New research reveals–not surprisingly–that female writers, directors, producers, etc. fare better in the world of indie films–though still make up only about 24% of the field.

KRS-ONE says hip-hop needs more women. I’m not sure what happened to female rappers. We used to have Queen Latifah, Lil’ Kim, MC Lyte, where’d everyone go?

In its first weekend, the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It grossed over $100 million dollars across the globe, with 21.3% of it coming from the U.S.

A gay man in Karachi, Pakistan was beaten to death after being caught with another man in his home by an angry mob.

Oprah says audiences may not “enjoy” the gritty Lee Daniels film Precious but she says people will appreciate the experience.  The film opens on November 6.

West Hollywood, a gay hotspot in California, is trying really hard to reach out to gay and lesbian tourists in order to boost revenue for the city.

Black comedian Wanda Sykes is being criticized for using white sperm to impregnate her white wife–the couple now have two white babies.

Are the Bonobo apes riot grrls? An article about whether the primates known for living in an unusually matriarchal structure are feminist friendly.

On the heels of the release of Hilary Swank’s new Amelia Earhart biopic, which is getting horrid reviews, critics are asking where have the strong female characters gone?

A group of LGBT individuals in Boston are planning to protest President Obama for not being enough of a fierce advocate for gay rights, on issues like DADT and DOMA.

Two Sudanese women were arrested during a raid and  sentenced to $110 in fines and twenty lashes for nothing but simply wearing pants.

A judge in Cook County has dismissed a case brought against Craiglist for not effectively curbing prostitution ads on its website.  The judge says there are plenty of legitimate services being offered.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their crime-fighting ways are moving to Nickelodeon, as Viacom buys the franchise from the Mirage Group for $60 million.

A student in Australia has been attacked by a school supervisor for promoting a rally in support of gay rights.  The teacher yelled “Faggot kid, you don’t know what real marriage is!”

Couples Retreat star Kristen Bell says she’s excited to get back to her “snarkier roots” in the movie musical Burlesque where she plays Christina Aguilera’s rival. She also says Christina has written music for the film.

Ewan McGregor says he enjoyed kissing Jim Carrey in the film I Love You Philip Morris, which is set for a February 2010 release in the United States.

Peggy Robertson was denied insurance coverage because she previously had a c-section. But her insurance company told her that if she got sterilized, they would give her coverage.

This is absolutely ridiculous and NOT the first time women have been denied coverage because of issues that women typically face. In eight state including the District of Columbia, getting beaten by your husband is a pre-existing condition. This madness has to stop.

Is Tom Cruse a homophobe? The AV Club seems to have gotten that impression around the time that he was filming the movie Risky Business.

A federal bill was introduced Monday that would penalize anti-gay adoption states. States such as Florida and Arkansas would lose federal funding unless they changed their laws.

Former mob hitman Robert Mormando shocked a Brooklyn judge Monday by declaring he’s gay before being sentenced for his part in the shooting of a bagel store owner.

In spite of the fact that Adam Lambert is an out gay man, Details magazine still decided to sexually objectify a female model in the singer’s most recent photoshoot to promote his new album.

Gay Irish hurling star Donal Ol Cusack says the homophobic taunts and slurs have kept his mother from attending his games.

After reports that a gay man had planted a kiss on him at an appearance at a gay club, John Mayer sets the record straight partly because he doesn’t like the idea that gays can’t control themselves.

Illinois teacher David Burk was given merely a warning for making a comment disparaging “black fags” in the middle of class during a discussion about funding for the arts.

Rapper Warren G (yeah, I’ve never heard of him either) says he’s fine with gay people, as long as they stay in the closet.  ’Cause you know, people got kids and shit.

A male reporter embarrassed himself and George Clooney at the Venice Film Festival when he removed his shirt and proclaimed he wanted George to “take him now”.

Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh talk more about “The Informant”, the film where Damon had to gain 30 lbs to play a man who blows the whistle on his company’s price-fixing scheme.

A gay man in Thunder Bay, Canada was brutally beaten by six to eight men with bricks, and will now require reconstructive surgery to deal with the damage done to his face.

Openly gay Representative Barney Frank is eyeing a position in the Obama cabinet.  I doubt it will happen, but if it did he’d be the first gay person ever in the Presidential cabinet.

Ntozake Shange was slated to write and direct the film adaptation of her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, but now Tyler Perry has stolen the entire film from her.

