Vacuum the red carpet, slip into the Armanis, strap on the Jimmy Choos, and flash the Fred Leightons, 'cause award season 2009 has arrived.  Whether it's the Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes or the Screen Actors Guild Awards, BlogHer has got it covered.  I'll be doing special posts right up until the Oscars on all the happy winners, sore losers, tears, jeers and badly written thank yous.  As we speak the stars are primping, preening and preparing for what they hope will be that once in a lifetime moment in front of millions of mercilessly critical viewers just like us.  

The lead character on "In Plain Sight" should have been a black woman.   How's that for an opening line? But I'm serious.  She should have been a black woman.  Why do I say this?  Because after watching the pilot episode of "In Plain Sight" and several episodes since, I keep thinking:  what a bland show.  It's kind of like watching a show that's set in New York but was shot on the gritty streets of Toronto:  there's nothing special about it and it's obvious to anyone who's been there, it's not New York.

As part of BlogHer's focus on Women's History Month, this post is about amazing women in the history of film and television: women who inspired in front of the camera and women who crashed the Hollywood old boy network behind it.When I sat down and thought about the women I might want to write about, I was overwhelmed with names. Like my fellow Contributing Editor Maria Niles and her post on Women Who Rocked American History, I felt the only way to do the subject justice was with a list. The list I came up with was as long as my arm.By the time I'd whittled that down to something manageable, I'd immersed myself in the remarkable careers of a group of twenty-seven talented and pioneering women. They're listed alphabetically and in two categories, movies and television.