E Circle – E Ranch of South Dakota

Move aside boys — it's time for the girls to get in on the action, on both sides of the camera.

It's no big secret that American cinema is still largely a man's world, from top to bottom and everywhere in between. Every once and a while, we get something like Frozen River — a film about what it means to be a woman, written and directed by Courtney Hunt (a woman) — and of course, small awards buzz aside, the film gets relegated to the fringe.

The point here is not that we should expect women to be making films solely about women — Kathryn Bigelow has exhibited more insight into the male psyche than most gents. But when sexuality and promiscuity are too often treated as synonymous with femininity, someone has to step in, and it might as well be someone who knows a thing or two about being a woman.

And, for that matter, filmmaking. Whether you believed she had it in her or not, Drew Barrymore is exactly that filmmaker.

Whip It! Skates Around The Sports Genre Conventions Admirably

Whip It! — Barrymore's directorial debut — isn't a sensationally great film, and from beginning to end, it's a downright predictable one. Every move is telegraphed by a thousand coming-of-age and sports movies before it. However, it has the wonderful sweat and stench of truth, as in something that came from experience rather than blind inference.

Scripted by Shauna Cross from her novel of the same name, Whip It! is unapologetic in its reliance on genre formula and convention, which is at least one reason why it gets away with playing connect the dots with the plot lines. Predestination aside, there's a lot of personality coming through from both sides of the camera.

Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) longs (as every small-town, high-school protagonist does) to escape. The prison in question is Bodeen, Texas, or more figuratively, her nutty mother's (Marcia Gay Harden) insistence on including her in the local pageantry circuit. Down the highway, the liberal offerings of Austin tempt her toward, of all things, roller derbies.

Ellen Page Leads Off Phenomenally Assembled Cast in Whip It!

Page, as she has proven before, is as talented as any young actress around, and it's a good thing she brought her A-game. Aside from the demanding physicality for the role, Page has competition coming at her from all angles. …

I'll admit it – I'm a Facebook addict. So when I heard that a movie about how Facebook grew to have 500 million members was in theatres, I was thrilled.

From the very first scene, The Social Network pulled me in and kept ahold of me for the entire 120 minutes.

The Beginning

The movie didn't keep us waiting long before getting into how Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, came up with the idea for the website. Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is obviously a computer genius and an expansive thinker. His people skills may be lacking but he makes for a character we root for. As Zuckerberg gets Facebook growing from one university to a dozen to a hundred to everyone worldwide, we get taken along on the ride.

Justin Timberlake

While I wouldn't consider myself a Justin Timberlake fan, he did a superb job playing the role of Sean Parker. Parker became a member of the Facebook team as it was spreading across the Atlantic Ocean to include universities in Europe. Parker brought a greater vision to Facebook than even Zuckerberg probably ever had and took the website into another realm of expansion. One could argue that Parker took Facebook from an American non-advertising website to a global one with paid advertisers; numerous, wealthy, profit-making advertisers. Whoever cast Timberlake as Sean Parker made an excellent choice.

The CFO

The second leading character after Zuckerberg is Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield), the Chief Financial Officer of Facebook. He was a part of the project from the beginning and provided all of the money Zuckerberg needed to get the website up and running, perhaps all of it until Facebook became profitable. Like quirky Zuckerberg, Saverin is a lovable character, flawed yet one we grow to empathize with. When he is standing in Zuckerberg's laundry room, dripping wet from waiting in the rain for Mark to pick him up at the airport – which he never did – and we see how far apart the two men are, we feel for Saverin who has worked his butt off for Facebook since day one.

My heart actually broke for Saverin when, through a series of documents and conniving actions by others, he is ousted. Even as a bystander to the story, you feel the blade of the knife in your back, too.

Lawsuits

The majority of the movie takes …

The ongoing popularity of Sherlock Holmes has led to many theatrical and movie adaptations of Conan Doyle’s stories. Guiness World Records regards him as the “most portrayed movie character” with more than 70 actors playing the fictional detective in over 200 films. Of these 70, one of the best remembered is Basil Rathbone.

Basil Rathbone as Holmes

In 1939 20th Century Fox released two Holmes movies, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Portraying the lead roles of Holmes and Dr. Watson were Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Both films were well received by audiences, in part due to the screen presence of both actors, particularly Rathbone.

The South African born Rathbone, who had often been cast as a villain in previous movies such as The Adventures of Robin Hood was an ideal choice to play the role. His height of 6-1, build, and facial features nearly matched the literary Holmes as described by Doyle. Trained on the Shakespearean stage, he was also able to bring a staid, dignified sophistication to the role.

Universal Studios Steps In

Shortly after the Fox movies were released, Rathbone and Bruce reprised their roles in a popular radio series based on the Doyle stories. Then in 1940 Universal Studios signed the two men to star in what would become a series of 12 Holmes movies, the last released in 1946.

The 12 movies were essentially low budget “B” or second feature films that ranged in storytelling from mediocre to quite good. The one which is still considered the best and holds up well today was the sixth in the series — The Scarlet Claw.

Synopsis of The Scarlet Claw

• Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Miles Mander, Ian Wolfe, Gerald Hamer, Paul Cavanaugh, and Kay Harding
• Director: Roy William Neill
• Length: 74 minutes
• Color: B&W

Holmes and Watson are in Montreal attending a conference with Lord Penrose when the latter receives a message that his wife has been found dead, her throat savagely torn out. The three go to the Lord’s small French-Canadian village of La Mort Rouge to discover that the town's residents are all convinced that the killing is the work of the legendary La Mort Rouge monster, which allegedly roams the marshes around the village.

Holmes, however, is skeptical, and quickly deducts that Lady Penrose, a former actress, is the victim of a revenge killing by …