The New York Times has a great piece on how women in Holly wood are underrepresented in a myriad of categories, and how hopefully films like New Moon and The Blind Side are a wake-up call.
“New Moon” and “The Blind Side” might not make a lot of critics’ Top 10 lists, but their popularity with audiences is good for women in film — and might be too great for even Hollywood to ignore. For years the received wisdom, both in the industry and the press that covers it, has been that women don’t go to the movies and can’t open movies. Although recent hits like “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Sex and the City” and “Mamma Mia!” have helped put a dent in that thinking, it will take more than millions of teenage girls (and their moms) squealing in delight at sparkly vampires and hairy beasties with swollen deltoids before real change will come to American movie screens. Women need to develop their own muscles.
I’m not talking about those buff babes who pop up in adolescent fantasies, licking their lips as they lock and load; I’m talking about movies made for and with women. I’m also talking about movies directed by women. Here’s a little history: Only three women have been nominated as directors by the academy in 81 years: Lina Wertmüller for “Seven Beauties” in 1976; Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993; and Sofia Coppola for “Lost in Translation” in 2003. None won. At a glance this year looks promising, with high-profile titles like Kathryn Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker,” Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia,” Lone Scherfig’s “Education” and Ms. Campion’s “Bright Star,” all of which have been too successful, critically and commercially, to dismiss.”
According to the 
Last week we reported the story of a Chicago-area woman,Samantha Tumpach, who was arrested and jailed for taping 3 minutes of New Moon on a video camera. What came to light after her arrest was that she wasn’t so much taping the movie as she was taping the guests at a birthday party that just so happened to be going on at the theater that was, you guessed it, showing New Moon. Now granted she caught New Moon footage and you’re not supposed to do that, but it’s not as if she was surreptitiously taping the whole movie with intent to sell. Throwing her in jail for what seems to be stupidity, naivete, carelessness (or quite possibly all three) does seem rather harsh. Well it looks like, given the alleged specific context of the situation, Chris Weitz agrees.
This just in from the folks at United Global Shift:
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