Female UK prison officer wins case against correctional facility she claims treated her unfairly for being young, female, and pretty.

More tour dates have been canceled for homophobic Jamaican singer Buju Banton.  One of his most popular songs talks about shooting gays and burning their bodies.

Proud, admitted homophobe Tim Hardaway is now working hard to save gay lives.  He says “we don’t have to accept the act, but we have to accept them as people.” How generous of you.

Everyone knows how I feel about the term “chick flicks” and the deep-rooted misogyny in our culture that puts female-centered media at a huge disadvantage in mainstream television, film, and publishing.  Many female authors have had to use pseudonyms because publishers have found that otherwise men will see a woman’s name attached to the book and not give it a chance.

It doesn’t surprise me considering basically anything that comes out in theaters that isn’t about men going around killing each other or trying to get laid is considered a “chick flick”, which of course has a negative connotation.  Meanwhile women still turn up in droves to see whatever lame ass Michael Bay flick is out this month.

Yet for all the obstacles women’s films have, the ones that do quite well don’t get their fair share of credit.  Even after Juno, even after Twilight, even after Mamma Mia, even after Sex and the City, it’s still a huge uphill battle to get studios to greenlight films with female protagonists.  And as Meryl Streep explains, it’s not just the studios, but also the theater chains who decide which films to carry.

“It’s always a shock to the studio,” Streep says with real firmness, “because men run the studios and live their own fantasies through them. It’s harder for a man to jump inside a woman character’s mind and imagine, ‘This could happen to me’ than it is for a woman to imagine herself as a male character.” But surely the profits count? “They see it and they understand that there is a market and it will make them an enormous amount of money, but we all respond to instinct and it’s their inner boy that jumps up and goes: ‘Yeah, I wanna see another GI Joe’.”

“Parts are rare,” Streep says, “the amount of product is rare. It’s a large machine that markets these films, that makes theatre [cinema] owners commit their theatres half a year in advance — that’s how it works. Are they gonna buy GI Joe or are they gonna buy Mamma Mia!?”

Mamma Mia! did great business, I say. “They’re still not sure,” Streep counters. “You need a good salesman. Those films have done well, yes, that audience is there, but it doesn’t go on the first weekend [which the industry nervously observes].”

In a separate interview screenwriter/director Nora Ephron weighs in on the problem as well.

When she was inducted into the Academy of Achievement in 2007, Ephron said she took up directing because “90% of the men directing movies have no interest in women in any real way, except as girlfriends or wives. They don’t really want to make movies about them, and they don’t.”

They’re both absolutely right.  With Mamma Mia and Sex and the City grossing over a billion dollars collectively worldwide, and Julie & Julia already grossing over $80 million on its way to 90 million one would really wonder why Hollywood isn’t clamoring to cash in on more women’s films.   But as has been stated before, whenever a female film does well it’s always written off as a “fluke” or the the little film that could.  But every time some mindless action film with some “hot chick” running around like a piece of meat needing to be rescued does well at the box office, it’s reason to make 20 more just like it.

Halle Berry is reportedly in advanced talks to star in the film Dark Tide, an action-thriller being produced by the people that brought us Twilight.

Variety says:

[Dark Tide] concerns a diving instructor who returns to the deep after a near-fatal incident with a Great White shark. “Dark” is set to lense in South Africa later this year.

Social Capital Films is arranging financing for the $15 million-$20 million pic. Company’s Martin Shore and Christopher Tuffin produce along with Tax Credit Finance’s Matthew Chausse and Plum Pictures’ Celine Rattray.

I’m always excited to see more action/thriller type movies starring women, though for some reason they rarely seem to do well.  I’m having a hard time remember the last one that actually did.  I could say Wanted, though Angelina was a supporting role.  Last one I remember after that is maybe Red Eye starring Rachel McAdams, but someone feel free to correct me.  This film is also written by a woman named Amy Sorlie, who as far as I can tell is a first-time screenwriter.

It bugs me that people bash “chick flicks” and say they’re the reason women’s films do so poorly at the box-office then when films are made that don’t fall into the stereotypical chick flick category like Invasion or The Brave One or North Country, no one goes to see them.  Speaking of The Brave One–Flightplan was in 2006 and that film did quite well.  We miss you, Jodie!

