Saw this photo shoot of Dakota Fanning and my heart fluttered. Loving the clothes!
Inspiring, full of texture, colors, movement..beautiful
Is it me or does Dakota Fanning look like Sharon Stone, especially in the jaguar print?
Mi favorito!
Monday, February 8, 2010
True blood Opening Sequence
Obsessed... Love the Opening Credits...
Alan Ball has done it once again.
Quote #2
“I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.”--Gertrude Stein
Kathryn Bigelow is first woman to win DGA award
Kathryn Bigelow is first woman to win DGA award
The Hurt Locker director's victory at the Directors Guild of America awards puts her in pole position in the Oscar race
Xan Brooks
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 February 2010 11.09 GMT
Lauded by her peers … Kathryn Bigelow with her Directors Guild of America award, presented by last year's winner Danny Boyle. Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Kathryn Bigelow took a major step towards this year's best director Oscar when she scooped the top prize at the Directors Guild of America awards on Saturday. Bigelow became the first woman to win the DGA award in its 62-year history. No woman has ever won the Academy Award for best director.
The Hurt Locker
Production year: 2008
Country: USA
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 131 mins
Directors: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, David Morse, Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes
More on this film
Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, a tense, ground-level account of a US bomb disposal team on the streets of Baghdad. "We all felt a really deep responsibility to tell this story with as much honesty as possible, given the courage of the men and women in the field," Bigelow said. She took the prize ahead of fellow nominees Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and Golden Globe winner James Cameron (Avatar).
The director confessed that she was "stunned, honoured and proud" to have won. "This is the most incredible moment of my life," she added.
Until recently, Cameron had been regarded as the heavy favourite for this year's Academy Awards, following his win at last month's Golden Globes. But, thanks to her triumph at both the DGA and Producers Guild of America, Bigelow may now have nosed into pole position. Only six DGA victors have failed to go on to win an Oscar since 1948.
Elsewhere, the DGA bestowed a lifetime achievement award on the veteran film-maker Norman Jewison. The Canadian-born film-maker, now 83, is best known for directing In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck.
Nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards will be announced in Los Angeles tomorrow.
Read Original: First woman to win DGA Award
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
The Hurt Locker director's victory at the Directors Guild of America awards puts her in pole position in the Oscar race
Xan Brooks
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 February 2010 11.09 GMT
Lauded by her peers … Kathryn Bigelow with her Directors Guild of America award, presented by last year's winner Danny Boyle. Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Kathryn Bigelow took a major step towards this year's best director Oscar when she scooped the top prize at the Directors Guild of America awards on Saturday. Bigelow became the first woman to win the DGA award in its 62-year history. No woman has ever won the Academy Award for best director.
The Hurt Locker
Production year: 2008
Country: USA
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 131 mins
Directors: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, David Morse, Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes
Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, a tense, ground-level account of a US bomb disposal team on the streets of Baghdad. "We all felt a really deep responsibility to tell this story with as much honesty as possible, given the courage of the men and women in the field," Bigelow said. She took the prize ahead of fellow nominees Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and Golden Globe winner James Cameron (Avatar).
The director confessed that she was "stunned, honoured and proud" to have won. "This is the most incredible moment of my life," she added.
Until recently, Cameron had been regarded as the heavy favourite for this year's Academy Awards, following his win at last month's Golden Globes. But, thanks to her triumph at both the DGA and Producers Guild of America, Bigelow may now have nosed into pole position. Only six DGA victors have failed to go on to win an Oscar since 1948.
Elsewhere, the DGA bestowed a lifetime achievement award on the veteran film-maker Norman Jewison. The Canadian-born film-maker, now 83, is best known for directing In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck.
Nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards will be announced in Los Angeles tomorrow.
Read Original: First woman to win DGA Award
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Why are there so few female film-makers?
Why are there so few female film-makers?
No woman has ever won an Oscar for directing. Could this be the year that all changes?
Kira Cochrane
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 January 2010 21.35 GMT
Cracking the boys' club … Beeban Kidron filming Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
For Vanity Fair's annual Hollywood issue a few years back, photographer Annie Leibovitz created a classic image of a film director at work. Posing beneath a stormy sky, George Clooney stood with his shirt ripped open, trousers tucked rakishly into his boots, arms outstretched – a young Orson Welles meets Michelangelo's vision of God. His crew were a crowd of female models in flesh-coloured lingerie; not the obvious costume for a camera operator, but there you are. This was the auteur as masculine genius, a warrior amid a sea of passive women.
