CRITICAL WOMEN ON FILM

He Said, She Said....Albert Nobbs: Sex, Lies And Economics

2012-01-20T18:03:00.000-08:00

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

'...During this time in history, Ireland is extremely poor. Just right around the corner from the hotel is abject poverty. Albert Nobbs knows that without her job that's where she could end up. And she knows anyone can get fired at any moment. There is a sense of fear among all the hotel workers. Sadly, she was an orphan child and as an adult she doesn't really know her own name...The story is simple and linear, but it touches on complex human issues that reflect on everyone's own life...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

'Close gives a mesmerizing performance as a 19th century woman determined to live her life covertly as a man, not out of any gender identity imperative, but to never again endure sexual violence from men. Girl bonding rules under the radar in hard times...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller
Long Island Press
Women Film Critics Circle

The Last Song: Tony Bennett Shares 'Body And Soul' With Amy Winehouse

2012-01-19T18:23:00.000-08:00

By Winnie Bonelli

Tony Bennett couldn’t have done it without the ladies. A follow-up to his first platinum selling collaboration album, “Duets II,” released last September, immediately rocketed to Number One status on the Billboard charts.

Earning three Grammy nominations, including Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, “Duets II” has also been chronicled for a PBS documentary, “Great Performances: Tony Bennett Duets II” airing Friday, Jan. 27 (see local listings for showtimes.)

Appearing at the recent Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, the 85-year-old legend took journalists on a half-hour musical journey via time-tested standards like “The Good Life” and “The Way You Look Tonight.” Backed by an intimate group, consisting of piano, guitar, bass and drums, his well-honed vocals were flawless, his timing impeccable, and his delivery almost playful.

Casual, relaxed and flashing a warm smile, the natty-dressed Bennett was eager to talk about his costars on the upcoming TV special. Topping the list was Lady Gaga, who joined Bennett in the recording session on “The Lady Is a Tramp.”

LISTEN TO TONY BENNETT AND LADY GAGA DUET HERE

The Astoria, Queens native shared his personal impressions, “I was amazed. Lady Gaga was so prepared and so knowledgeable. She’s as good as anyone you could come up with. She is very, very talented.”

Bittersweet, Bennett reserved his strongest and longest praise for the late Amy Winehouse, who he joined at the famed Abbey Road Studios on the track “Body and Soul.” It reportedly was the tragic songbird’s very last recording session.

He recalled, “She just instinctively had the gift of knowing how to sing that good. She was influenced by Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald. Her dream was to become very, very famous doing that.

LISTEN TO TONY BENNETT AND AMY WINEHOUSE DUET HERE

“I was performing for my 85th birthday at the Palladium and the BBC was going to televise it. I wanted her on that show. My son, Danny, called two months after we did the record, and she had just died. The whole world just stopped. No one could believe it, especially in Britain.”

A few months later, Bennett had a chance to speak with Amy’s parents when they made a trip to America. He confided, “I remember her mother saying, ‘You know, everybody feels so tragic about her dying, but as a mother, I’m very different. All she ever really wanted to do in her life was to become world-famous. To me, even though she had a short life, she had a very successful life because she got what she really wanted. What she had dreamed about her whole life happened.’ It was so different than anything I had ever heard.”

The remaining roster of ladies featured with Bennett are: k.d.lang on “Blue Velvet”; Aretha Franklin with “How Do You Keep The Music Playing”; Sheryl Crow on “The Girl I Love”; Queen Latifah on “Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)”; Norah Jones with “Speak Low”; Natalie Cole with “Watch What Happens”; Faith Hill on “The Way You Look Tonight”; Carrie Underwood with “It Had to Be You”; rounded out by Mariah Carey with “When Do the Bells Ring For Me.”

Whether Bennett makes the trek to the podium Feb. 12 during CBS-TV’s broadcasting of the Grammy Awards seems almost inconsequential. Since Bennett still possesses that same degree of passion that first whet his appetite to succeed when he dropped out of high school at age 16 to help support his family.

Vowing to never retire, Bennett modestly admitted, “The fact that I have a hit record at 85, it feels wonderful.”

Winnie Bonelli writes for The Newark Star-Ledger, Life & Style Magazine, New Jersey Monthly and The Herald News. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

The Iron Lady: Hollywood, Politics And Pseudo-Feminism

2012-01-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

'...For once the great Meryl Streep fails to create a character from inside out & seems to be merely impersonating rather than embodying the complexities of Margaret Thatcher--Britain's first (& so far only) female Prime Minister. A doty old lady dimly remembers past glories. Can you imagine anyone thinking to make a Ronald Reagan BioPic with this structure?!?...'
Jan Lisa Huttner
Films42 Movie Haiku

Jan Lisa Huttner is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle and the Chicago Film Critics Association. She also writes at The Hot Pink Pen, and is the author of the new book, Penny's Picks: 50 Movies By Women Filmmakers.

'...Not that this deliberate confusion surrounding The Iron Lady and Thatcher hasn't already spilled over into public discourse some time ago. Take for instance, the label 'Daughters of Thatcher' championed by conservative leaning women. And for whom Thatcher as inspiration held out hope for successful future lives, even as her massive privatization has led to a financial tailspin into the economic crisis currently in progress.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

On the other hand, there are those women referring to themselves as 'Thatcher's Girls.' A British term coined in the 1980s, when Thatcher's policies led to widespread unemployment. And a resulting upsurge in those who became prostitutes, and defiantly claimed that designation...'
Prairie Miller

And The Winners Are...Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2011

2011-12-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 57 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics’ organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in the country by far, and best reflecting the diversity of movie audiences.

Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory, and a gathering of women’s voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world. Critical Women On Film is online at: Criticalwomen.

   BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN: TIE*
   The Iron Lady
   We Need To Talk About Kevin

   BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN:
   The Help

BEST STORYTELLER:

   The Iron Lady: Abi Morgan

   BEST ACTRESS:
   Viola Davis: The Help

BEST ACTOR:

   George Clooney: The Descendants

   BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS:
   Melissa McCarthy: Bridesmaids

   BEST YOUNG ACTRESS:
   Shailene Woodley: The Descendants

   BEST FOREIGN FILM:
   The Hedgehog

   BEST FEMALE IMAGES:
   The Whistleblower

   WORST FEMALE IMAGES:
   Melancholia

   BEST MALE IMAGES:
   The Descendants

   WORST MALE IMAGES:
   Hangover 2

   BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN:
   Semper Fi: Always Faithful

   BEST FAMILY FILM:
   Hugo

   BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
   Puss In Boots

   BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES:
   The Debt

   COURAGE IN ACTING:
   Glenn Close: Albert Nobbs

   THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: Tie*
   Hiam Abbass: Miral
   Michelle Williams: Meek's Cutoff

   BEST UNRELEASED MOVIE:
   Miss Representation

   WOMEN'S WORK: BEST FEMALE ENSEMBLE:
   The Help

   BEST SCREEN COUPLE:
   The Artist: Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin

   LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Tie*
   Kathy Bates
   Cicely Tyson

   ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARD:
   Elizabeth Taylor

   ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD
   The Whistleblower

   JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD
   The Help

   KAREN MORLEY AWARD
   Albert Nobbs

   MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD
   Judi Dench: J. Edgar


*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity

*COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]

*THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]

**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD; The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

**KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

Women Film Critics Circle Awards Nominations 2011

2011-12-13T18:21:00.000-08:00

The Women Film Critics Circle has announced its 2O11 nominations for the best movies this year by and about women, and outstanding achievements by women, who get to be rarely honored historically, in the film world.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 57 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics’ organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in the country by far, and best reflecting the diversity of movie audiences.

Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory. And a gathering of women’s voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world.

WOMEN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE
CRITICAL WOMEN ON FILM
Criticalwomen@gmail.com

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
The Iron Lady
Pariah
We Need To Talk About Kevin
The Whistleblower

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Albert Nobbs
Cracks
The Help
Rid Of Me

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
In The Land Of Blood And Honey [Angelina Jolie]
The Iron Lady [Abi Morgan]
Pariah [Dee Reese]
We Need To Talk About Kevin [Lynne Ramsay]

BEST ACTRESS:
Jessica Chastain: The Debt/The Help
Viola Davis: The Help
Meryl Streep: The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton: We Need To Talk About Kevin

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney: The Descendants
Jean Dujardin: The Artist
Tom Hardy: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy/Warrior
Ryan Gosling: Drive/The Ides Of March

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Katy O'Grady: Rid Of Me
Melissa McCarthy: Bridesmaids
Sara Jessica Parker: I Don't Know How She Does It
Kristen Wiig: Bridesmaids/Paul

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Jordana Beatty: Judy Moody
Liana Liberato: Trust
Amara Miller: The Descendants
Shailene Woodley: The Descendants

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
The Hedgehog
A Separation
In The Land Of Blood And Honey
When We Leave

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Albert Nobbs
The Iron Lady
Soul Surfer
The Whistleblower

WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Jack And Jill
Melancholia
My Week With Marilyn
Young Adult

BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
50/50
The Descendants
Meet Monica Velour
Of Gods And Men

WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Hangover 2
No Strings Attached
The Skin I Live In
Straw Dogs

BEST DOCUMENTARIES BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
The Price Of Sex
Semper Fi
The Woman With The Five Elephants
Women Art Revolution

BEST FAMILY FILM
Hugo
Judy Moody
The Muppets
Tintin

BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
Arthur Christmas
Gnomeo And Juliet
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss In Boots 3D

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
The Debt
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Iron Lady
Midnight In Paris

COURAGE IN ACTING
Josiane Balasko: The Hedgehog
Mimi Chakarova: The Price Of Sex
Glenn Close: Albert Nobbs
Tilda Swinton: We Need To Talk About Kevin

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD
Miral: Hiram Abbass
Danai Gurira, Three Backyards
Red Shirley
Michelle Williams: Meeks Cutoff

WOMEN'S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
Albert Nobbs
Bridesmaids
The Help
The Whistleblower

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
The Artist
Gnomeo And Juliet
The Iron Lady
Like Crazy

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
Hiam Abbass
Kathy Bates
Cicely Tyson
Michelle Yeoh

ACTING AND ACTIVISM
Mia Farrow
Daryl Hannah
Elizabeth Taylor
Alfre Woodard

ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD
In A Better World
In The Land Of Blood And Honey
Life Above All
The Whistleblower

JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD
America
The Help
Pariah
3 Backyards

KAREN MORLEY AWARD
Albert Nobbs
The Conspirator
Meek's Cutoff
Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women:

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity

*COURAGE IN ACTING: [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]

*THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]

Deborah Kerr's Early Artistry, And Winston Churchill's Wrath

2011-11-27T09:51:00.001-08:00

By Penelope Andrew
Huffington Post

"...With a title like Colonel Blimp, it's assumed the film is concerned solely with matters of men and war, but it's frequently Kerr's performance(s) that inflect it with layers of emotion and romance. In his autobiography, Powell described her as no less than, "the ideal... the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for ever since I had discovered that I had been born to be a teller of tales and a creator of dreams..."

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew writes for The Huffington Post AOL News, WestView News, Bright Lights Film Journal, Critical Women On Film and Arts Express Syndicate. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

He Said, She Said...Desire, Dread And Gender On Screen

2011-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

The Skin I Live In

By Catherine Bray

'...Pedro Almodovar is no stranger to the outré. His films to date have incorporated nymphomania, child abuse, rape, S&M, murder, transvestitism, sex changes, comas, kidnappings, love triangles, incest, drugs and multiple other themes common to the loose genre of melodrama. The Skin That I Live In is nevertheless one of his most perverse films, something of an achievement...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Catherine BrayChannel 4 Film,
UKGuardian, Observer, The New Statesman

What's Your Number?

