it came time to selecting a provider (of course not all of them took my HMO, so that limited me a bit) But on the other hand, I was put in a position where there became pressure to include my birth in the film - which I resisted. I had no interest in turning the cameras on myself and was unsure whether we were in fact going to document my birth until the very last moment.

W&H: Explain why you chose the title The Business of Being Born.

AE: Truthfully, we couldn't think of anything short and catchy. None of us really loved the title but it seemed to encompass the broad range of aspects we were looking at in the birthing "business."

W&H: It seems that you and Ricki are both on a type of crusade here - using the film to help educate and organize women to take back their own bodies and their births. Did you ever expect the film would morph into this type of movement?

AE: We never expected that the film would have such an impact on mainstream birth culture. I think we suspected that it would hit a nerve, but we honestly just wanted to put the information out there in a bold way - not watered down. It all stemmed from Ricki's personal experience and grew organically from there. But we have definitely started a movement along with other writers and activists - Jennifer Block's book PUSHED was published at the same time we premiered, which was amazing. I think we are on a crusade to inform, but not to convince women to have natural births or homebirths. The modern woman wants information and options - but no one should feel pressured or regretful about their choices.

W&H: There seems to be a lot of women directing documentaries these days. Why do you think that is?

AE: I think that documentaries often have more substance than features and women are attracted to material that is potent and meaningful rather than commercially viable. Of course, there is also the fact that docs are low-budget and don't pay well (if at all!) so there is less competition.

But mostly I think that docs are usually self-generated passion projects where a director can have total control and women are organized, not afraid of hard work and always like a bit of control!

W&H: What's next for you?

AE: We are still opening the film in major cities (Chicago, Seattle, Boston, DC) so I am busy with that until April. Then, I am planning some vacation time with my family! Ricki and I are in the midst of writing a book based on the movie which will come out in April 2009 and a follow-up DVD that will accompany the book. We are also hard at work on our website - turning it into a resource for birth information and options. So, I will still be busy with all things BOBB for a while and then I plan to direct an independent feature film. I'd like to get back to working with actors and writers, which is truly what I love.

Film is available on netflix now

The Women is Coming on October 10th!

Just saw this description of the movie I am most excited about this year, The Women directed and adapted by Murphy Brown creator Diane English. Check out the most awesome cast. Mark your calendars!

Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Candice Bergen, Bette Midler, Cloris Leachman, Carrie Fisher, Lynn Whittfield, Joanna Gleason, Ana Gasteyer and Debi Mazar.

“The Women” directed by Diane English from her screen adaptation of Clare Boothe Luce’s play of the same name, first made famous by director George Cukor’s iconic 1939 film.

Set in New York City’s modern whirl of fashion and publishing, “The Women” tells the story of Mary Haines (Meg Ryan), a clothing designer who seems to have it all – a beautiful country home, a rich financier husband, an adorable 11-year-old daughter and a part-time career creating designs for her father’s venerable clothing company. Her best friend, Sylvie Fowler (Annette Bening), leads another enviable life – a happily single editor of a prominent fashion magazine, a possessor of a huge closet of designer clothes and a revered arbiter of taste and style poised on New York’s cutting edge. But when Mary’s husband enters into an affair with Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), a sultry ‘spritzer girl’ lurking behind the Saks Fifth Avenue perfume counter, all hell breaks loose. Mary and Sylvie’s relationship is tested to the breaking point while their tight-knit circle of friends, including mega-mommy Edie Cohen (Debra Messing) and author Alex Fisher (Jada Pinkett-Smith), all start to question their own friendships and romantic relationships as well.

This sounds fantastic. Can't wait.

The Tabloidization of the Media and How it Beats Up Women

One of the things that I have been concerned about for some time is the "tabloidization of the media" and its detrimental effect on women.

This whole celebrity obsession seems to have started almost a decade ago and one episode that stands out in my mind as to the double standard - even back then- between male and female stars was the short relationship of Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe. They met and supposedly feel in love on the set of Proof of Life. Once they were spotted together, the world turned against her for cheating on Dennis Quaid (of course, no one knows the state of their marriage at the time.) Meg who had been so popular in the 90s (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Courage Under Fire) seemed to almost disappear after the flop of Proof of Life and Kate and Leopold (with Hugh Jackman) that also did not do well (which I still think is adorable). According to IMDB she didn't make a movie from 2004-2007. It also didn't help that she hit 40 which is the kiss of death for women in Hollywood. (I am so looking forward to Meg's next role in the Diane English remake of The Women.)

But Russell Crowe passed through that incident, and many others (he actually is violent, remember the phone throwing incident), but he always bounces back and gets the next starring role making $20 million. Meg Ryan was judged more harshly because of the types of roles she played -- the good girl -- and the world couldn't handle the good girl with the bad boy.

My main concern is that we, as women, seem to be obsessed with the drama of these young women's lives. I am just as guilty with my subscription to Us Magazine (I am seriously thinking of canceling it- I am tired of seeing Britney Spears or Nicole Richie or those girls from Laguna Beach on every cover). We need to stop consuming this crap and then maybe the harassment of these young women will subside. Cause really folks, it is harassment. They can't drive anywhere, they can't eat anywhere. It's enough. Things are out of control.

The NY Times ran a piece in the Sunday style section on Sunday that illuminated this issue. Here are some quotes:

Yes, women are hardly the only targets of harsh news media scrutiny — just ask Mel Gibson. But months of parallel incidents like these seem to demonstrate disparate standards of coverage. Men who fall from grace are treated with gravity and distance, while women in similar circumstances are objects of derision, titillation and black comedy.