This has long been the archetype of the film director, but over the last few months a host of women have been making waves: Sam Taylor-Wood with Nowhere Boy, Lone Scherfig with An Education, Andrea Arnold with Fish Tank. Then there are Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion, both trailing Oscar buzz for The Hurt Locker and Bright Star respectively.
So, is this a new era for female film-makers? Unfortunately, the numbers suggest otherwise. In a study published last year, Professor Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University found that only 9% of Hollywood directors in 2008 were women – the same figure she had recorded in 1998. If Bigelow is nominated for the best directing Oscar in March, it will be only the fourth time a woman has been nominated, out of more than 400 director nominations altogether (the other three were Lina Wertmüller in 1976, Jane Campion in 1993, and Sofia Coppola in 2003). No woman has ever won. No wonder, then, that last year Campion entreated aspiring female directors to "put on their coats of armour and get going".
Once, the dearth of women directors could be traced to the small numbers entering film school. These days, that's not the case. Lauzen says women are now well represented in US film schools, while Neil Peplow, of the UK training organisation Skillset, says women make up around 34% of directing students in Britain. That translates into a large number of female graduates making short films, but few moving on to features.
Over the years, this failure to progress has often been blamed on a chauvinist culture; and certainly, talking to established directors, it's easy to uncover tales of overt sexism – from the mildly disconcerting to the downright illegal. The British film director Antonia Bird (Priest, Mad Love) says dryly that on her first directing job, "I was the only woman there, and all the guys just assumed I was the producer's PA. That was good." Director Beeban Kidron (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) once sacked a male assistant director who called her "the little lady". At the extreme end, US film director Penelope Spheeris, who made the $100m-grossing Wayne's World, remembers meeting an executive at the Beverly Hills Hotel when she was at the start of her career. "And the guy was pretty drunk, and he ripped some of my clothes trying to take them off me, and when I got up and started screaming he said, 'Did you want to make this music video or not?'" She pauses. "You say sexist, I say felony."
When it comes to sexism, Martha Coolidge – director of Rambling Rose and Real Genius, as well as the first woman president of the Directors Guild of America – has heard it all. There was the story of the female president of a major studio who said "no woman over 40 could possibly have the stamina to direct a feature film. I've heard people say that the kind of films they want to make are too big, too tough for a female director. The worst was when my agent sent another woman director in for an interview, and afterwards the guy called up and said, 'Never send anyone again who I wouldn't want to fuck.'"
There are signs that this culture is changing. A 2009 report – carried out by the UK networking organisation Women in Film and Television (WFTV) and Skillset – found that, while "a number of older participants reported direct experience of overt sexism, none of the younger participants [did]". But Coolidge insists that the film industry – and Hollywood specifically – remains a minefield, because "there is such a sexual component for the men who go into it. If all they wanted to do is to make money, they could just go to Wall Street. If you're a male executive, a producer – and I'm not talking about everybody, but the vast majority – you're there partly because you're surrounded by gorgeous girls. And that means that the older a woman is, the less they want them around. A woman would disrupt the flow of their lives." Coolidge and others point out that this is as true for black, working-class, and gay film-makers – in fact, anyone outside a small circle of privilege.
More subtle reasons have been mooted for the dearth of women at the top. One suggestion I heard is that women are brought up to negotiate in very different ways from men, which is problematic in a male-dominated environment. Coolidge doesn't agree with this – "there are plenty of women who are good negotiators" – but Kate Kinninmont of WFTV says she has noticed that, while "women are brilliant at pitching somebody else, they're not often good at pitching themselves". Lauzen says reporters have told her that "when they talk to the guys, they can't shut 'em up. But when they talk to the women, it's like pulling teeth . . . Women have to promote themselves, but when they do, it's seen as being unfeminine."
There is also the simple fact that the fewer women there are at the top, the fewer role models and mentors there are; those women who do forge ahead often talk of having to actively ignore the figures. Kidron says that when she was making her first film, she had "a phone call from a journalist who said, 'Do you know you're only the third woman ever to make a feature film in Britain?' And I said, 'Oh, please don't tell me,' and put the phone down, because I didn't want the pressure."