By Gerald Wright

'...The conflicts seem to bring in the audience by exposing sexual and social elements that are familiar. The acts of deception as Ally pretends to be someone she is not adds more to the continual battle between comfort and longing, plus fear and desire...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.comFilm Showcase

Warrior Review: It Asks, How Do You Forgive When You Really Have Been Wronged?

2011-09-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

By Logan Nakyanzi Pollard

'...And so this film underlines how the sons of cruel men can love again even though their hearts have been betrayed. And cruel men can change; they can grow humble and lose their powers.'

CONTINUE TO READ HUFFINGTON POST REVIEW HERE

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is a featured commentator at The Huffington Post, and has reported for ABC News and The Guardian. Logan is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

Crime After Crime Movie Review: Can Everything That's Broken Be Mended?

2011-08-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

By Logan Nakyanzi Pollard

'...And it's not like I could say, oh go see this movie, it's such a great escape! It's not an opiate, not a nice pretty thing that gets tied up with a bow. It might make you cry and feel sad for the troubles of the world.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

LISTEN TO DIRECTOR YOAV POTASH INTERVIEW HERE

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is a featured commentator at The Huffington Post, and has reported for ABC News and The Guardian. Logan is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

The Ward: Heavily Medicated Hotties In Mental Roach Motel Lockdown

2011-07-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Amber Heard in disheveled 'most wanted' mode, just prior to her controversial upcoming breakout small screen turn as a differently desired bling-accessorized glamour bunny in The Playboy Club.

...Guru of arty gore John Carpenter (Halloween, Village Of The Damned) bypasses too many missed opportunities to reflect on some seriously shady issues affecting females in the past. For whom institutionalization was a travesty and common method of deterring the emerging and inevitable empowerment bids by women - or simply a way for a husband to stash away and rid himself of an inconvenient spouse for another woman.

READ THE WARD REVIEW HERE

In effect, Carpenter opts for a copout ending, despite a mood-setting opener revisiting the depraved history of human psycho-medical torture. And without giving too much away, effectively reinforces establishment assumptions about 'difficult' women...

!War: Women Art Revolution - Conversation And Commentary

2011-05-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

Filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson's !War: Women Art Revolution is opening in theaters across the country.

READ PENELOPE ANDREW HUFFINGTON POST REVIEW HERE

LISTEN TO DIRECTOR LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON INTERVIEW HERE

Spain Rodriguez, whose cartoon characters like Trashman became icons in 1960s radical underground newspapers, has collaborated with Leeson on this feminist art history and unique interactive project with reader participation, to expand the scope of !WAR into the future. The comic book, with text by Spain, Leeson and Alexandra Chowaniec also includes a visual arts curriculum guide by Krista Lynes and Claire Daigle, and a film and video guide by Fiona Summers.

Penelope Andrew writes for The Huffington Post/AOL News, WestView News, Bright Lights Film Journal, Critical Women On Film and Arts Express Syndicate. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

Final Reflections On Cannes: The Festival And Beyond

2011-05-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Lebanese Director Nadine Labaki

By Annette Insdorf

Now that the 64th Cannes Film Festival has ended, we can expect some terrific films to be released in the second half of 2011. The general consensus was that the 20 films in competition included gems that can reach a wide audience, even beyond the few that received awards at last night's closing ceremony (list of winners below). And there were dozens of acclaimed movies presented by other sections over the 12-day period.

My favorite Cannes film of 2011 was Nadine Labaki's "Where Do We Go Now?" (shown in the "Un Certain Regard" sidebar). The second feature of the Lebanese director of "Caramel," it is about Christian and Muslim women uniting to prevent male violence from erupting. This fable is humanist as well as femi0nist, poetic as well as political. Labaki (who also stars in "Where Do We Go Now?") was awarded the Francois Chalais prize by a jury of French filmmakers on May 21: it is named in honor of a major film critic, and is given annually "to a fiction filmmaker who has best captured the world's reality." The prize was presented by actors Marisa Berenson and George Chakiris (yes, the "Shark" from "West Side Story")...

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Stay tuned for continuing features of Arts Express: Expression In The Arts. And if you'd like to Express yourself too, you can write to: ArtsExpressradio@gmail.com

Breaking News From Cannes: Annette Insdorf Film Festival Wrap-Up Report

2011-05-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

LISTEN TO CANNES FILM FESTIVAL WRAP-UP REPORT HERE

And...What gives with Lars "Okay I'm A Nazi" Von Trier film award, while being booted from Cannes? Also...Midnight In Paris, no pumpkin at the end of the day: A Conversation With Woody Allen.

The Cannes Film Festival Reports: Women Film Critics Circle Special

2011-05-07T15:17:00.000-07:00

The Tree Of Life: Brad Pitt Male Role Model Issues

In the first of a series of on location reports for The Women Film Critics Circle, Annette Insdorf is our correspondent at this year's Cannes Film Festival 2011. We are honored to feature her coverage, which will also include breaking news announcing the winners at the end of the Festival.

Annette Insdorf is Director Of Film Studies at Columbia University, and the author of Indelible Shadows: Film And The Holocaust, and other books on cinema. Professor Insdorf is an internationally renowned educator, and her works are hailed as the definitive texts on their subjects. She has also been a jury member of numerous international film festivals. Professor Insdorf is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle

LISTEN TO CANNES FILM FESTIVAL COVERAGE HERE

READ 'CANNES FESTIVAL ACCENT ON WOMEN' HERE

Professor Insdorf has reported from Cannes for over a quarter century, previously co-anchoring with Roger Ebert for Bravo and The Independent Film Channel. Her knowledge and insight about cinema, past and present, is a veritable treasure trove of film history and culture. And we're extremely proud to have her as our correspondent reporting from Cannes this year.

Among the films Professor Insdorf will be covering, is actress turned director Jodie Foster's The Beaver. Which stars Mel Gibson as an emotionally disturbed family man and Foster's estranged spouse, who seeks salvation via the talking puppet in question. Also, Terence Malick's The Tree Of Life, a likewise family drama starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn that delves into the contradictions of American social values. As well as Woody Allen's latest comedic venture into the politics of romance, Midnight In Paris.

LISTEN TO 'ECO-TERRORISTS INVADE CANNES' HERE

Deborah Kerr: Actress In Search Of An Author

2011-05-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

By Penelope Andrew

The shy, red-haired Scottish girl who found the strings of her tennis racket slashed, artist's palette and brushes broken, and tubes of paint squeezed dry was bullied often by the boarding school girls in Bristol. She survived these and other traumatic events by sublimating and, later, spinning them into gold, adding pathos and a sense of enchantment to her work as an artist. Working in film studios from Pinewood to Hollywood, Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) became one of only eight actresses (in a pantheon including Garbo, Gish, Stanwyck, and Loy) to receive an Honorary Academy Award...

CONTINUE TO READ BRIGHT LIGHTS FILM JOURNAL ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew writes for The Huffington Post AOL News, WestView News, Bright Lights Film Journal, Critical Women On Film and Arts Express Syndicate. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....BRIDESMAIDS

2011-05-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright
Film Showcase

...Bridesmaids, doesn't hold back on pushing boundaries for its female stars. Yet, I found myself feeling very uneasy with the jokes even if those same jokes were delivered by men. However perky, upbeat, modern, and post-feminist in tone, these petite women pack a big punch. My main problem in this film is that it is mindless in some of its tasteless humor. It comes off as sappy, and overly-commercialized with silly-fluff...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

SHE SAID...

By Amy Biancolli
Houston Chronicle

...Let's try to give "chick flick" the boot; from now on, I won't use it if you won't. And let no one apply it to Bridesmaids, a film of great hilarity, humanity, idiosyncrasy and grade-A, eyebrow-singeing raunch. There's a conversation about guns and bottoms that I cannot repeat but will stay with me, I'm sure of it, for a very long time...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

The Conspirator Movie Review: Sins Of The Mothers?

2011-04-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

If the corporate media is notorious for reporting only what they deem politically or personally expedient - and other stuff, even if involving up to a million protesters at an event, never happened - the official historical record may be even worse. Take for instance, the military trial and execution by the feds for conspiracy in President Lincoln's assassination of the first woman in history, Mary Surratt. Mary who?

Mary Surratt On Exhibit, National Museum Of Crime & Punishment, Washington D.C.

And not mentioned in the movie, is that she was shackled and hooded, Abu Ghraib fashion statement style, every minute of her several months incarceration...And tickets for the public throngs to attend her outdoor execution were a hot item indeed. While pieces of the rope that hanged her and locks of her hair, were then sold as souvenirs.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Are You Surprised By Movies Anymore? Deciphering Werner Herzog

2011-04-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

Werner Herzog is one filmmaker who defies the trailer, the reviewer and whatever formula you want to put on him. When I walk into a Herzog movie I never know what's going to happen. And when I walk out of one, I often question
how to put into words what I just saw....

By Logan Nakyanzi Pollard

CONTINUE TO READ CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS COMMENTARY HERE

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is a featured commentator at The Huffington Post, and has reported for ABC News and The Guardian. Logan is also a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

TCM Film Fest: Classic Stars Walk Red Carpet for 60th Anniversary Of An American in Paris

2011-04-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

Leslie Caron in Gigi, 1958

Leslie Caron Opens TCM Film Fest & Stars from Classic Era Walk Red Carpet for 60^th Anniversary of An American in Paris

by Penelope Andrew

The evening began auspiciously with Leslie Caron walking the red carpet to Grauman's Chinese Theatre, which opened in 1927 and contains around 200 celebrity handprints, footprints, and autographs embedded in the concrete of the building's forecourt. Flying all the way from Paris and showing no signs of jet lag, the still lovely and energetic 79-year-old was in Hollywood for the premiere screening of the 60th-anniversary restoration of her very first film, An American in Paris....

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew was in Hollywood covering the TCM Film Festival for The Huffington Post and Arts Express Syndicate. She also writes for Bright Lights Film Journal, WestView News and Critical Women on Film. Penny Andrew is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

HE SAID, SHE SAID...Girl Power Goes Up Against Sexualized Violence On Screen

2011-04-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

SHE SAID....Meek's Cutoff

'Directed by that rare figure in westerns whether in front of or behind the camera - a woman - the film gives voice to a segment of the Wild West back then which didn't have much of that to begin with. And with a title intimating macho cowboy metaphorical castration...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

SHE SAID....Sucker Punch

..."Am I the Only One Who Liked This Film?"...We're all sexy. We are all vital. How does Sucker Punch discuss this idea? By pitting extreme versions of all aspects of ourselves: the sexy parts, the dark parts, the gluttonous parts, the longing parts, the masculine, the feminine, the childlike, the maternal, the paternal.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
The Huffington Post

HE SAID....Sucker Punch

'..."I'm so cute and hot in my asylum look"...You may be considered the "sucker", if you don't skip over Sucker Punch.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

Mars Needs Moms? Pear-Shaped Shrewish Aliens Not 'Hip'

2011-03-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

Crone, left, Warrior Chick Martian

In Mars Needs Moms, odd stereotypes raise their big alien foreheads.

'...If sci fi plots allow their creators to work out real-life issues, then here we see a bunch of angry Hollywood males crying out against their feelings of emasculation with nostalgia for a reinstatement of the nuclear fifties family. Hmmm.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Thelma Adams
ThelmaAdams.com
Us Magazine

From The Housing Wars: WBAI Woman On The Front Lines: Mary Ann Miller with sister cellmate Claire Birmingham and State Senator Bill Perkins, discussing the status of the rent regulations.