Mel did something illegal so let's not put his indiscretion in the same category as poor Britney who clearly has some psychological problems.

Some celebrities and their handlers are now saying straight out that the news media have a double standard. “Without a doubt, women get rougher treatment, less sensitive treatment, more outrageous treatment,” said Ken Sunshine, a publicist whose clients include Ben Affleck and Barbra Streisand. “I represent some pretty good-looking guys, and I complain constantly about the way they’re treated and covered. But it’s absolutely harder for the women I represent.”

Liz Rosenberg, a publicist at Warner Bros./Reprise Records who represents Madonna, among others, also thinks sexism is at work. “Do you see them following Owen Wilson morning, noon and night?” she asked.

Go Liz!

Some editors confirm that they handle female celebrities differently. But the reason, they say, is rooted not in sexism, but in the demographics of their audience.

The readership of US Weekly, for example, is 70 percent female; for People, it’s more than 90 percent, according to the editors of these magazines.

We are our own worst enemy! What are the kids learning when we are obsessed with Britney or Lindsay Lohan?

“Almost no female magazines will put a solo male on the cover,” said Janice Min, the editor in chief of US Weekly. “You just don’t. It’s cover death. Women don’t want to read about men unless it’s through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup.”

Ms. Min acknowledged that her magazine played down its coverage of Owen Wilson and Heath Ledger. Part of the reason, she said, was that female readers tend to be sympathetic toward young men in crisis.

Why are women (cause women are the readers of the magazines) more sympathetic towards young men in crisis vs. young women in crisis? Why do we coddle the boys and hang the girls out to dry?

“There is certainly an argument for it being incredibly sexist, the attention that’s given to women and the hounding of them,” the actor Colin Farrell said at a recent party for his new film, “In Bruges.”

So now Colin Farrell is the spokesperson for women being hounded in Hollywood. Where are the women standing up for themselves and each other? Did the NY Times not bother to try and talk to one of the women who gets hounded so relentlessly?

Boys Will Be Boys, Girls Will Be Hounded by the Media

Tamara Jenkins, writer/ director of The Savages

It's Oscar week and I'm going to try and highlight the women nominees as much as possible on the road to Sunday's telecast. Here is an interview from Filmmaker Magazine with writer/director Tamara Jenkins. It's a very interesting pieces about the writing (Jenkins was nominated for best screenplay)

Quotes of note:

Filmmaker: Why did it take so long to make The Savages?

Jenkins: I feel like I know so many people who have made movies and then struggle so hard to get their next movie happening. This almost didn’t happen like 100 times. Just getting the financing…. [First] it was at Focus Features, and they really liked it, they financed the writing of the script, but then they were dissatisfied with the casting, which was crazy. And then we were out. They gave it [back] to us so we could shop it around, which took forever. We couldn’t get anyone to finance it, even with Laura and Phil.

I am floored that with Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman committed that this film almost didn't get made.

A great quote on writing

Writing is weird and lonely and makes you grumpy and strange, and it’s nice when somebody understands that. I also have a dog. That helps. Makes you go out into the world. Then your dog’s like, “Okay, I have to walk you.” There’s something about moving and thinking. A treadmill, working out, and your brain just kind of makes connections. Moving — being in cars, trains, being on treadmills, they’re all really good for the writing brain. But I haven’t written in a long time; I have to start writing. To write you really should be writing every single day to keep the muscle going. But then if you write and make a movie, the year of working on the movie goes by and then you’re supposed to start writing again and you have kind of forgotten how. So I have to start writing. I have to buy a new journal; I have to get some nice pens.

Read full story: Senior Moments

Middle Eastern Women Directors Use Films as Social Commentary

Check out this Christian Science Monitor piece: Women Directors Use Films as Social Commentary about three women directors from the middle east and how they are using their films to speak out about issues in their oppressive cultures.

In the Middle East, women have a new voice: the movies. As nascent film industries bloom in the region, a few emerging women directors are probing some of the most delicate subjects within their male-dominated communities, giving viewers a glimpse into once-veiled worlds.

The directors discussed are: Israeli Arab Ibtisam Maraana; Buthina Canaan Khoury of the Palestine Territories and Haifaa Al-Mansour of Saudi Arabia (which has no movies theaters)

Mansour didn't intend to focus her filmmaking career on women's issues, but found the issues too important not to address. She began her filmmaking career making a seven-minute short, "Who?," in which a man disguised as a women – i.e., dressed in a traditional black, full-body covering called the abaya – stalks women and enters their homes.

"Women typically appreciate my movies and want to have a forum for these important issues," she says. But men, especially, surprisingly, educated ones, feel threatened."

Maraana compares her filmmaking to going to war.

Buthina Canaan Khoury, a Christian Palestinian filmmaker from the West Bank town of Taybeh, is used to pioneering unchartered territory. She was the first Palestinian camera woman and producer for the European Broadcasting Union inside the Palestinian Territories. Now the head of her own Majd Production Company, she has nothing less than a filmmaking agenda: to highlight key Palestinian issues.

New Way of Posting

Hi folks. I'm back from my week off and excited to take Women & Hollywood to the next level. In order to make it easier for everyone I am changing the way I will post. I won't be organizing my posts by date, I will be organizing them by topic, that way it will make it easier to search and easier to read. Please let me know what you think of the new style.

Thanks

February 8, 2008

Please note: Women & Hollywood will be off next week- posting will resume February 18th.

At the Theatres This Weekend
No large scale releases to recommend.