All of that said, Halle Berry’s never been a huge box-office draw, her highest grossing films are not films where she was given top-billing, and quality-wise her movies tend to be hit and miss.  I took a chance on Perfect Stranger and it was one of the worst films of that year.  Conversely, Things We Lost In The Fire was amazing and it was certainly her best performance to date.

It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.  The budget is going to be between 15-20 million dollars, so there’s a lot of room for profit.

A lot of attention is paid to the diversity displayed on the small screen but Entertainment Weekly has an interesting piece discussing the race and gender of the people behind the scenes in the world of television. They mention some of our most successful and celebrated television show creators and producers like J.J. Abrams, Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, Aaron Spelling, David E. Kelley, and the list goes on. Forces to be reckoned with in the television industry who have had a number of successes. But where are the people of color? Where are the women?

Even the shows that are female-centric like The Closer, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, –they’re all created by white men. EW cites Shonda Rhimes of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice as well as Silvio Horta of Ugly Betty as some examples of non-white and non-male entities but Horta’s only success thus far has been Ugly Betty and Rhimes’ Private Practice’s long term success has yet to be seen.

But there are some up and coming women whose careers seem promising.

There are, certainly, a few up and coming female executive producers these days: Rebecca Sinclair (an alum of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls), who turned The CW’s 90210 remake around; Stephanie Savage, who’s given both The O.C. and Gossip Girl bite (even though she takes second billing to the more auteur-ish Josh Schwartz);

The L Word’s Ilene Chaiken; and Weeds’ Jenji Kohan. Tina Fey’s one of the few female voices on the Big Four — and she’s clearly one of the most unique (not to mention critically drooled-over). But none of those ladies has gotten the chance to prove she’s more than a one-hit wonder.

Tyler Perry has had much success with his multi-camera sitcom House of Payne on CBS, and as everyone knows, has had enormous success with his feature films, but again, Payne is his only television success and we still have no examples of television giants like the aforementioned who don’t have white skin or a penis.  A few more examples of creative forces of color:

Larry Wilmore won accolades (and an Emmy) for The Bernie Mac Show, but he’s now taken to more freelance work — appearing on The Daily Show, writing for/appearing on The Office, and authoring books.

And in perhaps the ultimate statement on the fate of female and minority would-be auteurs, Mara Brock Akil — who created the long-running UPN/CW sitcoms Girlfriends and The Game, some of the last vestiges of African-American-targeted programming — has joined the writing staff of ABC’s Cougar Town (created by Scrubs’ Bill Lawrence) to make the jokes on the Courteney Cox vehicle more organically female.

This information is troubling but not shocking, as the most recent report on the demographic breakdown of writers in Hollywood was quite bleak for women. According to the Hollywood Writers Report done by the Writers Guild of America, only 28% of the writers for television were female. Does that really make sense to you when more than 50% of the U.S. population is made up of women?

I’ve discussed homophobia as it related to race before, and I’ve also said that I disagree with the notion that the black community is no more homophobic than any other community.  I think the deep-rooted misogyny that runs rampant in the black community combined with the masculinity issues and the influence of the southern baptist church all converge to create the problem we have.

Here’s a video of a conference in Atlanta discussing a number of issues related to homosexuality in the black community.

I think the gentleman in the glasses made the most poignant remarks, but what stuck out to me the most was the idiot in the audience who seemed to think he made a “choice” to be heterosexual.

This story is a few months old but nonetheless is still astounded me.  A California couple actually had to sue the city in order to get the groom’s last name changed to that of the bride.  Michael Buday wanted to change his last name to his wife’s partly because he felt closer to his wife’s family than his own.

He discovered it would take a $US350 fee, court appearances, a public announcement and mounds of paperwork to make a change on his driving license that is routine for women who marry.

After months of frustration, the Los Angeles computer programmer and his ER nurse wife Diana [Bijon], 29, took their problem to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

A double barrel name would have been no problem, nor would Diana and Michael deciding to each keep their birth names. But California and some 40 other US states provided no place on the marriage license application, and driving license, for the groom to choose the bride’s surname.

I suppose there’s probably not a huge demand for husbands that want their wives names, so I get that it’s not an option on the license application (although it should be), but when someone specifically requests it, it makes no sense to me that request wouldn’t be fulfilled.  I mean what difference does it make?  Or are we only okay with women being the ones to give up part of their identities?