And...Midnight In Paris: A conversation with Woody Allen. Woody talks icons, inspirations, pharmaceuticals, communism, Gertrude Stein, Groucho, Bergman, Fitzgerald, related literary time travel in the movie, and the closing of famed artist gathering place, Elaine's.

Tenant justice cellmates Miller and Birmingham will report on May Housing Actions, when they chained themselves to Cooper Union site of the Rent Regulation Board Meeting. And give updates on their May 30th court hearing.

While movies have grown increasingly generic to appeal to all demographics and nations in a cynical bid for maximum box office cash appeal, Woody Allen still stubbornly resists such financial imperatives by moving in the opposite direction. Which translates in Midnight In Paris, his latest cinematic voyage to other realms both foreign and in the imagination, as determined egghead sci-fi fantasy. And in supremely bon apetit, arty 'Unblockbuster' mode, where the PG level rating could actually indicate Post-Graduate degrees as helpful....

Woody's guy Cinderella, spaced out sci-fi tale is the best yet among his collection of lunatic satirical travelogues. And the furthest that the director has taken a stroll himself lately out of his own more characteristic insular ivory tower world, among all those peculiar swells. While toning down the interactive punchline dialogues for a refreshing, heartier gourmet narrative stew. Even if the supernatural sightseeing literary references at times overstay their welcome, and are more high IQ insider jokes than they need be.

*****************

Acclaimed Latina author Isabel Allende talks slavery and memory, the Middle Passage, and revolutionary uprising in 18th century Haiti in her current novel, Island Beneath The Sea. And her own journey into political and emotional exile after the 1973 CIA orchestrated coup in Chile; remembering Salvador Allende, her uncle and the president of Chile, and the tragic victim of that Pinochet coup; and why she gets mad whenever she reads history.

And...Anthony Weiner was considered to win the future mayoralty easily. But now he will never be an 'Oscar Mayor Weiner.' Mary Ann Miller takes a look at the other 113 men - and they've all been men - who have held that office. And here to discuss that is Ralph Caliendo, who has written a book on the subject.

Also...Rent Regulations Update.

***************
From The Housing Wars: WBAI Woman On The Front Lines. A Rent Regulations Update.

Mary Ann Miller [far right] with rent hike activists, just prior to their arrests last month for protesting new Regulations Board rent hikes.

From The Housing Wars: WBAI Woman On The Front Lines. Tenant justice activists assembled during May Housing Actions, when they chained themselves to Cooper Union site of the Rent Regulation Board Meeting. A rent fightback and court hearing update.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Permission Slips

2011-03-02T06:54:00.000-08:00

SHE SAID....

Hall Pass

'....Directed by the Farrelly Brothers, the flick has gross gags involving penises, pooping and masturbation. One plus: Applegate, as always, shows good comic timing, snarking about the men's behavior, "This is why the terrorists hate us." '

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Thelma Adams
Us Magazine

HE SAID....

Scheherazade, Tell Me A Story

'...Writer Wahid Hamid and director Yousry Nasrallah weave a story of a well to do professional married couple grappling with their personal issues with an undertone of issues of the fight for social change in Egypt. The film gives note to fictionalized interviews and flashback scenes of personal stories revealing larger themes and questions of sexism, casteism, and communalism.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

Desperado Housewives: The Honeymooners' Joyce Randolph Revisits Trixie

2011-02-16T18:53:00.000-08:00

The Honeymooners: A Conversation With Joyce Randolph: The Honeymooners' Joyce Randolph aka Trixie, takes a trip down memory lane with NYC Classic Movie Sites Tours [Screentours.com/classics], and reminisces during this conversation, about Alice, Ralph and her small screen spouse, Ed Norton. She also sheds light on the enduring appeal of the show in its unique depictions of genuine workingclass people, the first ever small screen feminists in a sea of doting housewives and Barbie bimbos, and the inner sourpuss of funnyman Jackie Gleason. Here's Joyce Randolph, mulling the itinerary of those upcoming Classic Movie Sites, and the very few traces of The Honeymooners around town:

Listen To The Interview Here:

Women's Work: Triangle Fire, 100th Anniversary

2011-02-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

Triangle Fire: A commemoration and remembrance of the buried history of the 146 immigrant sweatshop workers, mostly women and teenage girls, who perished behind locked doors on March 25, 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan at Washington Place and Greene Street. Imparting special meaning to the labor protests breaking out now in Wisconsin and across the country, to defend the rights for which these unsung workers had fought so hard up until their senseless deaths at the hands of unscrupulous bosses. And where it all began. Also, an interview with the filmmaker.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

*Airing on PBS stations throughout March, Women's History Month

...And the buried history on this 100 year anniversary of the worst workplace carnage in NY history prior to 9/11, killing these labor activists who had so valiantly struggled for union rights that workers possess today.

**Cop Beat: What's going down with the NYPD at Occupy Wall Street: Former cop and regular commentator Stephen Ryder talks police macing of women protesters, lead gloves and swinging clubs. And why 'Deputy Inspector Anthony 'Tony Two Shoes' Bologna needs to be fired. And then arrested.' Ryder was also bodyguard to the late Lou Schweitzer, founding father of WBAI Radio.

**News Beat: Newsday's freelance reporter Emily Ngo talks Dominique Strauss-Kahn developments and other recent news events.

**Jerry Stiller In Conversation: The Seinfeld and King Of Queens feisty seasoned comic phones in from LA and doesn't want to hang up. As he delves into the big thrill of always devilishly playing against type as an actor, surviving McCarthyism, and stealing silverware with Anne Meara.

Refusing To Play The Star Card: A Conversation With Amy Ryan

2011-02-14T15:39:00.000-08:00

By Winnie Bonelli

Amy Ryan refuses to play the “star” card. Packing a lifetime’s worth of credits into the past quarter century, the “actor’s actor” or “journeyman” turns in a unique performance each time. Whether it’s capturing Michael Scott’s heart on NBC’s “The Office” as Holly Flax, the dorky human resources rep, or serving as Dr. Paul Weston’s therapist on HBO’s “In Treatment.”

This month finds her on the multiplex screen as a loving wife, who opens her heart and home to an abandoned teenager in “Win Win.” Her spouse is Mike Flaherty, a morally upright man, husband and father. Economical times are rough, so who could blame him for crossing the ethical line just once. That’s the setup for Tom McCarthy’s grownup comedy-drama that casts Paul Giamatti as the financially strapped, New Jersey suburban lawyer and coach for a losing JV wrestling team.

Pocketing an easy $2,000 a month for assuming guardianship of his elderly client, who he packed off to assisted living, Flaherty encounters an unexpected consequence. The oldest’s runaway 16-year-old grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer) turns up on the doorstep with no place to stay.

Kyle gets the basement couch. Mike gets a talented wrestler. However, “Win Win” is about much more than a championship season, it’s an emotionally honest tale about redemption, second chances, today’s parenting and marriage.

Penning the script with Joe Tibone, McCarthy always had Ryan in mind to play Mike’s feisty wife Jackie. Singing her praises, McCarthy stated, “She’s very direct and she can be sharp, but underneath that there’s always a great sense of warmth and caring – and at the same time she is naturally funny. I think in many ways she is the heart of the movie.”

Striving to add an extra layer of authenticity, McCarthy maintained an element of secrecy while filming. The attractive blond-haired 41-year-old actress explained during a recent interview at Trump’s Soho hotel, “Tom kept us in the scene. We only knew what the characters knew as we went along. It was intended to stay away from any sense of judgment or betrayal on my part.”

So convincing were Paul and Amy’s on-screen chemistry that several journalists actually inquired whether they were husband and wife. Laughing, she admitted, “I feel like we went to grammar school together. We have this naughty electricity between us and I don’t mean that in a sexual way.”

Setting the record straight, Ryan is engaged to Eric Slovin. The couple has one daughter, Georgia Gracie, born in Oct. 2009. Already a well-traveled 17-month-old, Georgia can usually be found on location, since she first trekked to Rockville Center, Long Island daily for the filming of “Win Win.”

Ironically, it was an entirely different approach to parenting that first pivoted Ryan onto Hollywood’s A list. Ryan’s sympathy-invoking portrayal of a drug-addicted welfare mom in Ben Affleck’s 2007’s “Gone Baby Gone” garnered both an Oscar-bid and Golden Globe nomination.

Offers followed, only Ryan refused to be pigeon-holed and completely shifted emotional gears, landing a guest star turn on “The Office.” Originally, a one shot appearance, it evolved into 15 episodes, including Steve Carell’s wrap-up departure.

The final episode was recently filmed and the actress was involved, but Ryan isn’t revealing any plot secrets. “It’s just a phone call. I did a conference call table read, when it was over it was very emotional. People are sad to see him go, but I hope Will Ferrell’s four episode story arch will help,” stated the Queens, NY born, Manhattan resident, who’s television credits include a five year stint as Port Authority Officer Beatrice “Beadie” Russell on HBO’s critically acclaimed series “The Wire.”

She can also be seen on HBO’s “In Treatment” as Gabriel Byrne’s unruffled therapist Adele. Extremely intense, Ryan compares sitting in a single room with Byrne for up to 12 hours at a time to playing poker without ever revealing one’s cards.

Winnie Bonelli writes for The Newark Star-Ledger, Life & Style Magazine, and Herald News. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2010

2010-12-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of fifty-five women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. We came together in 2004 to form the first women critics organization in the United States, in the belief that women's perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Mother And Child

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Winter's Bone

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
The Kids Are All Right: Lisa Cholodenko

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right

BEST ACTOR
Colin Firth/The King's Speech

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Jennifer Lawrence/Winter's Bone

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN: *TIE*
Mother
Women Without Men

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Conviction

WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Black Swan

BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE: *TIE*
Another Year
The King's Speech

WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Jackass 3D

BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN [Includes films released on DVD or TV, or screened at film festivals, in recognition of the limited opportunities available for films by and about women on screen]
Temple Grandin

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES: *TIE
Another Year
Fair Game

BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
Despicable Me

BEST FAMILY FILM
Toy Story 3

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Helen Mirren

ACTING AND ACTIVISM
Lena Horne [posthumous]: [6/30/17- 5/9/10] As an anti-racist activist, she refused to appear before racially segregated US Army audiences in WW2 Italy-since the army was officially segregated, the policy was to have one show solely for white troops and another show solely for black troops. Horne insisted on performing for mixed audiences, and since the US Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black US soldiers and white German POWs. Horne was also branded a 'communist sympathizer' by many right-wing conservatives because of her association with Paul Robeson and her progressive political beliefs, which led her to be blacklisted in the 1950s. Lena Horne passed away on Mothers Day at the age of 92.

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women:
Winter's Bone

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
For Colored Girls

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Fair Game

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Helen Mirren/The Tempest

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
Q'Orianka Kilcher/Princess Kaiulani

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY A WOMAN
A Film Unfinished

WOMEN'S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
Mother And Child

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
Another Year: Jim Broadbent/Ruth Sheen as Tom and Gerri.

*WFCC TOP TEN HALL OF SHAME*

*Please Note: The WFCC Top Ten Hall Of Shame represents the 'don't tell me to shut up' sidebar contribution of individual members, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire Circle. Also, members may be objecting to particular characters in a film, and not the entire movie.