Opening This Weekend
A Walk to Beautiful (NY only)- see interview below

Currently in Theatres
The Savages
The Business of Being Born
27 Dresses
Juno
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Caramel
Untraceable
Atonement
Mad Money
Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
P.S. I Love You
How She Move
The Golden Compass
August Rush
The Orphanage
Teeth

Interview with Mary Olive Smith, director, A Walk to Beautiful
In a world where the media is dominated by tabloid stars gone wild many important stories go untold and unseen. Most of the missing stories are the stories of poor people in countries far away struggling to survive while we here in the US are obsessed with Britney Spears' mental health.

Documentaries have been vital windows to these untold stories, and now with newspapers in crisis, they have become even more important in educating us about important issues around the world.

One of these documentaries, A Walk to Beautiful, opens today in NYC and later this month in LA. The film tells the story of five Ethiopian women who suffer from obstetric fistulas which cause them to constantly leak urine. They live in shame and are shunned from their communities, believing they are cursed and doomed to live the rest of their lives alone outside their families and culture. When they find out that other women suffer from this condition, and there is a place that can help, them they each start out on a long journey to the hospital that will hopefully help them regain their dignity and their lives.

This is a heartbreaking, moving film. The suffering and the shame of these women is visceral. The Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa is not only a hospital that performs physical surgeries on the women, they also stitch them back emotionally after suffering from years of depression and despair. The staff that works in this hospital led by an Australian ex-pat Dr. Catherine Hamlin who came to Ethiopia with her late husband in 1959, are nothing short of miracle workers. What they do for these women renewed my faith in humanity.

Mary Olive Smith spoke with Women & Hollywood about her experience making this film.

Women & Hollywood: Most people in the western world don't know what a fistula is, can you explain it to us?

Mary Olive Smith: The medical definition is an opening between an internal organ and the outside world. You can have different kinds of fistulas. We are dealing with obstetric fistula and that is an opening between the birth canal and the bladder, and in some rare cases between the birth canal and the rectum. It's caused by prolonged, unrelieved obstructed labor. The last recorded case in the US was 1895, but it was common all over the world before cesarean sections.

The only place in Ethiopia where there is advanced obstetric care is Addis Ababa. There are only 146 ob/gyns in a country of 77 million people and most all of them are in Addis Ababa.

Obstructed labor occurs in 5% of all labors all over the world, so those 5% need a c-section to successfully deliver a living child. In the developing countries when you add on the issues of early marriage and undernourishment, the rate gets higher. But, it's not just about early marriage and undernourishment. You will get fistulas unless you have trained medical technicians to perform c-sections.

W&H: How did you become interested in this?

MOS: I work at Engel Entertainment and I was asked by my boss to direct this film. It wasn't my idea. The idea came from a Nicholas Kristof column. I took on the job of envisioning it and developing it into a feature length film. My field director, Amy Bucher directed some of the women, and I directed others. Then I oversaw post-production. It was such a team effort.

W&H: What kind of outreach are you doing to spread the word about the film?

MOS: We have a grant from the UN Foundation and a grant from the Fistula Foundation which is the funding arm of the hospital. We are reaching out to universities, non-profit organizations, women's groups and medical groups to get as many people as possible to hold screenings. Nova will broadcast the film in May and they are also helping with the outreach.

W&H: How did you find the women?

MOS: I had two crews. One at the hospital interviewing women already there. I went into the countryside into one of the poorest areas called Gojam that has a high rate of fistula and I worked with the local clinics and churches and after a week later we still hadn't found anyone. The way we got to the women was talking to people in the market, to a woman outside a clinic, and then word started spreading that we were looking for a woman who was leaking. It was hard. Finally, through a chain of people I was led to Ayehu.

W&H: Do you feel an obligation to continue telling these stories?

MOS: Amy Bucher, my co-producer, pitched a follow-up story called Child Brides that aired on PBS in October. I am particularly interested in maternal health and learned that one woman dies every minute of the day from maternal injuries or related illnesses whether obstructed labor or hemorrhaging. It's unfathomable. Half a million women a year and that number hasn't changed in twenty years. I am in development on a proposal to do a documentary on maternal health and the hard part is going to sell it. I'm trying to make it "sexy enough" to get a broadcaster. The way to do that is to focus on the heroes in different parts of Africa where they are training the mid-level health professionals and midwives to do cesareans, By telling the heroes stories we can make it uplifting story. I hope to start fundraising this spring.

W&H: Was it hard to get the women to tell their stories?

MOS: I focused hard on being a compassionate and sensitive listener. The truth is they were really desperate to tell their stories. They opened up and you couldn't get them to stop. They were so surprised that anyone cared, that anyone wanted to know their stories.

W&H: I found the hospital staff beyond amazing and compassionate.

MOS: Especially with the brain drain in the country where doctors get trained and then take off and come to the US to work. Most of the surgeons at the Fistula hospital are Ethiopian with the exception of Dr. Andrew and Dr. Hamlin. They are extremely dedicated and extremely skilled. Fistula can be a fairly easy surgery yet some can take up to five hours.

W&H: Talk a little about Dr. Hamlin. Why has she dedicated her life to helping these women?

MOS: I wish I could have met her husband -- the two of them founded the hospital together in 1959. I have heard that he was truly inspirational too. Dr. Hamlin is the real deal. She's been there 50 years. She inspires not only to help women who are suffering, but also she's an extremely skilled surgeon and has inspired the medical community as well. They have managed to keep the hospital going through many brutal political regimes. Her biggest wish now is to have enough money in the bank so that when she passes away the hospital can continue for many years to come. So she is focused now on fundraising, not to just expand the hospital, (they are building five outreach centers throughout the country) but also to have an endowment. She is afraid of what will happen when she leaves.

W&H: These women suffer in silence. What did coming to the hospital do for their sense of self?

