10 years ago on this very day...

...remember when Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) lost the Globe to her ex husband James Cameron (Avatar) at the Golden Globes. Before he even began thanking his team, he name-checked her to her apparent delight in the crowd as the camera held on her.

I'm actually not well prepared because frankly I thought Kathryn was going to win this --  I'm kind of winging it here. She richly deserves it...

Of course by the time the Oscars rolled around the situation reversed and The Hurt Locker was the favourite film and Bigelow became the first female director ever to win the Oscar. The Globes gave a Best Director trophy to Barbra Streisand for Yentl (1983) two decades earlier so perhaps they didn't feel any need to make history since they already had? Anyway we figured this anniversary was worth noting because the awards trouble for female directors has also haunted this Oscar season. 

Jumping to the now... What is going on with Kathryn Bigelow? She has no new projects listed on IMDb apart from producing Pablo Larrain's next project The True American. We hope that Detroit (2017) doesn't prove to be her last feature!!!

The New Classics - The Hurt Locker

Michael Cusumano here to look back on one of the few classics about the Iraq War on the 10th anniversary of its release. 

Scene: The Daisy Chain Bomb
When Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker hit theaters in the Summer of 2009 it was sold as an all-thrills, zero-politics experience. Here, the ads promised, was a film that wasn’t going to go all Valley of Elah on you with ponderous anti-war messages. The trio of soldiers that make up the film’s central bomb disposal unit never discuss politics. They defuse the bombs, they don’t get to hung up on why they are there in the first place. At no point do any of them sigh during a low moment and wonder, “Man, I don’t even know what we’re doing here...”

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Showbiz History: The Hurt Locker, Xena, and a Truly Great Cinematographer

7 random things that happened on this day, September 4th, in showbiz history...

1936 Swing Time is released in movie theaters starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

1945 Happy 73rd birthday to the beyond-talented cinematographer Philippe Rousselot who won the Oscar for Sun-Drenched Ode to Brad Pitt's Golden Beauty (or as they called it in 1992 "A River Runs Through It")... but that's not the half of it. Rousselot is particularly gifted with erotic period dramas: Henry & June, Dangerous Liaisons, and Queen Margot are all utterly sensational to gaze upon...

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Doc Corner: Tales of the City at DOC NYC

by Glenn Dunks

The massive DOC NYC festival begins this week in – would you believe it – New York City. The festival runs from November 9 - 16 and showcasing over 250 films and events. We’re going to look at some of the films screening there that will hopefully make their way to theatres and VOD over the next year. This edition of our weekly Doc Corner is devoted to three films about cities and the way people interact within and around them.

12th and Clairmont
It is inevitable that Brian Kaufman’s 12^th and Clairmount will be compared with Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit considering both focus on the 1967 riots of the city. But whereas Bigelow’s production zeroed in on just one incident of the five-day series of violent and destructive action on the streets of the city, Kaufman’s film examines a much larger canvas, covering the time before, during and after the city's people responded to the significently white police force's swarm of brutality.

It’s a tactic that proves essential to beginning to understand the events that one person in this often compelling documentary describes as “the days of madness in July”...

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TIFF Launches $3m Campaign for Female Filmmakers

by Seán McGovern

Connie Nielsen on set with "Wonder Woman" director Patty Jenkins.

Instead of just lamenting the lack of female filmmakers helming projects today, TIFF is spearheading a $3m campaign to put more female talent behind the camera. Female directors accounted for just 7% of the highest grossing films worldwide in 2016. And that figure is down on the equally dismal 9% in 2015.

Dubbed "Share Her Journey", the campaign will include a three-month residency for female filmmakers, educational resources and gender diversity panels that aim to guide new and talented filmmakers into the industry...

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