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOMS OF THE YEAR AWARD:

*Melissa Leo
The Fighter

*Jacki Weaver
Animal Kingdom

BLACK SWAN
*For turning 'everything was beautiful at the ballet' into a horror venue populated by female stereotypes.

CATFISH
*The documentary exploits the woman who 'invents' Facebook personalities (if indeed this all is to be believed). It's a smarmy movie in every respect.

*For it's blatant audience manipulation without any honesty. These filmmakers clearly used a real family for personal gain.

I AM LOVE
*Did Tilda Swinton really need to stand up her dead son at his funeral in order to dash off like in a late for a date emergency, to lock lips with her lover? Mommie Dearest Award runner-up.

INCEPTION
*For making sure that one (& only one) 'good' female character is on hand for the express purpose of killing the one (& only one) 'bad' female character so none of the men have to do it.

JOLENE
*Based on a story by Doctorow, it's a flagrantly misogynistic story, an excellent example of how tales about abused women are turned into porn films.

*Ditto, THE KILLER INSIDE ME, see above.

KICK-ASS
*For the exploitation of a 12 year old girl.

*I resent the film's implication that the best way to empower a girl is to portray her as a chirpily sadistic killing machine (and one who uses the 'c' word, to boot).

THE GHOST WRITER
*At large Polanski sets up Olivia Williams' Lady Macbeth spouse as not only the instigator of UK's collusion in Iraq, letting Blair off the hook. But the predatory extreme seductress aggressor nearly rapes the gullible Ghost as well, when cornering him in his tub with an offer of towels to dry his tush. The Female Made Me Do It defense.

TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
*This film tells young girls, it's okay to sell your soul for a guy.

YOU AGAIN
*For perpetuation of the same-old same-old stereotypes of hysterical insecure women and reasonable, sage men.

The Women Film Critics Circle

Awards Season & Second Looks

2010-12-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

SHELLEY WINTERS' PLACE IN THE SUN

By Penelope Andrew

Sixty years ago (1951 films competing for 1952 awards), Vivien Leigh -- who hadn't been nominated since her win for Gone With the Wind in 1939 -- won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for A Streetcar Named Desire over actresses such as Katharine Hepburn and Shelley Winters for The African Queen and A Place in the Sun, respectively...

CONTINUE TO READ HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew is a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post, WestView News, and Critical Women on Film. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

Women's Work: Lubitsch & Chomet, Cluny Brown & The Illusionist

2010-12-19T08:42:00.000-08:00

...Lubitsch's last film is a zany yet sophisticated satire on English manners laced with hilarious, sexual innuendo using every plumbing metaphor available. The English and their drains are just too damned stopped-up, which provide Boyer and Jones--her first, highly successful attempt at comedy--golden opportunities to delight us at every turn. When they can no longer deny their attraction, Belinski declares: "I would build you the most beautiful mansion, with the most exquisite and complicated plumbing, I would hand you a hammer, and say, Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Cluny Belinksi is about to put the pipes in their place!"...

CONTINUE TO READ HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew is a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post, Westview News, and Critical Women on Film. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

HE SAID, SHE SAID...Testing Boundaries

2010-12-19T07:16:00.000-08:00

SHE SAID...

'When We Leave is about a young Muslim woman whose separation from her abusive husband makes her a harlot in the eyes of her community, a candidate for an honor killing, but to describe this movie as a story about that barbaric custom is akin to calling Sophocles’ Antigone a play about burial rights...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Maria Garcia
Film Journal International
Women Film Critics Circle

HE SAID...

'Kaboom is mainly sexploitation in a coming-of-age contemporary setting. It can be said that this is softcore porn, in that the film serves largely as a vehicle for showing scenes involving nude or semi-nude women and men...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

HE SAID, SHE SAID....WOMEN'S WORK

2010-12-11T21:25:00.000-08:00

SHE SAID....The Tourist

Think James Bond as a woman instead, and the negative critic backlash by the mostly male profession, will come pouring in. Not unlike, say, the mere thought of a female president in this country. Enter Angelina Jolie as a sly, elusive double or even possibly triple agent in The Tourist, locking horns when not lips with infatuated nerd Johnny Depp doing the girl, and the indignant critical fix is in....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

HE SAID....Black Swan

Black Swan is a film that explores the artist's ego. Yet, it also explores themes involving people's love/hate relationships with themselves....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

Actress Daryl Hannah may have faced a bleak future in the apocalyptic thriller, Blade Runner. But she's focused now on the bleak world of the present for real. Hannah will be on the show to talk about her arrest during massive protests in DC against the Keystone XL Tar Sands oil pipeline that will destroy communities across the Americas, and future strategies for taking action.

Activist lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. revisits his involvement in the struggles against mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia, as chronicled in the documentary The Last Mountain. RFK Jr. describes fighting the good fight against the energy capitalists; inspiration he drew from his late dad and his uncle JFK; what's going down in the reptilian core of our brains: and this country as the most entertained and least informed population on the planet.

Sally Hawkins Talks Female Ford Plant Struggles, In Made In Dagenham

2010-11-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

Screening Women: Female Images Inscribed In History. Prairie Miller and Daily Challenge Newspaper's Marie Moore in a Women Film Critics Circle sitdown with actress Sally Hawkins, investigating the striking UK Ford Plant women machinists who made history in Made In Dagenham.

Hello Critical Women:

I was going to go to see the film about the women striking in the UK until I read your comments. I don't think I could stomach it now with your insightful comments. Thank you very much.
Best, Ramie Streng

P.S My mother, Mary Perry Stone, was a social protest ( former WPA ) artist who told me of the sit-ins and strikes she was part of in the Thirties in NYC. So I was lucky to grow up in a family that believed in unions.

Maryperrystone.com

"Art is What Makes Us Human" scenes from Mary's exhibit in Dayton, Ohio 2- 2010. Mary died in 2007.

Noomi Rapace Kicks The Hornets' Nest

2010-10-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

Swedish actress Noomi Rapace talks tattoos, female empowerment, sexual healing and visiting dark places inside herself.

Listen To Noomi Rapace Interview Here:

'...The film begins in earnest as members of a long-dormant shadow conspiracy are roused into action...the elusive men of power who've been violating her for decades. Lisbeth, small of frame and strange of hair, is a figure of explosive violence and implosive psychic wounds.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Amy Biancolli
Houston Chronicle
San Antonio Express-News
Hearst Newspapers

Beyond The Sacrificial Good Woman: Black Feminism And Freethought

2010-10-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

BLACK VENUS (VENUS NOIRE)'The film captures the dehumanization of this woman. Many of the scenes are tough to take in. Yahima Torres is magnificent in her portrayal of Sarah. She portrays Sarah's life as unbearable. Yet she shows the tender scenes as a humanized woman who was virtually regarded as an animal, according to the ideology of the day...'CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HEREFAMILY AFFAIR

'I was hoping filmmaker Colvard would have more professional and/or clinical interviews to thoroughly explain and explore the problems these people unknowingly live with these issues, and how they can ultimately overcome the effects of broken lives...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE Gerald WrightNational Association of Black JournalistsHDfest.comFilm ShowcaseSHE SAID....

By Sikivu HutchinsonIn the 1997 film The Apostle Robert Duvall plays a white Southern Christian fundamentalist preacher and murderer on the lam seeking redemption. The film is literally cluttered with images of devout blacks, from black women swaying in the breeze at a big tent church revival to a particularly indelible church scene of dozens of black men chanting “Jesus” in rapturous response to Duvall’s pulpit-pounding call. I found The Apostle perversely fascinating because it trotted out this totally revisionist romanticized narrative of black obeisance to yet another charismatic but flawed white renegade savior figure in Louisiana (where, contrary to Hollywood flim-flammery, most of the congregations are racially segregated). These popular fantasies of black religiosity always seem to revolve around images of good, matronly black women eternally quivering with a strategic “Amen” or “can I get a witness;” subject to break out into a Blues Brothers back flip down the church aisle at any moment.

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERESikivu Hutchinson is the editor of Blackfemlens, a journal of progressive commentary and literature, and the author of Mortal Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America. She is member of the Women Film Critics Circle, a commentator on Pacifica's Some Of Us Are Brave on KPFK 90.7FM, and a reporter for the LA Women's Desk of the WBAI Radio Women's Collective in NY.Listen to blackfemlens commentaries on Fridays, 6:25pm LA Time, at http://kpfk.org.

We visit two major Housing Crisis Hotspots. Jimmy McMillan [left of Andrew Cuomo], famously flamboyant founder of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, stops by to share landlord from hell intrigue he's confronted in NYC. The Vietnam veteran, rapper and persistent candidate out of nowhere standing up to all those millionaire designer politicians, is now intent on taking his bid to the 2012 US presidential election, and he'll tell us how and why.

And...This week marks the 6th anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and where homelessness, along with the ever looming threat of another hurricane to come, apparently continues in its wake. Famed SNL funnyman and the many voices of The Simpsons Harry Shearer turns serious, with his documentary The Big Uneasy, about the man-made Katrina cataclysm and coverups in his native New Orleans, while NPR refused to listen. And the suppressed history of a disaster that was not so natural after all.

Hosts: Mary Ann Miller and Prairie Miller

Conviction: Sisterhood Straightens Out The Criminal Justice System

2010-10-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

JAN LISA HUTTNER ON OSCAR SNUB FOR CONVICTION

READ JAN LISA HUTTNER CONVICTION FILMMAKER INTERVIEWS HERE

'...As a narrative feature, the goal of a film like Conviction is to use the tools and techniques of cinema to go beyond fact in order to elucidate the human condition. This it does brilliantly, making Conviction one of the very best films I’ve seen so far in 2010.'

READ REVIEW HERE

Jan Lisa Huttner is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle and The Chicago Film Critics Association. She writes for The Hot Pink Pen, WomenArts.org and Films For Two.

'...How can you not sympathize with a woman who isn't merely a figment of some screenwriter's imagination but an actual human being who displays such fortitude and faith? And though there's something a little mechanical in Swank's Best-Actress-y repertoire, she makes us forget that she's a Hollywood actress playing make-believe. Art imitates life, and what a powerful movie it made.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

S. Jhoanna Robledo
Common Sense Media

Female Film Icons Honored

2010-10-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

Film Icons De Havilland, Bisset, O'Hara, Kerr & Caron Elevated By BFI, TCM & French Legion Of Honor

By Penelope Andrew

As late summer transformed into autumn, milestones in classic film, which focused primarily on iconic leading ladies, dominated the news and will be remembered as bittersweet. Some of international cinema's most important figures such as Patricia Neal, Claude Chabrol, Arthur Penn, and Tony Curtis passed away, while others were honored and celebrated.

O'Hara Turns 90

The indomitable Maureen O'Hara turned 90 on August 17, 2010. Like her contemporary Olivia de Havilland, 94, she appears to have sipped from the Fountain of Youth given the festive, birthday photos published in the Irish press.

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrewis a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post, WestView News, and Critical Women on Film. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Rachel: The Image As Obscenity And Truth

2010-10-03T18:15:00.000-07:00

HE SAID...

By Gerald Wright

'...This film studies the criticism of this death and the collateral damage it brought such as the 2005 Human Rights Watch report titled Promoting Impunity: The Israeli Military's Failure to Investigate Wrongdoing. Thus, raising several issues related to the impartiality and professionalism with which the Military Police investigation was conducted. The Watch describes the investigators' lack of preparation as being hostile, inappropriate and mostly accusatory. Making this a very well crafted documentary that lays out all the facts.'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID...