MOS: Most of them immediately start healing on day one, they open up they start laughing again. There are cases of women who are so depressed that nothing helps them right away and they need psychiatric treatment. The longer they suffer the harder it is. The suicide rate is high for fistula. The hospital surveyed and said that 98% have contemplated suicide and we don't know how many kill themselves because they are not visible. Fistula is a huge shame.

To get more information on Fistula:
Fistula Foundation (the U.S. foundation that raises money for the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital)
End Fistula Now (UNFP's Campaign to End Fistula)

To organize a screening contact: Allison Shigo, Engel Entertainment
allison@engelentertainment.com
(212) 413-9200

February 7, 2008

Preview Review: Bernard and Doris
Bernard and Doris is one of the strangest love stories I've ever seen on TV. Honestly, the relationship between the beyond rich Doris Duke and her alcoholic butler Bernard Lafferty is so crazy that if it hadn't of actually happened, the person who made it up would be a fantastic fiction writer. Bob Balaban takes the events of their relationship that were known and creates a fantasy of what their day to day life might have been like. The spectacular Susan Sarandon takes on the flamboyant role of Duke with gusto and Ralph Fiennes plays Lafferty perfectly like a puppy basking in the love of its master. She was a difficult woman with no real friends and fired people on whim, and he was a penniless Irish drunk who had made his way around Hollywood working for Elizabeth Taylor and Peggy Lee. The film is a tour de force for Sarandon who in my opinion, is always great.

Film premieres on HBO Saturday, February 9 at 8pm.

Dumb Blonde, Smart Blonde
If you're in NYC on February 12 you might want to attend this event sponsored by NY Women in Film and TV (which I am a proud new member of)

Women have wanted to be blonde from time immemorial. Equated with youth and sexiness, blondes have always been centerpieces in the movies. There have been all kind of blondes -- smart blondes, dumb blondes, scheming blondes, sweet blondes, powerful blondes, and victim blondes.

Anita Loos created the dumb blonde in 1927 (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and male writers perfected the genre. Women screenwriters improved on the genre, smartening their blondes up. Dumb Blondes, Smart Blondes will analyze the trajectory of blondes in film and television over the past 30 years. Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer film critic, will screen film clips to show the changing images of blonde-haired women on the screen and tube to determine whether they accurately reflect changing roles of women and the reality of their lives. The event will appeal to blondes and non-blondes alike.

Sign up Here: Dumb Blonde, Smart Blonde

February 6, 2008

Sneak Preview- Then She Found Me
I had a bad couple of days last week and had entered a mild depressive state but that was instantly lifted as soon as I left the screening room after seeing Then She Found Me, Helen Hunt's directorial debut which will be released in late April. Based on the novel by Elinor Lipman and adapted by Helen Hunt, Vic Levin and Alice Arlen, this film tells the story of April Epner (Hunt), a woman struggling with her desire to have a child in the midst of the disintegration of her marriage (to Matthew Broderick), meeting her birth mother (Bette Midler) for the first time, and then unexpectedly falling in love with an equally damaged man (played spectacularly by Colin Firth.)

This film reminds me of last year's wrenching Away From Her, not in subject matter, but in the almost lyrical intersection of the performances and the script. Why it also reminds me of Away From Her is that Hunt, like Sarah Polley, shows us the women's faces in both their joy and agony. Hunt, as the lead, really puts herself out there and it works. Seeing her facial lines (yes, she does have lines on her face like any normal woman does) made me hold my breath for a moment because there are so few films where you are able to see the truth on someone's face. The film also co-stars Bette Midler as Hunt's mother who had her when she was a teenager and gave her up for adoption. I miss Bette who was so big in the late 80s and early 90s. I was really impressed with the whole effort. Mark your calendars now, April 25th.

I Could Never Be Your Woman Goes Straight to DVD
I've been desperate to get information and the back story on the delayed release and now straight to DVD dump of the Michelle Pfeiffer Amy Heckerling collaboration I Could Never Be Your Woman which has been done for over a year (closer to two.) I contacted Amy Heckerling's office but she wouldn't speak to me because she was hopeful that she might get a theatrical release. But now that there's no chance of that, she let loose to Missy Schwartz at Entertainment Weekly.

What is so spectacular about this film going straight to DVD is that it's not going because it's a bad (like the recent Jessica Simpson or Jennifer Lopez films) it's going to DVD because the film's producer was a crook, has gone bankrupt and screwed up every potential release at every turn. This story is incredibly sad.

Some highlights:

The one thing all parties agree on is that it's baffling that a movie with two well-known actors, [Paul Rudd is the co-star] directed by the woman behind Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, wound up in the home-video refuse pile.

Woman, however, is a subcultural curio. It's a modestly budgeted indie that, while far from perfect, never got the chance it deserved, hitting every speed bump and knocking over every traffic cone along the way.

The inspiration for I Could Never be Your Woman came to Heckerling in the mid-90s...Every day, she felt increasingly ambivalent about working in an industry that promotes unrealistic standards of beauty for young girls and considers women over 40 to be prehistoric beasts.

The screenplay found a home at Paramount, [when Sherry Lansing was still there] but in an unfortunate case of life imitating art, the studio put it on hold. "There was some concern about doing a movie with an older female protagonist- not everybody's favorite demographic..."

She got $25 million in financing from Phillipe Martinez of Bauer Martinez Entertainment who knew nothing about releasing films and to make a long story short he sold off the DVD and most of the TV rights to the Weinstein Company, but then almost got lucky enough to get MGM to release the film, but because Pfeiffer's deal was cut as $1 million up front and 15% of the gross of the top MGM balked. Of course Pfeiffer was blamed. They also seem to blame her for not agreeing to do enough publicity that scuttled a deal with Freestyle Releasing. Very convenient to blame the actress. Give me a break.

