Kathryn Bigelow’s name has been in the news a lot lately thanks to her film Zero Dark Thirty. The film, based loosely on the intelligence effort that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, has had supporters and detractors but got people talking about the serious issue of torture. But there’s another issue Bigelow would like to get the word out for and that’s women in national security. She’s hoping a large-scale Twitter campaign, and you, will help. 

We know (though some choose to ignore) that there’s some heavy-duty gender inequality going on behind the scenes in movies and TV. But a new study conducted by the Sundance Film Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles has found that female filmmakers have it better in the world of indie film than in Hollywood. Not great, mind you. But better.

This morning saw the announcement of the nominees for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards, the lighter, boozier, less important cousin of the Oscars. (Hey, it makes a difference that attendees can drink at the former but not the latter.) Typical awards season films like Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook picked up plenty of noms, but so did some more niche-interest (read: Geeky) fare.

The awards show, taking place on January 13th, is being hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. They did a short video promoting the Globes, which you can check out under the jump along with a rundown of the geeky movies, people, and shows to be nominated.

If there’s one thing I don’t like about Twitter, it’s how it’s given people an easy platform to say stupid things that they should have just kept to themselves. Case in point: Author Bret Easton Ellis tweeted that “Kathryn Bigelow would be considered a mildly interesting filmmaker if she was a man but since she’s a very hot woman she’s really overrated.” And the follow-up: “Kathryn Bigelow: Strange Days, K-19 The Widowmaker, Blue Steel, The Hurt Locker. Are we talking about visionary filmmaking or just OK junk?”

Ahhh, I see what’s happening here. Ellis is framing his sexism against Bigelow, the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Directing (because obviously there’s no other explanation for a women achieving success in a male-dominated field than her sleeping around or mesmerizing guys with her boobs or something) as some ass-backwards defense of the integrity of the Oscars.

Kathryn Bigelow made history nearly four years ago by becoming the first woman to ever win an Academy Award for Best Director for The Hurt Locker, a.k.a., the movie that made Jeremy Renner a big name star, so you have her to thank for that as well, Avengers fans. Yesterday she made history again by becoming the first woman to win multiple directing awards from the New York Film Critics Circle over its seventy-seven year history, putting her in a group with fifteen other male filmmakers.

When it was revealed that the Obama administration provided information about the raid on and death of Osama bin Laden to director Kathryn Bigelow for the movie she was making about the event, some people found that a little weird to hear, even after the fact. Because, um, isn’t that information kind of on the extremely classified side? And doesn’t it look bad for a president to appear so “tight” with Hollywood during an election year? (I’ll continue laughing about that second one after writing this post.) Well, conservatives — who don’t believe anything Barack Obama does can ever be good to begin with — are up in arms over this seemingly “oversharey” exchange between the president and a Hollywood type. But make no mistake — they don’t care about Kathryn Bigelow. This is all about Obama. (WARNING: There are some politics in this post. All of you are entitled to your opinions about everything.)

We’re sure that you’re well aware of the paltry numbers concerning the presence of women in film. Not actors — directors, writers, producers, etc. The people behind the scenes who call the shots. It’s been great to hear about recent successes — like Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010 and Jennifer Yuh Nelson becoming the world’s highest grossing director — but it’s more frustrating to hear about the missed opportunities — like Patty Jenkins being replaced as the director of Thor 2 or Brenda Chapman being taken off Brave. But why are the successes so few and far between? The Sundance Film Festival, taking place in the snowy mountains of Utah as we speak, is hoping to change this. Along with Women In Film, the Sundance Institute has pledged to start tracking the progress of female filmmakers, then use that information to increase the parity between men and women in the film industry. Because seriously, it shouldn’t be that shocking to find out that women can direct a great movie — they do it all the time.

Get ready to not be psyched at all: A new study conducted by the University of Southern California has revealed the pretty appalling statistic that women only account for 32.8 percent of all the characters who had speaking roles in the top grossing movies of 2008. This includes The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Twilight and, obviously, many others. Women (namely young women aged 13 to 20) were also seen to be presented as more sexually attractive (based on their clothing, weight, and general physical attractiveness) by margins of 20 percentage points. Even more annoying: the numbers have not really changed since the 1970s.