'...An investigative journey unraveling the state murder of young social justice activist Rachel Corrie, buried alive in Israeli occupied Palestine. Filmmaker Simone Bitton, a Moroccan born self-described Arab Jew, phones in from Paris to describe her search for answers while sifting through mountains of lies, and directing a movie by telephone across the forbidden borders of Gaza.'

LISTEN TO REVIEW AND INTERVIEW HERE:

Prairie Miller

Religion And Gender: Breaking Through Stained Glass Ceiling

2010-09-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

SHE SAID...

Hildegard von Bingen was a medieval German pre-feminist nun who poked a few holes in the stained glass ceiling. And while Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, Hildegard led the nuns out of a horny monastery...

LISTEN TO VISION COMMENTARY AND DIRECTOR MARGARETHE VON TROTTA INTERVIEW HERE:

HE SAID...

NORA'S WILL (Cinco dias sin Nora)

Directed by: Mariana Chenillo
Running time: 92 min.
Release date: October 15, 2010
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Religion and Art/Foreign
Distributor: Menemsha Films
MPAA Rating: Not rated

Filmmaker and screenplay writer Mariana Chenillo of the recent 2010 film Revolcion, orchestrates a marvelous bitter sweat dramedy that gives an undertone of romance set in a Jewish family relationship located in Mexico. The theme in question is why a bipolar passionate Jewish woman commits suicide, how a non practicing passive Jewish ex-husband deals with a same day Jewish burial tradition, and what calamity damages spark the family and friends to react to this situation?

Jose brilliantly portrayed by veteran Mexican actor Fernando Lujan, whose work dates back 50 years, is the ex-husband of Nora (Silvia Mariscal). She is the woman he'd been married to for 30 years and then divorced, who has committed suicide (after 14 tries). The timing is uncanny being that this death is right before Passover and Jewish custom dictates that the body has to be buried quickly. However, the holiday is followed by the Sabbath and this is almost 5 days of this religious orders.

Humorously and oddly enough, before dying Nora prepares her home for her funeral and arranges the home for an elegant dinner. The plan, that will culminate with the whole family gathered for the dinner celebration of Jewish Passover, is to have Jose, who lives directly across the street, to arrange everything according to her mapped-out schedule. This dark comedy, uses a host of characters, such as, non-responding Rabbis (Max Kerlow and Enrique Arreola), a bargain offering Christian burial serviceman with "wake-to-go" provisions, a son whose presence is a necessity but not actually present, and the psychiatrist who is linked romantically to Nora that Jose is angered about.

The plot is consistently and deliberately design to bring laughter. Amusing scenarios and provoking laughter by exaggerating the situations, the language (with one-liners, jokes, etc.), and the use of dark satirical relationships between characters makes this film work well. The plot driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations give great intense character development and interaction. Yet, the romantic theme is always hanging over head with use of flashback scenes, to keep the audiences' attention on the affairs of the heart that center on the passion and emotion young Nora and Jose ( Marina de Tavira and Juan Pablo Medina) shared.

The large ensemble cast includes Juan Carlos Colombo, Angelina Pelaez, Ari Brickman, Cecelia Suarez, Arantza Moreno, Vanya Moreno, Veronica Langer, Rodrigo Cachero, Jorge Eduardo Cardova and Martin LaSalle make a perfect fit for a hilarious take of a serious matter.

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

Claude Chabrol [1930-2010]: Astute Dissection Of Sex, Class And Show Business

2010-09-13T19:57:00.000-07:00

Chabrol masterfully focuses a keen eye on the misogynistic convergence of entrenched intimate emotional exploitation of women, and their objectification in public entertainment. Bravo, Claude, a rare man in profound touch with the darker impulses of his species.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Audrey Bernard Honored With 2010 Thurgood Marshall Prestige Award

2010-09-12T17:26:00.000-07:00

THURGOOD MARSHALL COLLEGE FUND ANNOUNCES
2010 PRESTIGE AWARD HONOREES

WFCC Member Audrey Bernard to be honored.

The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) has announced the 2010 Prestige Awards honorees as part of the organization’s 23rd Anniversary Weekend. The Prestige Award, TMCF’s highest award, is presented annually to individuals who embody the leadership, commitment and legacy of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall.

“The Thurgood Marshall College Fund is proud to bestow the 2010 Prestige Award upon six outstanding honorees,” says Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President & CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. “Judith Agism, Audrey Bernard, Carol Campbell, Shon Gables, Jocelyn Taylor and Nathan Hale Williams are all cutting edge individuals whose successes, achievements and contributions to the community are truly inspirational.”

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Katie Holmes Perfects Doormat Duty in The Romantics

2010-09-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

'...Katie plays Laura, a character many women can relate to: a jilted lover. In the film, an independent release, she portrays a young woman cast aside by the love of her life in favor of her old college roommate and chum. Instead of being the bride at this wedding she is the maid-of-honor. The message: love, friendship and romance can be messy and angst-ridden.'

CONTINUE TO READ NEW YORK COOL ARTICLE HERE

Debra Wallace Forman
Newyorkcool.com
British Foreign Press Association
Direct TV Guide

Machete Plays Out In Houston: Blood, Race And Sex

2010-09-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Border Babe: 'She' Hawks Tacos And Revolution

SHE SAID...

"...On one side: murderous yahoos in cowboy hats. On the other: a network of illegal immigrants and sympathizers run by taco-saleswoman Michelle Rodriguez."

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Amy Biancolli
Houston Chronicle
San Antonio Express-News
Hearst Newspapers

HE SAID...

"...I for one welcome the puffery style dialogue and the quick tongue that pushes the envelope in today's women."

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

Valerie Plame Wilson Counts Down To Zero

2010-09-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Valerie Plame Wilson Exclusive: On life after being outed by Dick Cheney, and resurfacing in the doomsday doc, Countdown To Zero. And, is there such a thing as 'spy sexism'?

The CIA operative turned anti-nuke advocate tells all.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW HERE:

WFCC Countdown To Zero Commentary

Another chilling doc from Participant Productions warning us that we still live in the shadow of the nuclear arms race. Sobering & yet too focused on dangers we already know, while never offering any realistic analysis or hinting at viable actions. OK, we get it... now what..?

Jan Lisa Huttner
Movie Haiku

The Remarkable Life And Career Of Patricia Neal, Sassy Screen Goddess Extraordinaire

2010-08-11T09:21:00.001-07:00

By Penelope Andrew

What sets artists apart from stars and competent actors is originality and authenticity. Patricia Neal had these and other rare qualities in spades. Like some of her contemporaries who achieved greatness, she rose above mediocre or even bad material and delivered performances that ranged from elegant and understated to bold and breathtaking. Her unique talents carried her from the traditional styles of post-WWII Hollywood through the enormous influence of the cutting-edge, New York Method on film acting...

CONTINUE TO READ HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle, and she writes for The Huffington Post, Critical Women and WBAI Arts News.

Note: Patricia Neal's deathbed last words: "I've had a lovely time."

From The Women's Desk

2010-07-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

Taking Feminist Radio To The Next Level...

Hung: Sex, Detroit And Economic Hard Times. Radically subverting sexuality on the small screen.
Adelante Siempre! Sikivu Hutchinson, correspondent at our LA Women's Desk, in a roundtable with Chicana artists exploring class, race, sex and culture.
Feminists Gone Bad? Joy Rose takes on right wing feminism. A conversation with feminist psychologist and author, Phyllis Chesler.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

A presentation of the WBAI Women's Collective. Covering the entire spectrum of political and cultural issues crucial to women's lives, from revolutionary global sisterhood and movement building to critical aspects of the mind, body and yes, men.
Radio Goddesses In Session: Joy Rose, Sikivu Hutchinson, Prairie Miller, Laura Aguilar, Jacalyn Lopez Garcia. Music by Polly Wood.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Hedonism, The New Feminism In Hollywood?

2010-07-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

HOLY SPUMONI!

HE SAID....

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

...Julia's Elizabeth character tells her publisher Delia (Viola Davis) she must find herself once again in Italy, where the eat scenario of this film is mouth watering. But our protagonist can't eat throughout the movie - especially not on a 2 hour plus flick...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
Film Showcase
HDfest.com

SHE SAID....

...Alas, perhaps the only thing more boring than watching someone else eat is watching her meditate...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Jan Lisa Huttner
The Hot Pink Pen

THE PEOPLE I'VE SLEPT WITH

Quentin Lee's flaky Don Jane promiscuous literally screw-ball comedy hits theaters simultaneously with Eat, Pray, Love. Which also makes it seem like women everywhere may be suddenly morphing into commitment phobic female studs...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

The Concert Movie Review

2010-07-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

A sentimental comic odyssey keen to wring tears and laughter from a script that can't sustain it, if you played classical music to your unborn child in the hopes of spawning a genius, this one's for you....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Catherine Bray
Channel 4 Film, UK
Guardian, Observer, The New Statesman

Cyrus: Class Bonding and Man-Children in LA

2010-07-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

By Kim Nicolini

We know this character from the world he lives in. He is a lonely, existential man, not poor, but too self-pitying to do anything but hide his head and his penis in the hovel of his home and his internet connection....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Kim Nicolini
CounterPunch

Hung: The Punisher Puts A Price On His Head

2010-07-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

...A delightfully brash, expectation defying, gender role reversal sex trade satire, from a mercilessly feminist point of view. While among the many unpleasant rude awakenings for this self-commodifed guy sex toy, are male expectations of erotic entitlement and exemptions not routinely extended to female sex workers; forced tolerance for far less than hottie demanding customers; a variety of on-the-job sexual humiliations; female screamers; and aggressive horny women who 'give orders like four star generals'....

CONTINUE TO READ DVD REVIEW HERE

Women Film Critics Circle's Jan Lisa Huttner Wins Top Honor

2010-07-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

Feminist Film Critic Wins Top State Honor Plus National Recognition

Chicago film critic Jan Lisa Huttner recently earned her third Silver Feather Award for writing the most award-winning articles in the Illinois Woman's Press Association's annual Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. Huttner made international news in 2009 when she questioned why Loveleen Tandan (the credited co-director of Slumdog Millionaire) became an “invisible woman” just as Slumdog began generating serious Oscar buzz, thereby setting the stage for March 7, 2010, when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in history to win an Oscar in the Best Director category. Huttner’s passionate posts about the “Slumdog Brouhaha” on her blog, The Hot Pink Pen, won first place in IWPA’s Website Development/Creation category, then placed third in national competition when IWPA passed it up to its parent organization, the National Federation of Press Women....

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Who's Afraid Of Orlando?

2010-07-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

Screening Room: Who's Afraid Of Orlando? Can an enduring Virginia Woolf screen classic hold its own amid the clutter of summer blockbusters and instant short shelf life of Hollywood movie culture? A conversation with Orlando writer/director Sally Potter and star Tilda Swinton about the re-release nearly two decades later of the page to screen adaptation of a woman journeying through the centuries. Or is it a man...

LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION HERE

Emerging Female Directors From The Middle East

2010-07-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

By Rose Capp

Predominantly low-budget, sometimes stylistically rudimentary, these films constituted a compelling, collective call to arms reminiscent of the forceful feminist polemic of Western female filmmakers in the 1970s and 80s....

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Rose Capp is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle. She is a critic at The Melbourne Times, RealTime Arts, Senses Of Cinema, Metro Magazine, on-air at ABC Radio 774, The Film Show and Film Buffs Forecast, and she has lectured in film studies at Monash University, RMIT and The Australian National University in Canberra.

Pink Brain, Blue Brain?

2010-06-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

Taking Feminist Radio To The Next Level...