So despite positive test screenings, MGM shelved Woman- the same day Pfeiffer was due to board a plane to kick off the PR campaign.

The saddest outcome:

Heckerling doesn't know when she'll direct again. "I don't want to work for the hell of it," she says. "I get offered: 'Here's a girl who's mad at another girl for having a wedding on the same day.' "That'll be a big hit, but I don't want to do that."

If Amy Heckerling and Michelle Pfeiffer couldn't get into the theatres, what does that say for other women directed and women starring movies. This whole story gives me indigestion. Kudos for EW for laying it out, finally.
Full piece: Would You Dump This Woman? (EW)

February 5, 2008

Lipstick Jungle - Preview Review
The best news about Lipstick Jungle from previewing the first two episodes is that it is way better than Cashmere Mafia which has become painful to watch. So what to do? Well, since there is nothing on TV (it's beyond pathetic now) watch both, but I have a feeling that one or both of them won't make it when the rest of the shows come back.

Lipstick Jungle comes from the brain of Candace Bushnell who also brought us Sex and the City. What made Sex and the City so great was her collaboration with Darren Star who after a falling out with Bushnell created the Mafia. If you want my opinion (and I know you do ) I think it would be better to have one pretty good show than one ok show, and one not so good show.

The show is about three highly successful women and how they negotiate life, love and responsibilities -- you get the idea. But really what this show does, as does Cashmere Mafia, is make women feel guilty about their successes and failures. It's one thing to have a show like say Grey's Anatomy that shows women dealing with all of life's issues in a way that makes one think instead of making one feel like crap. That's what I love about Grey's. And that's what I hate about both Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia.

I'm tired of people basing shows on women's guilt -- guilt over being more successful than your husband, guilt over being a bad mommy, guilt over kicking ass at the office, you know what I mean. Brooke Shields as Wendy Healy has the most guilt on the show and the job of her friends is to support her and make her feel like she has nothing to feel guilty about. She is the head of a movie studio and her husband (Paul Blackthorne) is an architect but is really the primary parent of the family. He makes her feel guilty that he has no career and is treated like "the wife" in public, while at the same time he feels guilty himself about not being supportive of his wife's success which he is very proud of.

Kim Raver plays Nico Reilly, a magazine executive, whose marriage to an academic has gone stale and finds herself drawn to a hot young man at a party which we all know can only lead to trouble. Nico is a very ambitious career woman of around 40 without kids and her disgustingly sexist boss starts grooming a guy to take over in case she decides to go off and have a family. He actually says to her "you're a woman of a certain age approaching a critical juncture." Nico does not take to that well, and really people, most women don't have the opportunity or money to check out after having a kid. Women need to work so their kids can eat.

The third player, and weakest link, is Lindsay Price as a down on her luck fashion designer Victory Ford (I really hope she made that name up herself.) She gets trashed at her latest fashion show but just when she's about to call it quits she meets a billionaire. I bet a thousand women have had that same experience. Ha ha.

While the show tries to make it seem like these women are just like us, the harder they try, the harder they fail. Just be honest, they're not like us -- some of the issues may be relevant -- but they're rich, glamorous, skinny, perfectly dressed which makes them all a fantasy. One thing they have going for them is that they look like they like each other unlike Miranda Otto and Frances O'Connor on Cashmere Mafia.

Show premieres February 7 at 10pm on NBC.

SXSW Unveils Lineup
South by South West Film Festival, one of the quirkier and off-bet and cutting edge fests takes place in Austin Texas from March 7-15. Fest will also feature screening of Kimberly Peirce's highly anticipated follo-up to Boys don't cry- Stop-Loss. Here are the films by/about women.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION
"Bulletproof Salesman," director by Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein
Fidelis Cloer is a self-confessed war profiteer who found The Perfect War when the US invaded Iraq. It wasn't about selling a dozen cars, or even a hundred, it was a thousand-car war where security would become the ultimate product. (World Premiere)

"FrontRunners," director by Caroline Suh
The campaign for student body president at Stuyvesant, perhaps the most prestigious public high school in the country, is almost as sophisticated as any presidential election. But unlike presidential candidates, they also have to do their homework, take their SATs and write their college applications. (World Premiere)

"The Matador," directed by Stephen Higgins & Nina Gilden Seavey
The epic tale of David Fandila's quest to become the world's top-ranked bullfighter. Heart-wrenching setbacks and thrilling successes dramatize his three-year journey across Spain and Latin America and into the pages of bullfighting history. (World Premiere)

"Some Assembly Required," directed by Dori Berinstein
Over 2000 kids. 400 teams nationwide. Eight months of brainstorming, designing and building. One goal: to create the next great toy. (World Premiere)

"They Killed Sister Dorothy," directed by Daniel Junge
On February 12th, 2005, a 73 year-old Catholic nun from Ohio, was shot six times at point blank range and left to die on a muddy Amazon road. Who was this woman, and why was she killed? What will become of her murderers, and who else was involved? What are the implications of her murder and these trials on the future? (World Premiere)

NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION
"My Effortless Brilliance," directed by Lynn Shelton. Written by Lynn Shelton, Sean Nelson, Basil Harris.
Starring: Sean Nelson, Basil Harris, Calvin Reeder, Jeanette Maus. Successful and self-involved novelist Eric Lambert Jones has been unceremoniously dumped by his life long buddy, Dylan. In an attempt to piece together the fractured friendship, Eric takes a side trip from his latest book tour to drop in on Dylan, newly settled in the picturesque backwoods of Washington state. (World Premiere)