A lack of female film-makers also seems to have made it difficult for studios to imagine women in charge. Film is big business, filled with financial risk, and so "the whole industry is based on demonstrable success," says Peplow. "Unless something has worked in the past, it's very rare that people will take a risk. There's this perception that, well, traditionally it's a man's role, so we won't buck that."
It's true that men have directed the great majority of high-grossing films over the last decade. The website indiewire.com recently reported that, of the 241 films that had grossed $100m or more in the US over the last 10 years, only seven were directed by women (Shrek, Shark Tale, Twilight, What Women Want, The Proposal, Mamma Mia!, and Something's Gotta Give).
But a closer look at the figures reveals that women film-makers aren't a bigger financial risk. In 2008, Lauzen conducted a study called Women@the Box Office, which found that the key to big grosses wasn't the gender of the film-maker, but the budget. Big budgets equalled big grosses. "When women and men have similar budgets," she wrote, "the resulting box office grosses are also similar."
The problem is that the biggest budgets tend to be given to films that appeal to teenage boys – still considered the most frequent, most enthusiastic moviegoers (this may be because so many films are aimed at them, but that's another argument). There's no reason why women can't make films for this audience – as Spheeris did with Wayne's World. But female directors say that it is difficult to get assigned to the kind of comedy, horror or action movie that would establish their box office chops.
Despite the enormous success of films such as Mamma Mia! and Twilight, executives often seem perplexed by films with female themes. "I've been there when a film with a female protagonist has been screened," says Lauzen, "and the guys at the top go, 'Well, I don't get it.' When the majority of people in power are male, who are they going to relate to most on screen, and who do they think other people are going to relate to? Males. That's no big conspiracy. I don't even think it's conscious, honestly." Bird agrees. "One of the big problems is that, 90% of the time, the people who you pitch your idea to are male, and even though they might be very sympathetic, they do look at the world from a different perspective."
I ask Lauzen whether she thinks female film careers are interrupted by motherhood, and she says no, as do Kinninmont and Coolidge (the latter has extensive experience of juggling the two). They point out that directors tend to be highly driven; there are many cases of heavily pregnant women and young mothers making films. "A lot of them will say, 'Look, I wouldn't let that get in my way,'" says Lauzen.
Kidron, however, says that motherhood has affected her career "more than gender . . . At a certain point I had to stop making films in America, and make them here, which made a huge difference. Obviously men also give up an enormous amount for their families, but there are many male directors who have partners who take primary care of the family, or who are free to travel with them. That is rarely true the other way around. I absolutely don't want to suggest that women are unreliable because we're mothers – on the contrary. But the question of who brings up the kids has a material effect on all women's careers."
Bird agrees. "Film directing is more than a full-time job. When you're making a film, it takes up every day of your life, 16 to 18 hours a day, for a year. Trying to have children and being a film director is virtually impossible unless you're rich." Bird doesn't have children: "If I look deep down inside myself," she says, "I'm quite sure that I never did it because I never really had time."
The problems facing female directors are structural and systemic, a tangled mix of sexism, cultural differences between men and women, and maternity issues; in this, they mirror the problems affecting many women in male-dominated workplaces. But the film industry magnifies all this. As Spheeris says: "When the stakes are high, when fame and extreme amounts of money and power are involved, it's a jungle out there. It's brutal. How hard do you want to fight?"
Thankfully, many women are prepared to fight. British director Lindy Heymann, for instance, whose second feature, Kicks, is released this year, says that one of the great lessons from shooting that film was the realisation that she "didn't have to be liked, that that's the last thing you should be thinking about". She's just one of the film-makers heeding Campion's rally cry, getting her armour on; given the high visibility of female film- makers now – Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut this year, and there are films in the pipeline from Claire Denis, Gurinder Chadha, Nicole Holofcener, Julie Taymor and Sofia Coppola – perhaps others will be inspired, too. If Bigelow raises that gold statuette in March, many more women might breach the boys' club.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Read original:
Why are there so few female film-makers?
No woman has ever won an Oscar for directing. Could this be the year that all changes?