Pink Brain, Blue Brain? Opposing Commercial And Media Enforcement Of Gender Stereotypes On Youth. KPFK's Sikivu Hutchinson at our LA Women's Desk, with the real deal on race, class and sex.
And...Young Feminist Perspectives And The Motherhood Movement: What Is It, Who Cares, And Why Do We Need It. Joy Rose of Mamapalooza, Housewives On Prozac and Don't Tell me To Shut Up Radio tackles the issues and talks Maternal Feminism with media activist, Rebekah Spicuglia.
Also...'Sophie Tucker' and 'Mae West': A Celebration of Female Empowerment In A Man's World.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

Women Film Critics Circle Radio Goddesses In Session: Sikivu Hutchinson, Joy Rose, Prairie Miller, Jan Aaron.

I Am Love: Sex, Class And Seafood

2010-06-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

I am Love is a story of the wealthy Recci family in Milan, Italy. The film follows their lives during and after the year 2000. The movie takes on a dual approach to its plot with a sensual love affair between bourgeois characters and a Freudian love affair of food that links these same characters...

READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
HDFEST.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID

...It is the aftermath of discovery and an ensuing tragedy that stuns; “frenzied” doesn’t begin to describe the take-the-clothes-and-run climax. “You don’t exist,” Tancredi informs his wife, and it’s true: Emma is dead. Thankfully, even in the pre-feminist realm of the Italian bourgeoisie, this neo-Bovary has a shot at an extra life.

READ REVIEW HERE

Michelle Orange
Movieline

The Politics Of The Female Pleasure Principle In Movies

2010-06-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

Helen Mirren Soaks Up The Attention

HE SAID....

Love Ranch: I think it's great that this "young senior dame" can still get away with the hot and heavy sex scenes that the younger women tend to dominate on screen...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

Sex, Senate Stings And Suicide: Call Girl Jeanette Maier exposes with raw commentary the sexual and class differences of johns, the erotic dark side of prominent politicians, and gender bias in prostitution laws in The Canal Street Madam....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

LISTEN TO JEANETTE MAIER ON THE WBAI ARTS MAGAZINE HERE

Prairie Miller

Reader Mailbag: SATC 2 And The Woman Question

2010-05-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

Reviewer Resignation, Please

I read your review of the recent film Sex in the City 2, on Rotten Tomatoes. I have to say, to help with the quality of RT, can you please resign from your position?

You obviously have no real value of history, film, or plot if you thought SATC2 was even close to a decent film. The movie was pointless to the sex in the city story, was disrespectful and stereotyped middle east cultures, and was just flat out obnoxious. I will never read another one of your reviews again, for being so blatantly incompetent at your job.

Eli Joyce
Swashbuccaler@....

Hi Eli:
Sorry to hear. Thankfully, we don't live in a country where those of a different opinion should expect to be executed or resign from their positions. Not to mention the tens of millions of women flocking to the theaters to see the movie, who would have to do so as well in such a country.
Here's a different sort of response below that I received yesterday - from a man!
Prairie Miller

Prairie:
I am THRILLED to see your take on the movie, which is exactly the same as mine.
It rankles me to see all the ageist bullshit about how old the characters look and complaints about the insensitivity to the unemployed and celebration of wealth--as if the NY Times wasn't filled on every page with mammon-worshipping. I was planning to write something about this later and am feeling my oats after reading your review.

You are the greatest! My hero!

Lou

THE LAST STATION: DISSENTERS DISEMBARK

Having just watched the movie, I can say that his is an absurd, ridiculously exaggerated, review that bears no
relation to the excellent movie that I enjoyed.
Alan White

Hello Alan:
Can you tell me exactly what you found enjoyable that I didn't? That would be helpful in understanding your opinion, thank you.
Prairie Miller

Try reading other reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. Helen Mirren was first class, the ambiguities & frustrations of Tolstoy's last years were accurately represented and he was well played. Also the visual representation of the Russia of that period was excellent and the drama was also good. Note that both Mirren & Plummer were Oscar nominated for their performance. I have not read any other reviews that you have written, but I find your perspective on a really good movie to be hopelessly off-base. I hope this is not typical.
Alan

Alan:
Yes, I see that Rotten Tomatoes has a 70 percent positive critic rating for the film, which is not exactly glowing. Nearly one third of the critics disliked the film, and anything less than 60 percent at RT gets a negative rating. But that hardly matters, really. What I find disturbing and troubling, is this tendency lately towards a kind of consensus fascism. Just as there are many potential critic opinions about any movie, so are there diverse tastes in the audience. And what's more invigorating than a diversity of thought. How tedious the world would be, if everyone has identical reactions to everything.
Movie criticism is not an election, where the one with the most critic votes or biggest box office receipts wins and everyone else loses. The suggestion that there should be only one opinion about a movie and any dissenters should be banished, makes me cringe.
Prairie

Frankly My Dear: Molly Haskell's Exploration Of Nation And Of Self

2010-05-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

Haskell Captures the Dynamics Underlying an American Icon in Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited

By Penelope Andrew

Film scholar Molly Haskell could not have been a more perfect choice for Yale University Press to tap for another volume in its Icons of America series that explicates the phenomenon—both novel and film—of Gone with the Wind. Its virtues and flaws are explored with an erudite, yet fresh perspective from a feminist who considers aesthetics before politics in her role as film critic. However, in Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, Haskell draws from France’s vanguard social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville as well the visual artistry of Hollywood’s William Cameron Menzies in analyzing the wonder of GWTW.

The author--a transplanted southerner raised in Richmond who now lives in NYC--never turns away from the fact that Margaret Mitchell’s story trivializes the enormous human tragedy of slavery, yet elevates Mammy, a slave, to a position of wisdom who often serves as the saga’s moral center. These fascinating dualities and ironies fuel the power of GWTW, and Haskell’s book itself. Exhaustive dichotomies in which Haskell poses Cukor next to Fleming, the delicate alongside the bold, the fussy with the sweeping—essentially every “yin and yang” firing up the strands of GWTW’s DNA--are explored.

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Molly Haskell is a distinguished critic and author, and a member of the Women Film Critics Circle. More information is at: MollyHaskell.com

Penelope Andrew, a NY based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post and Critical Women on Film, is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle. A certified psychoanalytic psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice in NYC.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Winter's Bone

2010-05-25T06:29:00.000-07:00

SHE SAID....

...Seemingly set for release on the successful coattails of that other likewise Sundance award winner venture in exploitative underclass tabloid cinema, Winter's Bone plays out like a seedy and no less cynical white trash version of Precious. Or, as NY Post critic Kyle Smith aptly characterized the lurid genre, 'poverty porn'....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

HE SAID....

...This is a masterful film adaptation capturing life in the subculture of Missouri's Ozark clan community, its drug culture, and female teenager attempting to take control of her life without parental guidance....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Sex And The City 2

2010-05-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

By Louis Proyect

...The NY Times’s A.O. Scott assumes the posture of James Agee in finding the movie insensitive to our current economic crisis: “But the ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense.” Scott also appears to have read Karl Marx at some point in his life based on this observation: “The Emirate to which the four friends repair is an oasis of gilded luxury in a world that has grown a little ambivalent about unbridled commodity fetishism.”
Excuse me. Am I missing something? If there’s any media outlet that should not be talking about “unexamined privilege” and “unbridled commodity fetishism”, it is the NY Times that is almost singlehandedly responsible for backing the yuppification of the island of Manhattan. This is a newspaper with society pages gushing over $10 million weddings and whose restaurant reviews are strictly devoted to venues that will cost you $150 per meal...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW COMMENTARY HERE

Louis Proyect
The Unrepentant Marxist

SHE SAID....

The hostile, emotionally charged critic assault on SATC 2 is really a 'veiled' attack on the power of the older woman. And gives the strange impression that females are pariahs more here than in the Middle East, women - not men - who confront sheik sexism and burka blues in the movie. If only those 'make war not love' critics were as outspokenly outraged against the US military in that region, as they are against these women. And the fact that women are showing up in droves without men for SATC 2, says it all about the gender divide right here at home. Not since the nasty sexist campaign to drive Hillary Clinton out of the presidential race, has there been such an attack on anything expressing female political or sexual empowerment...

READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

As events transpire to bring out hidden secrets of these two characters, I found myself engaged in the film. Their dialogue consists of clever witticism and they make some acute social observations. At times, the absurdity of the ridiculous and nonsensical takes over in the lives of these characters....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Princess Kaiulani

2010-05-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

'PRINCESS KAIULANI' ARRESTED

The actress portraying Princess Kaiulani and Native American legend Pocahontas in the 2005 film The New World, has been arrested in Washington, D.C. for staging a protest outside the White House. Q'orianka Kilcher, 20, chained herself to the White House perimeter fence to protest a state visit by Peru's President Alan Garcia, who has announced plans to sell large areas of indigenous land to oil companies and other foreign investors.

Kilcher's father is a Peruvian Indian.

The actress' mother Saskia was also involved in the protest, pouring black paint on her daughter to give the appearance of being covered in oil. The mother has been charged with defacing government property. Kilcher was charged with disorderly conduct.

Kilcher also recently visited Lima, Peru to help champion an indigenous leader there, and supported Bolivian president Evo Morales at a political rally in April on climate change.

Kilcher's name Q'orianka means "Golden Eagle" in Quechua. Her father is a Quechua Peruvian artist, and her cousin is Grammy-nominated singer Jewel Kilcher.

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

The in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional feelings, racial prejudice, religious intolerance and corruption, put characters in conflict with themselves, as well as societies. The performances of ensemble are flawless...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

Unfolding somewhat like James Cameron's Avatar relocated back in time to planet earth, the film ironically excavates a very different homeland security, in resistance to US imperialism. And a rare woman on screen, not living through a man....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

Hawaiian Historical Society Responds to Princess Kaiulani Review

2010-05-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

Aloha e Ms. Miller...

I have read your review of Marc Forby's version of Princess Ka'iulani's life, and appreciated your comments about Hawai'i's submerged history. I assume, though, that you are aware that Mr. Forby takes considerable dramatic license with what Ka'iulani experienced in England (Great Harrowden Hall was anything but the miserable place/experience that he portrays it as, and the romance is also largely a fiction - I doubt Ke Ali'i Ka'iulani would have been pleased by either depiction).
I imagine you were aware of Ka'iulani as a historical/cultural figure before this film?

While I am waiting to see the finished film (I've read the script in its several drafts...save for the first, which elders in the Hawaiian community found so offensive in some of its content that Mr. Forby was forced to alter it), it remains a matter of ambivalence or controversy for members of both the Hawai'i history and ethnic/cultural communities...for a variety of reasons.

It is a pity that a "romance" had to be resorted to at all (but I suppose Hollywood formula dictates here)...since Ka'iulani did so many interesting things that I am assuming are not depicted in the film...as they are absent from the scripts. (From surfing to playing the violin...and she was quite a talented artist).

But of course "romance" - and naturally with a white man [one is unhappily reminded of the Pocahontas/John Smith convention, particularly with Ms. Kilcher in the lead] - takes precedence over the things an intelligent young woman might otherwise occupy her time with. Aue no ho'i e!

I hope the film truly awakens Americans to at least some of the issues centered on the theft of the Hawaiian nation from its people. I also hope that some gifted Hawai'i/indigenous documentary makers will in the near future make a fact-based documentary about Ka'iulani's real life...which is dramatic enough without an assortment of fictional baggage.

All the best,
Mindi Reid
Hawaiian Historical Society

READ PRINCESS KAIULANI MOVIE REVIEW HERE

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Agora

2010-05-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

HE SAID...

