When journalist Rupert Isaacson observed his autistic son’s unusual affinity for horses, he and his wife took five-year-old Rowan to the far reaches of Mongolia to seek the healing help of Shamans who work with horses and spiritually-based cures.   Read more

“It’s not the destination; it’s the journey” – that’s what propels a young couple to take their autistic five year-old son to Mongolia to trek on horseback through the high mountains and down into a valley where, according to mystical tradition, reindeer-herding shamans practice healing rituals. Read more

Actress Audrey Tautou and designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel are both international symbols of modern French femininity – Chanel as the trend-setting couturier who liberated 20th century women with the simplicity and ease of her clothing, and Tautou as the single most recognizable French actress in the world, thanks to her captivating performances in films like 2001’s Oscar-nominated Amelie and a little 2006 thriller called “The Da Vinci Code.

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Alessandro Nivola has made more than two dozen films during the past twelve years, and his roles just keep getting better and better. His career is unusual in that it bounces back and forth across the Atlantic, and has currently landed him in the court of French filmmaking — acting in French — in “Coco Before Chanel,“ Anne Fontaine’s fine biopic about the French designer before she became a brand. Nivola plays Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, a young man of privilege and the paramour of the young Chanel (Audrey Tautou). Read more

AWFJ highlights films made by and about women: Read more

Is it “obsessive” to want to tell stories about women? Is it just plain paranoia to suspect that a beautiful but not anorexic woman could get fired from a TV show for not being thin enough? Is there reason to hope that things could be changing for women in entertainment? Read more

Are you ready for whistleblowing as an absurdist comedy? Because that’s the way Steven Soderbergh has re-imagined the true-life story of dementedly delusional Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a top executive/Ph.D. biochemist and the youngest divisional president at Archer Daniels Midland, a Decatur, Illinois-based agribusiness, who - after learning about a Japanese extortion scheme in 1992 - decides to expose his company’s multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI.

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Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? It’s hard to tell with Jennifer Aniston’s wretched new romantic drama which is almost as disastrous as the tabloids’ chronicles of her off-screen, unlucky-in-love life. Why draw the obvious similarity? Because of her friend’s (Judy Greer) wry observation: “You tend to fall for these guys with expiration dates right on their foreheads.”

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Although it’s inspired by the popular 1978 children’s novel, written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett, the 3-D animated screen version is a tantalizing delight unto itself – and a cautionary tale about gluttony, obesity and genetically-altered edibles. Read more

There’s definitely something of an old soul in Ben Whishaw, even if it’s hard to pin down. He had a breakout role as an obsessed killer in Perfume: The Story of A Murderer, played Keith Richards in the British music pic Stoned, and channeled two other poets at once – Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan – in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. He loves poetry and still writes letters, two lost arts that might just regain popularity thanks to his latest film, Bright Star, a lyrical biopic that chronicles the brief but passionate love affair between 19th century poet John Keats and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Read more