Kira Cochrane
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 January 2010 21.35 GMT
Cracking the boys' club … Beeban Kidron filming Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
For Vanity Fair's annual Hollywood issue a few years back, photographer Annie Leibovitz created a classic image of a film director at work. Posing beneath a stormy sky, George Clooney stood with his shirt ripped open, trousers tucked rakishly into his boots, arms outstretched – a young Orson Welles meets Michelangelo's vision of God. His crew were a crowd of female models in flesh-coloured lingerie; not the obvious costume for a camera operator, but there you are. This was the auteur as masculine genius, a warrior amid a sea of passive women.
This has long been the archetype of the film director, but over the last few months a host of women have been making waves: Sam Taylor-Wood with Nowhere Boy, Lone Scherfig with An Education, Andrea Arnold with Fish Tank. Then there are Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion, both trailing Oscar buzz for The Hurt Locker and Bright Star respectively.
So, is this a new era for female film-makers? Unfortunately, the numbers suggest otherwise. In a study published last year, Professor Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University found that only 9% of Hollywood directors in 2008 were women – the same figure she had recorded in 1998. If Bigelow is nominated for the best directing Oscar in March, it will be only the fourth time a woman has been nominated, out of more than 400 director nominations altogether (the other three were Lina Wertmüller in 1976, Jane Campion in 1993, and Sofia Coppola in 2003). No woman has ever won. No wonder, then, that last year Campion entreated aspiring female directors to "put on their coats of armour and get going".
Once, the dearth of women directors could be traced to the small numbers entering film school. These days, that's not the case. Lauzen says women are now well represented in US film schools, while Neil Peplow, of the UK training organisation Skillset, says women make up around 34% of directing students in Britain. That translates into a large number of female graduates making short films, but few moving on to features.
Over the years, this failure to progress has often been blamed on a chauvinist culture; and certainly, talking to established directors, it's easy to uncover tales of overt sexism – from the mildly disconcerting to the downright illegal. The British film director Antonia Bird (Priest, Mad Love) says dryly that on her first directing job, "I was the only woman there, and all the guys just assumed I was the producer's PA. That was good." Director Beeban Kidron (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) once sacked a male assistant director who called her "the little lady". At the extreme end, US film director Penelope Spheeris, who made the $100m-grossing Wayne's World, remembers meeting an executive at the Beverly Hills Hotel when she was at the start of her career. "And the guy was pretty drunk, and he ripped some of my clothes trying to take them off me, and when I got up and started screaming he said, 'Did you want to make this music video or not?'" She pauses. "You say sexist, I say felony."
When it comes to sexism, Martha Coolidge – director of Rambling Rose and Real Genius, as well as the first woman president of the Directors Guild of America – has heard it all. There was the story of the female president of a major studio who said "no woman over 40 could possibly have the stamina to direct a feature film. I've heard people say that the kind of films they want to make are too big, too tough for a female director. The worst was when my agent sent another woman director in for an interview, and afterwards the guy called up and said, 'Never send anyone again who I wouldn't want to fuck.'"
There are signs that this culture is changing. A 2009 report – carried out by the UK networking organisation Women in Film and Television (WFTV) and Skillset – found that, while "a number of older participants reported direct experience of overt sexism, none of the younger participants [did]". But Coolidge insists that the film industry – and Hollywood specifically – remains a minefield, because "there is such a sexual component for the men who go into it. If all they wanted to do is to make money, they could just go to Wall Street. If you're a male executive, a producer – and I'm not talking about everybody, but the vast majority – you're there partly because you're surrounded by gorgeous girls. And that means that the older a woman is, the less they want them around. A woman would disrupt the flow of their lives." Coolidge and others point out that this is as true for black, working-class, and gay film-makers – in fact, anyone outside a small circle of privilege.
More subtle reasons have been mooted for the dearth of women at the top. One suggestion I heard is that women are brought up to negotiate in very different ways from men, which is problematic in a male-dominated environment. Coolidge doesn't agree with this – "there are plenty of women who are good negotiators" – but Kate Kinninmont of WFTV says she has noticed that, while "women are brilliant at pitching somebody else, they're not often good at pitching themselves". Lauzen says reporters have told her that "when they talk to the guys, they can't shut 'em up. But when they talk to the women, it's like pulling teeth . . . Women have to promote themselves, but when they do, it's seen as being unfeminine."