"Older Than America," directed by Georgina Lightning. Written by Georgina Lightning, Christine Kunewa.
Starring: Adam Beach, Tantoo Cardinal, Bradley Cooper, Georgina Lightning, Wes Studi. A woman's haunting visions reveal a Catholic priest's sinister plot to silence her mother from speaking the truth about atrocities that occurred at a Native Indian boarding school. (World Premiere)

"Paper Covers Rock," directed and written by Joe Maggio
Starring: Jeannine Kaspar, Sayra Player, Clint Jordan, Tom Brangle. The story of Sam, a troubled young woman who loses custody of her six year-old daughter in the wake of an unsuccessful suicide attempt. (World Premiere)

"Yeast," directed and writted by Mary Bronstein
Starring: Mary Bronstein, Amy Judd, Greta Gerwig, Sean Williams. A maddeningly oblivious, tyrannical and emotionally stunted young woman tries her best to negotiate two toxic friendships. (World Premiere)

February 4, 2008

Women's Weekend Box Office Results
Women (and by women I mean young women and girls) ruled the box office this weekend. The four top grossing films starred women. At the top of the list was Miley Cyrus as her alter ego Hannah Montana in a 3-D concert event that pulled in $29 million in just 683 theatres. That's over $42,000 per theatre -- more than Titanic made on Super Bowl weekend. Jessica Alba's The Eye came in second; 27 Dresses is still going strong and came in third; and the Juno juggernaut was 4th with a total box office haul of $110 million.

In the specialty market 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days grossed $122,400 on 17 screens, averaging $7,200 and Nadine Labaki's Caramel made $7,123 from 11 screens for a total of $78,355. (Indiewire)

The Juno Phenomenon
This is a must read. Christine Spines at Entertainment Weekly takes a look at the success of Juno and puts it in the context of all that is wrong for women in Hollywood. I love Christine's writing because she is one of the few people who writes about women and Hollywood with respect and thoughtfulness and presumes the fact that women and girls actually matter. She is spot on in her analysis of the lack of roles for young women as well as the problem with the roles that are available -- princess or mean girl.

Key quotes:

Juno has become a bona fide phenomenon — a rare cultural touchstone for millions of young female moviegoers. That's something that nobody anticipated.

I love how Hollywood is always shocked by the fact that women actually go to movies and want to see realistic characters like themselves - smart and complicated. I knew Juno was going to be big - the time was ripe.

After years of being served mostly bland good girls and ciphers — from Molly Ringwald in the '80s to Alicia Silverstone in the '90s to Lindsay Lohan in the '00s — teenage girls are clearly starving for a female antihero, as are their mothers, fathers, older sisters, and even some of their brothers. In Juno, the story of a pint-size badass who also happens to be a romantic idealist, Hollywood has finally delivered. ''It's a teenage female lead we've never seen before,'' says Page. ''She dresses like she wants, says what she wants, and doesn't apologize for it.... Girls haven't had that sort of character before. We don't have our Catcher in the Rye.'' In what may be the ultimate sign of success, there's even a cranky backlash bubbling up, much of it from adults who question whether teenage girls are really all that clever.

Diablo Cody knows the feeling. ''There was a lack of authentic teen girl characters.... I saw writing this screenplay as an opportunity to create an iconic female,'' says the 29-year-old former stripper and phone-sex operator who penned Juno's script (and who now has a gig as a columnist for EW). ''I think women are often positioned as a support structure for men, and that's certainly not been my experience. Some women want to be heroes!''

Sure, Hollywood has occasionally served up edgy female outcasts, such as Winona Ryder in Heathers or the forlorn geek girls in Ghost World played by Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch. But those characters were more weirdos than antiheroes. They were marginalized by their difference, whereas Juno is empowered by hers. For the most part, the options for young actresses have been limited to Princesses and Mean Girls.

Pre-Juno, the conventional wisdom in Hollywood was that women would go to see movies about guys, while the prototypical ''chick flick'' was a prison sentence for most young men. That's why even romantic comedies, once solidly female turf, have lately migrated to the guy's point of view (Knocked Up, The 40 Year-Old Virgin). Films for females have almost become a niche genre — fantasies about winning Prince Charming (Enchanted) or having a fabulous beach wedding (27 Dresses). The environment hasn't encouraged writers and directors to get creative with female characters. ''When I first started, everybody was looking for a female Animal House,'' says director Amy Heckerling, who took on the flora and fauna of high school in 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High and 1995's Clueless. ''It never came to be because [studios] don't like to see women being sexual, being rowdy, being slovenly. That's all okay for boys. But I don't think a girl could smash a bottle against her head for your amusement.'' Cody agrees: ''I think it's easier to fall back on tired archetypes that [studios] know will bring people to the theater,'' she says. ''It helps that I had a very cynical attitude going into this. I didn't ever think this film would be produced. So that gave me the freedom to write the kind of movie I wanted to see.''

The most important question is, will Hollywood be smart enough to learn from Juno and give women and girls more films like this or will this be again dismissed as a fluke like The Devil Wears Prada was and will we go right back to the same old, same old?

Maybe there's hope?

''I think that when the strike ends we'll see a lot of scripts with smart, funny, and subversive teen girl characters,'' says a production executive at a rival studio.

Juno-Inside a Surprise Hit (Entertainment Weekly)

Romantic Comedies Today Basically Suck
Thank you A.O. Scott for that brilliant assessment in yesterday's Times acknowledging, that yes, the romantic comedies made today are crappy compared to the rom coms of the past.