By Gerald Wright

Rachel Weisz gives a brilliant performance as she deals with the climate of violence and confrontation in her stance against the socio-political debacle. It is quite remarkable. The supporting cast are great and bring a most diverse creativeness to their fictional characters.

This is a very impressive historical period piece film. As biopics go, this displays a solid fact based theme and allows a fictional narrative explode on screen. With crisp pacing and terrific performances by a great ensemble, I enjoyed this movie.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID...

Rachel Weisz is her usual luminous self in a role that sees a religious fear of educated female leaders pitted against a woman who is drawn to the challenge of unlocking universal truths. Unfortunately, the key drama between Hypatia and the Christian zealots is drowned in at least half a dozen other plot strands and conflicts.

In a lavishly shot ancient world with great costumes and set design, we encounter a freed slave, a spurned lover, an aging father, a ruler's crisis of faith, and plenty of modern parallels with the rise of extremism. These characters and elements are explored with various degrees of success - and as they all clamour for screen time, clarity is lost and urgency slackens...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Catherine Bray
Channel 4 Film, UK
Guardian
The New Statesman

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2010

2010-05-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

An annual spring event at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater in New York City, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2010 will host thirty socially themed documentaries and dramatic features from twenty-five countries this year. Many of the directors will be present for discussion following the presentations, and twenty-eight of the films are NYC premieres. The Festival runs June 10th through 24th.

There are several features this year touching on a topic rarely explored in movies, the economic injustices inflicted upon a troubled world, and how economic issues permeate multiple aspects of society and individual lives of women and the poor, in significant ways...

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

More information about the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is online at: HRW.org and FilmLinc.com

Please Give Movie Review: The Supporting Leading Lady On Screen

2010-05-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Middle-aged, middle-class Manhattanite is overwhelmed by all the things in life she can't make better no matter how hard she tries. Keener steps up & gracefully allows herself to be the butt of every joke, & the rest of the cast provides great support. Jan gets this woman & LOVES this film...

READ REVIEW HERE

Jan Lisa Huttner
TheHotPinkPen
Films For Two
WomenArts.org

Arts Magazine Screening Room

2010-04-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Lily Tomlin On Call. The irreverent and unconventionally female comic phones in to the Arts Magazine with reflections on her numerous personas counting that nosy bill collector Ernestine and The Incredible Shrinking Woman; memories of Robert Altman on Nashville; the influence of her Detroit workingclass roots on her unique brand of humor; and how her characters change with the changing social issues through time.

And... A conversation with Ethiopian born Sankofa director and Howard University Professor Haile Gerima, delving into an African filmmaker's perspective on race and class in African American cinema.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

TCM Film Fest 2010: Screen Goddesses Rule

2010-04-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

Bette Davis: 'Getting Old Ain't For Sissies.'

By Penelope Andrew
Huffington Post

"I AM BIG, IT'S THE PICTURES THAT GOT SMALL."
----Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard

...Osborne remarked that classic films such as All About Eve were made to be seen on a large screen, but lamented that they seldom are. He enticed the audience with the April film festival by naming some of the classic films and actors who will be seen "three stories high" just as they were when the films debuted. Bette Davis, Sanders, and the All About Eve cast which also featured Celeste Holm, Anne Baxter, Gary Merrill (soon to become Davis' fourth and last husband), Marilyn Monroe (in one of her earliest credited roles), and the irrepressible, superb character actress Thelma Ritter did not disappoint and obviously remain giants of the silver screen to the enthusiastic, 2010 New York audience.

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Like Casablanca (1942), All About Eve (1950) is one of those classic films one can watch over and over again without ever falling out of love with it. Part of its splendor is to be found in a “truly bravura performance by its star, Bette Davis, as a theatrical diva whose temper tantrums towards others are as much fun to watch as are her savage misgivings about herself,” wrote Kenneth L. Geist back in 2000 in a New York Times review of a book devoted entirely to the subject of the film....

CONTINUE TO READ PART II HERE

Penelope Andrew, a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post and Critical Women on Film, is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle. A certified psychoanalytic psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice in NYC. Penelope Andrew is reporting from the Turner Classics Movies Film Festival in LA for The Huffington Post.

Generation Zero Doc Counterpunch Review: Tea Party Cinema A Weak Brew

2010-03-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

...Invoking intimidating biblical scriptures that are fused visually with looming tornadoes, rotting fruit, paper money on fire, and a man versus lion beatdown, Generation Zero and its Tea Party animals get down to business on fast forward by blaming the current economic crisis retroactively on Lucifer, Woodstock, Dems, post-hippie yuppies lighting up cigars with burning Ben Franklins, Hollywood, Black Panthers, anti-war protesters and disrespectful post-WWII youth. Which might leave the marginalized left in this country scratching their collective heads while caught between pondering these neo-McCarthyite attacks, and shock that they seem to wield such enormous power over the course of history...

CONTINUE TO READ COUNTERPUNCH REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

Mob Rules: Tea Party's High Noon

By Sikivu Hutchinson

...Reveling in nightly PR infusions from the corporate lapdogs of American journalism, the freshly evangelized macho racist right has ensured that its charge of a socialist government expansion is now viewed as a “reasonable” critique of an overhaul that effectively concedes universal coverage to the insurance industry. Mining a deep strain of patriarchal backlash, the Tea Partiers have taken Christian fundamentalists’ language of “moral” panic and used it as a goad to a white nationalist uprising obsessed with the imagery of enslavement...

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of Blackfemlens, a journal of progressive commentary and literature, and the author of the forthcoming book Mortal Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America. She is member of the Women Film Critics Circle, a commentator on Pacifica's Some Of Us Are Brave on KPFK 90.7FM, and a reporter for the LA Women's Desk of the WBAI Radio Women's Collective in NY.
Listen to blackfemlens commentaries on Fridays, 6:25pm LA Time, at http://kpfk.org.

From The Women's Desk

2010-03-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

The Havana In NY Film Festival: Distinguished guests from the film world in Cuba, with discussion of how movies get made under socialism without commercial imperatives as the driving force, and women both in front of and behind the camera in Cuba.

Also...Redefining Marriage: What's wrong with marriage today, and do we need it.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

A Presentation of The WBAI Women's Collective, Taking Feminism To The Next Level.

Hosts: Eneida DelValle, Joy Rose, Prairie Miller, Alana Free.

Screening Room: Janet Jackson, Shirin Nashat

2010-03-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

Janet Jackson on acting as a healing process. The performer turned actress on her latest movie, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too, and how disappearing into a character with anger management issues, helped her through the tragedy of brother Michael Jackson's death.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

And...Women Without Men: Iranian born NYC based director Shirin Neshat's disturbing, mystical portrayal of the haunting colonialist history Of Iran, as she addresses the hard questions. Including the origins of Middle Eastern rage against the West in the CIA backed destruction of Iranian democracy in 1953. And the dilemma of supporting protests in Iran while warding off the anti-government push by US imperialist wolves at the door.

Arts Magazine Screening Room

2010-03-21T16:56:00.001-07:00

Shirtwaist Factory Workers prepare to strike.

Screening Room: The birth of television news and US documentary in radical underground filmmaking, and the misremembering of history. Filmmaker Tom Hurwitz on the legacy and impact of the Great Depression Workers Film And Photo League, the Red Channels purges, and a people's cinema movement born in vacant lots and union halls.

Also...Transplant take-out medical terrorism and recipients resistance uprising, in Repo Men.

And...Stephen Wolf, reads poetry commemorating the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, March 25,1911

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

Women Without Men: Rape, Rebellion And Radio In Iran

2010-03-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

...Rape, resistance and rebel radio in Iran, and a tormented girl forced into prostitution whose ravaged, anorexic body symbolizes women and a nation alike, plundered and depleted by avaricious forces feeding upon it, both foreign and conspiring from within...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Interview With Director Shirin Nashat about Women Without Men:

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

Prairie Miller

Women Without Men will debut at New Directors, New Films on 3/30 and 3/31. The film series runs 3/24 through 4/4 in NYC. More information is at: Newdirectors.org. Women Without Men will open theatrically in LA beginning April 9th, and in NYC in May.

Iran and The Global Struggle for Women

By Sikivu Hutchinson

...As many Middle Eastern activists have noted, U.S. occupation has been a major catalyst for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. However, Gol cautioned, “Islamic fundamentalism hangs on its ‘death to America’” rhetoric as a means of legitimizing and reinforcing nationalism. In some regards, poor people in the region see no other viable alternative to Western imperialism besides Islamic fundamentalism. Tragically, some Iranian feminists and intellectuals also buy into this line. And it is for this reason that Gol faults the activists of the Iranian Green Movement for their failure to challenge its leaders on the issue of nationalism and women’s rights. Global women’s liberation is undermined by cultural binaries that weave a narrative of Western enlightenment versus Middle Eastern fundamentalism... I

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org, a journal of progressive commentary and literature, and the author of the forthcoming book Mortal Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America. She is member of the Women Film Critics Circle, a commentator on Pacifica's Some Of Us Are Brave on KPFK 90.7FM, and a reporter for the LA Women's Desk of the WBAI Radio Women's Collective in NY.
Listen to blackfemlens commentaries on Fridays, 6:25pm LA Time, at http://kpfk.org.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Why Did I Get Married Too?

2010-03-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

.... As the plot deals with the crisis of human emotion, failed romance or friendship, strain familial situations, tragedy, illness, deception, and neuroses, it is easy to consider this movie a combination of a "guy cry movie" and "chick flick" because both male and female audiences are targeted.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
HDFEST.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

...Finding this occasionally over the top nasty domestic strife entertaining, depends on whether or not you're someone who has a tendency to put your nosy ears closer to the wall when married neighbors squabble loudly, or who would rather cover them up for the annoying duration.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

HE SAID, SHE SAID...Chloe

2010-03-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

...There is great dialogue between Moore and Seyfried while the flow of the movie depicts their intense sexual scenes in a sensual mood. Julianne Moore shines in her performance at this point, and it is complimented by Amanda Seyfried's portrayal of a young woman's sense of erotica...

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
HDFEST.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

The Girlfriend Experience meets Fatal Attraction: The Hooker Sequel, in this steamy same sex triangle touching on a lapsed libido, incidental fetishism involving designer heels that might make Imelda Marcos envious, and the ordeal of stifling your inner lesbian.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Oceans, A Dazzling Documentary

2010-03-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

By Jan Aaron

Oceans opens with a young boy staring in wonder at the ocean and turns all of us into children of wonder with 103 minutes of eye-popping underwater exploration of the world's oceans. The film gives off vibes similar to Winged Migration, which presented an intimate portrait of birds..

Indeed, it is the second creation by Winged co-directors Jacques Cluzaud and the French actor film-maker Jacques Perrin, who briefly appears on screen This film combines a sense of wonder at natures underwater variety with a plea for great concern over world-wide environment. Heartbreaking images at the end show human damage to our oceans.

Oceans is the result of four years of 75 diving expeditions in 50 locations all over the world, where cameras capture 80 species of exotic fish, crabs, dolphins, whales, squid, lizards, sharks, turtles and those so outlandish they defy easy classification. Unlike some nature films which uses narration and anthropomorphic animals, this film presents nature as it is. The end result is a poetic underwater pageant without a story, making it lack appeal for very young children.

The straight nature approach is greatly assisted by Bruno Culais' subtle score, which perfectly partners the excellent camera work. Vast schools of whales swimming in unison bring to mind those old synchronized swimming routines of Esther Williams and her chorines. Dramatic scenes of crabs crawling on the ocean floor might be out of a sci-fi feature.

