What is it about beautiful, opinionated women that makes all of Hollywood (especially the media) want to scream? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it's not like berating women for speaking up is a new practice. If memory serves me correctly, both Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand got handed a very large can of whooping ass for expressing their personal and political opinions. In Hollywood, you can be a do good political persona ala Angelina Jolie, but having an opinion that might call Hollywood on the carpet, that's a no no.

I've been following the press leading up to the opening of Mamma Mia! this week and I have to say, while there have been some negative reviews (and I will be very interested to see if it is mostly guys who hate the film), the overall tenor of the press has been much kinder than it was to Sex and the City. There are no nasty articles about any of the women's appearances, or the shallowness of American women for liking the film.

The news regarding women directors of fictional films in Hollywood continues to be bleak: in 2007, only 6 percent of these films were directed by women. But the non-fiction film world is a whole different story. While no one has exact figures, anecdotally most experts in the documentary community believe that women directors make up at least 50 percent of the directing ranks. Take a look at all the major film festivals that include documentaries and you will see women's names as prominent as the men’s.

Unless you've been under a rock for the last week or so you know that the women from the TV show Sex and the City are back this time on the big screen. Four years after we said goodbye to Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, the women have taken the movie industry and the country by storm, besting all projections with an opening weekend take of almost $56 million dollars.

Earlier this month we had Manhola Dargis' NY Times piece on the lack of women onscreen this summer and now Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times gives us the annual lament about the paucity of women working behind the scenes as directors.