But in general the trough of late winter and early spring is Hollywood’s designated season of mediocrity, a time for predictable, unchallenging genre movies. Horror and action for the teenagers, sappy family comedies for the kids, and, for grown women and their companions, stories of dating and mating decked out with tame Mars-and-Venus jokes and preordained happy endings.

But the dispiriting, uninspired sameness of romantic comedy strikes me as something of a scandal.

I think the scandal is the fact that Hollywood thinks that women (and men) want to see these mediocre films. (Scott is being generous when he calls them mediocre- most of them are really bad) The dumbing down of America that is going on at the multiplex is the true scandal here.
A Fine Romance, My Friend, This Is (NY Times)

Forever Hunky: Ageless Action Figures
Another NY Times piece from this weekend about rejuvenation of the aging male stars Sylvester Stallone as Rambo and Bruce Willis as John McClane in the latest Die Hard movie. Isn't it great to live in a world where a man can be an AARP member and an action star while we get so few movies starring women. I'm disgusted.

Leigh Silverman- an actual live blooded female director working and being successful in the theatre business
If you think it's bad in films its just as bad if not worse to be a theatre director. But some women are able to make successful careers and one that's doing quite well now is Leigh Silverman. She just finished directing David Henry Huang's Yellow Face at the Public and is now helming the world premiere of Brooke Berman's Hunting and Gathering, and will then segue into directing the spectacular Julie White in Liz Flahive's From Up Here at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
Director Prefers Shock of the New (Variety)

News
Why is it that the Guardian always has much better interview pieces than the US papers do? Here is a piece with the amazing Kristin Scott Thomas who will soon be seen in The Other Boleyn Girl.
I'm 47. Unlike Most Other Actresses I Don't Lie About My Age (The Guardian)

Jaime Rosales' (not a woman) understated femme drama "La soledad" (Solitary Fragments) pulled a surprise double whammy at Sunday's 22nd Spanish Academy Goya Awards, taking both the film and director prizes. (Variety)

February 1, 2008

At the Theatres This Weekend
Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria Parker star in two films opening this weekend. These openings give me a perfect chance to explain the types of movies that Women & Hollywood cares about people seeing vs. the movies we don't care about at all. I could give a crap about the Jessica and Eva's flicks. Not worth my time, or yours.

Caramel- directed by Nadine Labaki
What is worth your time is the film Caramel a love story to Beirut by the filmmaker Nadine Labaki. Labaki tells the story of five women trying to negotiate living modern lives in an environment where women are still not treated as full citizens. Labaki plays Layla the owner of the salon who being unmarried, still lives at home at 30, and is in the midst of humiliating affair with a married man. The other characters were all played by non-professionals so Labaki could get the real feel of Beirut which is known as Paris of the middle east. Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri) is a Muslim young woman who undergoes a hymenoplasty so her husband to be won't find out she is not a virgin; Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) is a sexually confused young woman drawn to a customer; Jamale (Gisele Aovad) is struggling with growing older and Rose (Siham Haddad) is a seamstress who works across the street from the salon and spends her days sewing and taking care of her mentally ill older sister. Rose's story is the most heartbreaking because she meets someone and has a chance for love yet does not pursue it because of her obligations and her age. Seeing her wipe the makeup off her face when deciding not to go on her date is a beautiful moment from an acting and directing standpoint.

This is a small movie in Lebanese and French so make sure to you pay close attention, but it is worth the trip.
Here is an IndieWire profile of director Labaki. (I hope to have an interview with her next week) Film opens in 11 locations today.
Caramel Director Nadine Labaki

Another phenomenon to watch this weekend is the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert film which plays in theatres for one week in 683 venues. It is the biggest seller on Fandango and because of a lot of sell-outs it could do very well this weekend.

Remaining in Theatres
Juno
The Savages
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Untraceable - stars Diane Lane as an FBI agent (haven't seen it)
27 Dresses
Mad Money
How She Move
The Business of Being Born
Atonement
P.S. I Love You
The Golden Compass
Enchanted
August Rush
The Orphanage
Teeth

Celluloid Ceiling Study (update)
Dr. Martha Lauzen and her team at San Diego State have released the numbers of women working in the film business. Things suck. Women have just 15% of the jobs. Scary.
No Growth in Film Jobs for Women (Hollywood Reporter via Yahoo)

Film Feminist of the Day
More reasons to love Ellen Page. She played right-wing on two soccer teams in her native Halifax. While I am still in Julie Christie's camp for the best actress Oscar, Page is so smart in this interview with the Guardian that I faltered for a brief moment. The Juno juggernaut is on the offensive in England in advance of its impending release next week.

"I hate how box-office failures are blamed on an actress, yet I don't see a box-office failure blamed on men," she says. Such as? "Like when The Golden Compass came out. Daniel Craig was in it, and Nicole Kidman was in it, and people were just ragging on Nicole Kidman the whole time." She also bemoans the lack of meaty leading roles for women. "I think a lot of the time in films, men get roles where they create their own destiny and women are just tools, supporters for that," she says. "I guess it's because we live in a patriarchal society, where feminism is a dirty word."

Ellen are you reading Women & Hollywood? We said the same thing about the Golden Compass.

Page, naturally, is happy to be described as a feminist, and is gobsmacked to have recently discovered that "40% of women in America or less" consider themselves feminists. "If it's about equality for the sexes, then who wouldn't be?" she asks. It is no surprise coming from the woman who, musing on how gender roles are imposed on children by society, says: "As a girl, you're supposed to love Sleeping Beauty. I mean who wants to love Sleeping Beauty when you can be Aladdin?