Toward the end we are warned of the terrible future awaiting us if we continue to dump waste into the oceans of the world. Still we are left to wonder at how the cameraman could take those wondrous shots while traveling at considerable speed in shark infester waters.

Jan Aaron
Education Update

HE SAID, SHE SAID....The Runaways

2010-03-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

...I was easily absorbed into the entertaining yet depressing story of how impressionable young girls could fall into the clutches of a man like Kim Vincent Fowley, who had claims of abusing the girls.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
HDFEST.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

...An uneven clash of nicely telegraphed raw sound and timid storytelling, Dakota same sex afterglow in bed with her roller skates still on, and Kristen still in bite this mode, self-entertaining and singing solo in the tub.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

A Lie Of The Mind: Troubled Family Drama

2010-03-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

By Jan Aaron

“Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out:”
- From the Mending Wall by Robert Frost

This Frost phrase ran through my when I saw Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind recently, in a fine revival at the Acorn Theater on West 42nd Street in New York City. If you had neighbors like these, you'd probably want to wall them out. But this doesn't apply to the play.

Acclaimed actor Ethan Hawke here scores high, as he directs a topnotch cast: There are the women: Maggie Siff, Laurie Metcalf, Marin Ireland, and Karen Young who bear the psychic and physical wounds of the dopey, damaged men played by Keith Carradine, Frank Whaley, Josh Hamilton, and Alessandro Nivola. In an interesting twist, Young played in the original production a quarter of a century ago, but in a different role. It is the women who mesmerize and make this play something to draw the attention of Critical Women’s web site.

The theme of the play explores fissures in the American family, and the set by Derek McLane was a marvel of clutter they collect and discard along the way. A spooky musical sound design by Shane Retig, and dramatic lighting by Jeff Croiter further established the mood. Costumes by Catherine Zuber were appropriately generic.

The story pivots around two families from opposite coasts who become linked through an act of senseless violence. The abusive Jake (Nivola) has beaten his wife Beth (Ireland) so badly he thinks he’s killed her. His worried brother Frankie (Hamilton) leaves him in the care of his mother (Young) and sister (Siff) to search for the truth. He finds Beth at her parent’s home suffering from brain damage and being looked after by her mother (Metcalf); her short-fused brother (Whaley) seeking revenge. But unfortunately, Frankie has been shot in the leg as he approached the property, by Beth’s hunting addled dad (Carradine), who mistakes him for a deer.

Throughout the play Shepard creates a searing portrait about people who are beyond repair, although stubbornly clinging to old-fashioned beliefs and comforting rituals, like properly folding the American flag.

“Mind” has recently ended its run; but it makes good reading and who knows? Some day, it could become a film...Hmm, now who would we cast as Beth?

Jan Aaron
Education Update
Women Film Critics Circle

HE SAID, SHE SAID...The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

2010-03-13T20:23:00.000-08:00

HE SAID....

By Gerald Wright

The film's mystery unfolds in a bold dramatic fashion with the uncovering of grotesque murders dated from as much as 50 years prior. The amalgam of murder, rape, mystery, family saga, a bizarre love story, and financial intrique makes this an intelligent narrative. The fact that issues such as violence against women is plagued in this film gives it a genuine appeal to sit back in your movie seat and emerge into the story....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Gerald Wright
HDFEST.com
Film Showcase

SHE SAID....

A ballsier than thou babe who really knows how to rescue her timid man from danger and relishes retaliatory rape in reverse, delivers potent screen enigma in the masculinization of a profoundly sexually damaged female psyche....

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Prairie Miller

WEBSITE: Dragontattoofilm.com

Director Fay Ann Lee Talks Falling For Grace

2010-03-13T19:54:00.001-08:00

Screening Room. Cinderella In Chinatown: The roots of class consciousness in female folklore, and neighborhood sweatshops in confrontation with divisive step-sisterhood. Director Fay Ann Lee talks the politics and economics of identity in Falling For Grace.

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW HERE

Children Of Invention: A Conversation With Director Tze Chun

2010-03-08T14:07:00.003-08:00

Screening Room: Children Of Invention. While the Oscars heaped accolades on the eve of International Women's Day, on movies like Precious and The Blind Side that demonize ghetto mothers living in poverty, Asian American filmmaker Tze Chun in contrast conveys a candid yet compassionate dramatic portrait based on his own childhood with a struggling single undocumented immigrant working mother, under the impact of a brutal social system that could care less. And, while surviving foreclosure, homelessness, worker exploitation and the INS. A conversation with Tze Chun.

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW WITH TZE CHUN HERE

Hitchcock, Nixon And The Taliban

2010-03-01T18:50:00.001-08:00

Screening Room: Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art. Locating Hitchcock within the volatile historical currents his day, from the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, spectacle sparring between Nixon, JFK and Khrushchev, television versus radio, cinema versus television, consumerism, and suspect coffee commercials as sinister metaphor, to finally 'fear as commodity' in a catastrophe culture, within what seems like the ultimate reality film noir. And, whose Taliban? In Miscreants Of Talliwood. And more...

LISTEN TO THE FILMMAKER INTERVIEWS HERE

All About Her Mother

2010-03-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

Cindy Kleine's Phyllis and Harold, And Actress Jean Simmons: Leading Lady in Her Final Film

By Penelope Andrew
The Huffington Post

Born nine years after Phyllis, the actress Jean Simmons shares some things in common with her....It's another film that tries to make sense of Friedan's feminine mystique--that awful, nagging sense that something in life is missing....

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew, a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post and Critical Women on Film, is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle. A certified psychoanalytic psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice in NYC.

Racial Politics And The Black Image In Hollywood

2010-03-01T13:55:00.000-08:00

By Sikivu Hutchinson
Our Weekly, Los Angeles

....Critical darling Precious (directed by African American filmmaker Lee Daniels) and audience favorite The Blind Side have both garnered Oscar nods for portrayals that some Black critics and moviegoers have dubbed condescending and stereotypical. The irony is not lost on novelist Ishmael Reed, author of the forthcoming Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media. In a recent article in the New York Times Reed wrote, “The Blacks who are enraged by Precious have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them. It was the enthusiastic response from white audiences and critics that culminated in the film being nominated for six Oscars by the Academy...an outfit whose 43 governors are all white and whose membership in terms of diversity is 40 years behind Mississippi”....

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and the author of the forthcoming book Mortal Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America. She writes for Our Weekly, is member of the Women Film Critics Circle, The James Agee Cinema Circle of political criticism, a commentator on Pacifica's KPFK 90.7FM. and a reporter for the LA Women's Desk of the WBAI Radio Women's Collective in NY.

Children Of Invention Movie Review: Motherhood Meltdown

2010-03-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

...Heartbreak, regret and enormous compassion: The plight of immigrants, foreclosed families, moms and children on their own in an uncaring system and desperately reinventing themselves, and the way workers become hurtfully pitted against one another for survival.

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

CRITICAL WOMEN ON FILM

He Said, She Said....Albert Nobbs: Sex, Lies And Economics

The Last Song: Tony Bennett Shares 'Body And Soul' With Amy Winehouse

The Iron Lady: Hollywood, Politics And Pseudo-Feminism

And The Winners Are...Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2011

Women Film Critics Circle Awards Nominations 2011

Deborah Kerr's Early Artistry, And Winston Churchill's Wrath

He Said, She Said...Desire, Dread And Gender On Screen

Warrior Review: It Asks, How Do You Forgive When You Really Have Been Wronged?

Crime After Crime Movie Review: Can Everything That's Broken Be Mended?

The Ward: Heavily Medicated Hotties In Mental Roach Motel Lockdown

!War: Women Art Revolution - Conversation And Commentary

Final Reflections On Cannes: The Festival And Beyond

*Breaking News From Cannes*: Annette Insdorf Film Festival Wrap-Up Report

The Cannes Film Festival Reports: Women Film Critics Circle Special

Deborah Kerr: Actress In Search Of An Author

HE SAID, SHE SAID....BRIDESMAIDS

The Conspirator Movie Review: Sins Of The Mothers?

Are You Surprised By Movies Anymore? Deciphering Werner Herzog

TCM Film Fest: Classic Stars Walk Red Carpet for 60th Anniversary Of An American in Paris

HE SAID, SHE SAID...Girl Power Goes Up Against Sexualized Violence On Screen

Mars Needs Moms? Pear-Shaped Shrewish Aliens Not 'Hip'

In Mars Needs Moms, odd stereotypes raise their big alien foreheads.

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Permission Slips

Desperado Housewives: The Honeymooners' Joyce Randolph Revisits Trixie

Women's Work: Triangle Fire, 100th Anniversary

Refusing To Play The Star Card: A Conversation With Amy Ryan

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2010

Awards Season & Second Looks

Women's Work: Lubitsch & Chomet, Cluny Brown & The Illusionist

HE SAID, SHE SAID...Testing Boundaries

HE SAID, SHE SAID....WOMEN'S WORK

Sally Hawkins Talks Female Ford Plant Struggles, In Made In Dagenham

Noomi Rapace Kicks The Hornets' Nest

Beyond The Sacrificial Good Woman: Black Feminism And Freethought

Conviction: Sisterhood Straightens Out The Criminal Justice System

Female Film Icons Honored

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Rachel: The Image As Obscenity And Truth

Religion And Gender: Breaking Through Stained Glass Ceiling

Claude Chabrol [1930-2010]: Astute Dissection Of Sex, Class And Show Business

Audrey Bernard Honored With 2010 Thurgood Marshall Prestige Award

Katie Holmes Perfects Doormat Duty in The Romantics

Machete Plays Out In Houston: Blood, Race And Sex

Valerie Plame Wilson Counts Down To Zero

The Remarkable Life And Career Of Patricia Neal, Sassy Screen Goddess Extraordinaire

From The Women's Desk

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Hedonism, The New Feminism In Hollywood?

The Concert Movie Review

Cyrus: Class Bonding and Man-Children in LA

Hung: The Punisher Puts A Price On His Head

Women Film Critics Circle's Jan Lisa Huttner Wins Top Honor

Who's Afraid Of Orlando?

Emerging Female Directors From The Middle East

Pink Brain, Blue Brain?

I Am Love: Sex, Class And Seafood

The Politics Of The Female Pleasure Principle In Movies

Reader Mailbag: SATC 2 And The Woman Question

Frankly My Dear: Molly Haskell's Exploration Of Nation And Of Self

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Winter's Bone

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Sex And The City 2

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Princess Kaiulani

Hawaiian Historical Society Responds to Princess Kaiulani Review

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Agora

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2010

Please Give Movie Review: The Supporting Leading Lady On Screen

Arts Magazine Screening Room

TCM Film Fest 2010: Screen Goddesses Rule

Generation Zero Doc Counterpunch Review: Tea Party Cinema A Weak Brew

From The Women's Desk

Screening Room: Janet Jackson, Shirin Nashat

Arts Magazine Screening Room

Women Without Men: Rape, Rebellion And Radio In Iran

HE SAID, SHE SAID....Why Did I Get Married Too?

HE SAID, SHE SAID...Chloe

Oceans, A Dazzling Documentary

HE SAID, SHE SAID....The Runaways

A Lie Of The Mind: Troubled Family Drama

HE SAID, SHE SAID...The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Director Fay Ann Lee Talks Falling For Grace

Children Of Invention: A Conversation With Director Tze Chun

Breaking News From Cannes: Annette Insdorf Film Festival Wrap-Up Report