There is also the simple fact that the fewer women there are at the top, the fewer role models and mentors there are; those women who do forge ahead often talk of having to actively ignore the figures. Kidron says that when she was making her first film, she had "a phone call from a journalist who said, 'Do you know you're only the third woman ever to make a feature film in Britain?' And I said, 'Oh, please don't tell me,' and put the phone down, because I didn't want the pressure."
A lack of female film-makers also seems to have made it difficult for studios to imagine women in charge. Film is big business, filled with financial risk, and so "the whole industry is based on demonstrable success," says Peplow. "Unless something has worked in the past, it's very rare that people will take a risk. There's this perception that, well, traditionally it's a man's role, so we won't buck that."
It's true that men have directed the great majority of high-grossing films over the last decade. The website indiewire.com recently reported that, of the 241 films that had grossed $100m or more in the US over the last 10 years, only seven were directed by women (Shrek, Shark Tale, Twilight, What Women Want, The Proposal, Mamma Mia!, and Something's Gotta Give).
But a closer look at the figures reveals that women film-makers aren't a bigger financial risk. In 2008, Lauzen conducted a study called Women@the Box Office, which found that the key to big grosses wasn't the gender of the film-maker, but the budget. Big budgets equalled big grosses. "When women and men have similar budgets," she wrote, "the resulting box office grosses are also similar."
The problem is that the biggest budgets tend to be given to films that appeal to teenage boys – still considered the most frequent, most enthusiastic moviegoers (this may be because so many films are aimed at them, but that's another argument). There's no reason why women can't make films for this audience – as Spheeris did with Wayne's World. But female directors say that it is difficult to get assigned to the kind of comedy, horror or action movie that would establish their box office chops.
Despite the enormous success of films such as Mamma Mia! and Twilight, executives often seem perplexed by films with female themes. "I've been there when a film with a female protagonist has been screened," says Lauzen, "and the guys at the top go, 'Well, I don't get it.' When the majority of people in power are male, who are they going to relate to most on screen, and who do they think other people are going to relate to? Males. That's no big conspiracy. I don't even think it's conscious, honestly." Bird agrees. "One of the big problems is that, 90% of the time, the people who you pitch your idea to are male, and even though they might be very sympathetic, they do look at the world from a different perspective."
I ask Lauzen whether she thinks female film careers are interrupted by motherhood, and she says no, as do Kinninmont and Coolidge (the latter has extensive experience of juggling the two). They point out that directors tend to be highly driven; there are many cases of heavily pregnant women and young mothers making films. "A lot of them will say, 'Look, I wouldn't let that get in my way,'" says Lauzen.
Kidron, however, says that motherhood has affected her career "more than gender . . . At a certain point I had to stop making films in America, and make them here, which made a huge difference. Obviously men also give up an enormous amount for their families, but there are many male directors who have partners who take primary care of the family, or who are free to travel with them. That is rarely true the other way around. I absolutely don't want to suggest that women are unreliable because we're mothers – on the contrary. But the question of who brings up the kids has a material effect on all women's careers."
Bird agrees. "Film directing is more than a full-time job. When you're making a film, it takes up every day of your life, 16 to 18 hours a day, for a year. Trying to have children and being a film director is virtually impossible unless you're rich." Bird doesn't have children: "If I look deep down inside myself," she says, "I'm quite sure that I never did it because I never really had time."
The problems facing female directors are structural and systemic, a tangled mix of sexism, cultural differences between men and women, and maternity issues; in this, they mirror the problems affecting many women in male-dominated workplaces. But the film industry magnifies all this. As Spheeris says: "When the stakes are high, when fame and extreme amounts of money and power are involved, it's a jungle out there. It's brutal. How hard do you want to fight?"
Thankfully, many women are prepared to fight. British director Lindy Heymann, for instance, whose second feature, Kicks, is released this year, says that one of the great lessons from shooting that film was the realisation that she "didn't have to be liked, that that's the last thing you should be thinking about". She's just one of the film-makers heeding Campion's rally cry, getting her armour on; given the high visibility of female film- makers now – Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut this year, and there are films in the pipeline from Claire Denis, Gurinder Chadha, Nicole Holofcener, Julie Taymor and Sofia Coppola – perhaps others will be inspired, too. If Bigelow raises that gold statuette in March, many more women might breach the boys' club.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Read original:
Why are there so few female film-makers?