I Don't Want to Sound Like a Piece of Poop, But... (The Guardian)

Crimes of the Heart Theatrical Revival
If you're anywhere near NY in February get thee to the Roundabout Theatre for the revival of Crimes of the Heart directed by Kathleen Turner. Show boasts a fantastic cast including Sarah Paulson (god I miss watching her of Studio 360). They spoke with NY Magazine this week.
Highlight quote:

Here you’ve got a female author, a female director—
K.T.: Almost all female designers—

Plus three female leads. This is quite the chick-power production.
K.T.: I’m a little worried… S.P.: When we all get our period! It hasn’t happened yet, but, boy. Everyone’s gonna sync up, and it’s gonna be a nightmare in here. K.T.: The other day, Beth, the playwright, started to write something in her script, and up to that point she hadn’t done anything but watch. And you should’ve seen the faces on the actors. S.P.: “She hates it, she hates it, she hates everything!”

Full piece: Heart-to-Heart

News
A wrap up on women at Sundance: "2008 was a great year both for films helmed by women and films about women at the Sundance film festival."
Women at Sundance (Alliance of Women Film Journalists)

"Celluloid Dreams will represent the director Irena Salina's Sundance '08 entry, "FLOW: For Love of Water" internationally. Additionally, it was announced that the film will be the first theatrical film to collaborate with the global environmental initiative 1% For The Planet for its eventual commercial release. 1% is a growing global movement of 782 companies worldwide who have committed to donate 1% of their profit to a network of more than 1,500 global environmental organizations." (IndieWire)

Persepolis was voted best film of young people (16-19) at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. (IndieWire)

January 31, 2008

Is There Any Such Thing as the Thinking Woman's Chick Flick?
An article in today's Times of London talks about a new romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe, which is being released next week, that according to writer Wendy Ide "pushes all the right romantic buttons but is smart, well-observed and immensely satisfying. It's that rarest of things - a film about affairs of the heart that doesn't require you to check your brain in at the door. It's a film that we can take our husbands and boyfriends to without embarrassment or having to resort to bribery."

We all know that women like romantic comedies and men don't. That is one of the premises that fuels Hollywood. A script with words in it = women's film; a film with action or sci-fi and limited words = men's films. So as I'm reading this piece I can't help but think that we are now moving back into a climate like the late 80s (remember the films of John Cusack and Kevin Costner at that time) where the romantic comedies (before the term chick flicks was coined) will again be starring men. Definitely, Maybe might be romantic comedy but it looks to me that its Ryan Reynolds story that he is the star and the women (Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz) are the supporting characters.

Does that bother anyone else aside from me?

Here's one good quote from the piece that is spot on: "What's particularly galling is that it's only when the film is targeted at the female audience that it loses its wits so dramatically."
Definitely, Maybe (Times of London)

Thelma Adams Asks "What's Wrong With This Picture?"
Us magazine film critic circulated an email about an all male critics panel that was held at this year's Sundance film festival.

Sorry, but the above picture says it all. Every year when I host a panel about amazing women in film at the Woodstock Film Festival, we discuss male critics being the final gatekeepers for women's features entering the marketplace. As someone who has attended Sundance since 1986, and a working critic since 1989, who knows and enjoys the company of Mark, Owen and Eugene, and proudly saw the female-led Frozen River win the Grand Jury Award for Dramatic Feature, I've got to ask you with both respect and passion: how does this all-male image of a Sundance critics' panel strike you?

NY Times Magazine's Problem With Women Authors
Galley Cat is reporting that the Times magazine has not run a profile of a female author since 2005. Pathetic.
Resolving That Women Authors in the Times Magazine Question

What Women Want
Theatre critic Alexis Greene has written a new piece for American Theatre Magazine
Here are some excerpts. Contact Alexis at: xalexisg@nyc.rr.com for a copy.

Google “women theater companies” these days, or go to the website of the Fund for Women Artists, and you find the names of numerous non-for-profit groups across the country dedicated to women making theater, or to stories dramatized from women’s perspectives. Some, like Venus Theatre in Washington, D.C., or Voice & Vision, New Georges, and Hourglass Group in New York, began life during the 1990s. But many others have emerged since 2000: 3Graces Theater Company, viBe Theater Experience, and Flying Fig Theater Company in New York; The 20% Theatre Company in the Twin Cities (so-called for alarming statistics about the underrepresentation of women in the professional American theatre); Rosalind Productions in Los Angeles; and The Women’s Theatre Project in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.—to cite only a handful….

Indeed, Martha Richards, founder and executive director of the Fund for Women Artists (which is coordinating an international event called SWAN Day—Support Women Artists Now Day—on March 29) reports that the Fund “is getting responses from all over the world,” suggesting that “there are more women making art than we realize.” But, as she has discovered running the Fund, the thousands of women making art in the United States usually cannot raise the money to do the projects they envision or, in most cases, simply exist on what they do raise….

But the presence of these groups also testifies to a situation that has changed only modestly since the 1970s: In the professional American theater, the numbers of produced plays written by women do not equal the numbers of produced plays written by men--and the numbers of directors, producers and designers who are women do not match the numbers of men who perform those same artistic activities. The last account of any standing--Report on the Status of Women: A Limited Engagement? (edited by Suzanne Bennett and Susan Jonas and released by the New York State Council on the Arts in 2002) stated that, of the plays slated to be produced by more than 400 TCG theatres during the 2001-2002 season, 17 percent were written by women and 16 percent were scheduled to be staged by women.

Translation: If the status quo is not providing women with the artistic opportunities they need, or telling the stories that women want to tell, then women might as well start their own theatres…..

Read my earlier piece on the lack of women's voices in theatre:
Women's Voices Missing from the Theatre—Does Anyone Care?