Three Women Directors (Before Bigelow) Who Rocked Oscars History - Inside Movies
Three Women Directors (Before Bigelow) Who Rocked Oscars History
February 4, 2010 | By: Sandie Angulo Chen
As Kathryn Bigelow celebrates her much-deserved Best Director Oscar nomination for 'The Hurt Locker,' it's mind-boggling to realize that she is, in fact, only the fourth woman director ever to be nominated.
While the Academy has honored a female composer (Rachel Portman), editor (Thelma Schoonmaker), and screenwriters (Diablo Cody, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), no female director has won an Oscar in the past 81 years. If Bigelow breaks through, as her fellow female directors hope, it will be a tribute to how far women directors have come.
Here's a look at the only three other female directors to score Oscar nominations in the history of the awards.
Lina Wertmüller
Movie: 'Seven Beauties' (1975)
Known for: Collaborations with actor Giancarlo Giannini, leftist sociopolitical themes, fascination with impoverished characters
Why She's Important: The Italian filmmaker was once Federico Fellini's assistant director ('8 1/2') and best known to foreign-film devotees for movies starring her good friend Giannini. 'Seven Beauties,' a tragicomic tale of how a demoralized man (Giannini) survives life in a concentration camp by seducing a female German officer, earned Wertmüller critical and commercial success in the art-house market, culminating in her four Academy Award nominations. Another first-time nominee, John Avildsen, ended up winning for his considerably more cheerful underdog flick, 'Rocky.'
Oscars Trivia: Although Wertmüller's three other competitors were beloved former nominees: Ingmar Bergman ('Face to Face'), Sidney Lumet ('Network') and Alan J. Pakula ('All the President's Men'), none of them ever won an Oscar for directing.
Jane Campion
Movie: 'The Piano' (1993)
Known For: Strong female protagonists, psycho-sexual themes, and striking art-cinema visuals
Why She's Important: It took 17 years, but in 1994, Kiwi director Jane Campion broke the almost-two-decade gap to become the second woman with a Best Director nomination. Unfortunately for Campion, 'The Piano' was released the same year as 'Schindler's List.' Even if Steven Spielberg had not been a lock for Best Director, Campion also faced off against a trio of veteran nominees: Robert Altman ('Short Cuts'), James Ivory ('The Remains of the Day') and Jim Sheridan ('In the Name of the Father'). Campion went on to snag an original screenplay Oscar for writing the critically adored period drama.
Oscar Trivia: 'The Piano' swept the actress category, with both Holly Hunter and an 11-year-old Anna Paquin winning their best and supporting awards.
Sofia Coppola
Movie: 'Lost in Translation' (2003)
Known For: Highly stylized cinematography and art direction, vulnerable characters, and impeccably selected soundtracks
Why She's Important: A decade after Campion's nomination, the next woman to receive the honor was Hollywood royalty. The daughter of Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia was the first American woman to earn an Oscar nod for directing. Only 32 at the time, she was up against the unbeatable Peter Jackson for 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,' Academy favorite Clint Eastwood ('Mystic River'), five-time nominee Peter Weir ('Master and Commander') and fellow first-timer Fernando Meirelles ('City of God'). Although she wasn't expected to win for directing, Coppola, like Campion before her, won the Oscar for original screenplay.
Oscar Trivia: With her screenplay Oscar, Coppola joined first cousin Nicolas Cage as the third generation of Coppolas with an Academy Award (their grandfather Carmine won for scoring 'The Godfather: Part II').
What This Means For Bigelow:
Unlike Bigelow, all three previous nominees also received screenwriting nominations, so the Academy had two chances to recognize them individually with an award. Both Campion and Coppola won for original screenplay, but if the Academy wants to honor Bigelow alone with an Oscar to match her DGA Award, it only has one shot, since nominee Mark Boal wrote the film.
On the bright side for Bigelow, she is the only one of the four women to win the DGA Award, which firmly places her as the front-runner in this year's race. Only six directors so far have ever won the DGA and gone on to lose the Oscar. So in the Battle of the Exes (Bigelow and fellow nominee/ex-husband James Cameron), being on Team Bigelow is a smart bet.
Read original:
Three Women Directors (Before Bigelow) Who Rocked Oscars History - Inside Movies
February 4, 2010 | By: Sandie Angulo Chen
As Kathryn Bigelow celebrates her much-deserved Best Director Oscar nomination for 'The Hurt Locker,' it's mind-boggling to realize that she is, in fact, only the fourth woman director ever to be nominated.
While the Academy has honored a female composer (Rachel Portman), editor (Thelma Schoonmaker), and screenwriters (Diablo Cody, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), no female director has won an Oscar in the past 81 years. If Bigelow breaks through, as her fellow female directors hope, it will be a tribute to how far women directors have come.
Here's a look at the only three other female directors to score Oscar nominations in the history of the awards.
Lina Wertmüller
Movie: 'Seven Beauties' (1975)
Known for: Collaborations with actor Giancarlo Giannini, leftist sociopolitical themes, fascination with impoverished characters
Why She's Important: The Italian filmmaker was once Federico Fellini's assistant director ('8 1/2') and best known to foreign-film devotees for movies starring her good friend Giannini. 'Seven Beauties,' a tragicomic tale of how a demoralized man (Giannini) survives life in a concentration camp by seducing a female German officer, earned Wertmüller critical and commercial success in the art-house market, culminating in her four Academy Award nominations. Another first-time nominee, John Avildsen, ended up winning for his considerably more cheerful underdog flick, 'Rocky.'
Oscars Trivia: Although Wertmüller's three other competitors were beloved former nominees: Ingmar Bergman ('Face to Face'), Sidney Lumet ('Network') and Alan J. Pakula ('All the President's Men'), none of them ever won an Oscar for directing.
Jane Campion
Movie: 'The Piano' (1993)
Known For: Strong female protagonists, psycho-sexual themes, and striking art-cinema visuals
Why She's Important: It took 17 years, but in 1994, Kiwi director Jane Campion broke the almost-two-decade gap to become the second woman with a Best Director nomination. Unfortunately for Campion, 'The Piano' was released the same year as 'Schindler's List.' Even if Steven Spielberg had not been a lock for Best Director, Campion also faced off against a trio of veteran nominees: Robert Altman ('Short Cuts'), James Ivory ('The Remains of the Day') and Jim Sheridan ('In the Name of the Father'). Campion went on to snag an original screenplay Oscar for writing the critically adored period drama.
Oscar Trivia: 'The Piano' swept the actress category, with both Holly Hunter and an 11-year-old Anna Paquin winning their best and supporting awards.
Sofia Coppola
Movie: 'Lost in Translation' (2003)
Known For: Highly stylized cinematography and art direction, vulnerable characters, and impeccably selected soundtracks
Why She's Important: A decade after Campion's nomination, the next woman to receive the honor was Hollywood royalty. The daughter of Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia was the first American woman to earn an Oscar nod for directing. Only 32 at the time, she was up against the unbeatable Peter Jackson for 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,' Academy favorite Clint Eastwood ('Mystic River'), five-time nominee Peter Weir ('Master and Commander') and fellow first-timer Fernando Meirelles ('City of God'). Although she wasn't expected to win for directing, Coppola, like Campion before her, won the Oscar for original screenplay.
Oscar Trivia: With her screenplay Oscar, Coppola joined first cousin Nicolas Cage as the third generation of Coppolas with an Academy Award (their grandfather Carmine won for scoring 'The Godfather: Part II').
What This Means For Bigelow:
Unlike Bigelow, all three previous nominees also received screenwriting nominations, so the Academy had two chances to recognize them individually with an award. Both Campion and Coppola won for original screenplay, but if the Academy wants to honor Bigelow alone with an Oscar to match her DGA Award, it only has one shot, since nominee Mark Boal wrote the film.
On the bright side for Bigelow, she is the only one of the four women to win the DGA Award, which firmly places her as the front-runner in this year's race. Only six directors so far have ever won the DGA and gone on to lose the Oscar. So in the Battle of the Exes (Bigelow and fellow nominee/ex-husband James Cameron), being on Team Bigelow is a smart bet.
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Three Women Directors (Before Bigelow) Who Rocked Oscars History - Inside Movies
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