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Did you know that Lucille Ball was not the first woman of sitcom television land? In fact, there was another who not only came before the famous redhead, but who should also be counted as one of the pioneers behind the screen? No? I didn't either.

Enter Gertrude Berg, who is the focus of Aviva Kempner's new documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, which is hitting theaters this week in New York City before heading to DC on the 17th and LA on the 24th. This isn't your heart-tugging, dramatic art doc, but rather a straight-forward account of someone we should know because, frankly, her success was impressive. (That picture to the right -- that's Berg with her scripts.)

Turns out that before I Love Lucy, there was a show radio show that hit television called The Goldbergs. It was Berg's own creation -- a brainchild she shopped around herself, wrote, and starred in from 1929 to 1954. (Writing daily episodes while also raising children and being an all-round wonderwoman, I might add.) Billboard called her the First Lady of Radio, she nabbed the first Best Actress Emmy, was the highest-paid guest star on TV ... the list goes on and on.

Yoo-Hoo plays out as a simple, informative film, one bolstered mostly by the context it creates. Berg's influence extended to everyone from Ruth Bader Ginsberg to Ed Asner and Norman Lear, and her success is bolstered by the fact that she was a self-made female professional of the '20s, who fought for her success through the rise of Hitler (she was Jewish), and even against the rabid insanity of McCarthyism.

In other words, a kickass woman and talent we should all be familiar with.

Call it Juno on Wheels. The first image of Ellen Page in the upcoming roller derby flick Whip It has been released, showing her strapped into a girl scout uniform as she skates around a track with Drew Barrymore and Kristen Wiig. The photo above, and several others, can be viewed at USA Today (additionally, check out two extra images below)

The film represents Barrymore's directorial debut. Page stars as 17-year-old Bliss Cavendar, who is tired of competing in beauty pageants at the insistence of her mother (Marcia Gay Harden). She rebels by joining the Hurl Scouts, a women's roller derby team in Austin, Texas, and finds her true calling -- or, at least, a good place to unleash some pent-up aggression. Barrymore skates with the Scouts, as does Saturday Night Live's Wiig and the great Zoe Bell (Death Proof). Juliette Lewis is described as the villain of the piece, an opposing player determined to defeat Page and the Scouts, and the players all have cool nicknames: Smashley Simpson, Maggie Mayhem, Bloody Holly, and so forth.

As Jenni Miller advised, Fox Searchlight will distribute the film, which is set for release on October 9. Roller derby vet Shauna Cross (AKA Maggie Mayhem) wrote the screenplay, based on her own novel, Derby Girl. A very good doc about the Austin roller derby scene, Hell on Wheels, is available to view at SnagFilms (we also embedded it after the jump), and if Whip It can approach that real-life excitement, it could break out of the fall pack. Since nicknames are de rigeur for roller derby players, what nickname will you choose if you decide to see Ellen Page Whip It?

Indie Roundup reviews the past week of news from the independent film community and provides a peek at what's coming soon.

Opening. Three indie flicks open on Friday: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's terrific music doc Soul Power, Chris Nahon's live-action adaptation of anime horror thriller Blood: The Last Vampire, and a reissue of Francois Truffaut's 1969 crime romance Mississippi Mermaid, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. After a good start in New York and Los Angeles (see below), action thriller The Hurt Locker expands into 50 selected markets.

Deals / Articles of Interest. Our friends at indieWIRE reported on three recent acquisitions with upcoming theatrical releases planned: Chris Fuller's critically-acclaimed teen drama Loren Cass (Kino; July 24); Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, with Robin Wright Penn and Alan Arkin (Screen Media, October); and Dror Zahavi's thriller For My Father (Film Movement, Winter 2010). Eugene Hernandez considers Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price and suggests that Anderson's "ideas and examples" are applicable to the "evolving marketplace for movies."

On-Demand Viewing. Anne Thompson posted a clip at Variety for Michael Almereyda's post-Karina drama New Orleans Mon Amour, with Elisabeth Moss and Christopher Eccleston. I saw it at SXSW last year and couldn't get into its very deliberate pacing; its virtues might be better appreciated on a smaller screen. It debuts on cable VOD on July 15. Blogging at The Huffington Post, filmmaker Adam Hootnick compares recent events in Iran with the situation in Gaza after Israel's withdrawal from its settlements in 2005. That's the subject of his film Unsettled, which is now available on iTunes and Amazon VOD.

After the jump: Indie box office results -- and a year-to-date report.

To qualify for Academy Award consideration, a documentary must play in at least one theater in both Manhattan and Los Angeles for at least a week. That rule is to prevent people who made a documentary and showed it for free to a few people at the rec room of their apartment complex from hassling the Academy for attention. But it also means that some very worthy docs don't get the recognition they deserve because, as good as they may be, getting theatrical distribution for a documentary is hard.

Enter DocuWeeks, an event sponsored by the International Documentary Association that puts deserving films in theaters so they'll qualify for the Oscars and also so that, hey, whaddaya know, audiences can actually see them. The 13th annual lineup has just been announced, with 18 features and 10 shorts scheduled to play at L.A.'s ArcLight Hollywood and New York's IFC Center from July 31 to Aug. 20.

Past DocuWeeks have showcased 16 films that went on to earn Oscar nominations and seven that won Oscars, including last year's Taxi to the Dark Side. This year's program includes DIRT! The Movie (pictured), Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie, Sweet Crude, and Soundtrack for a Revolution. For complete details, check with the International Documentary Association.

Hey, remember the Morgan Freeman / Antonio Banderas thriller, The Code (also known as Thick as Thieves)? No? That's ok, no one does! This poor film was doomed to go straight to DVD shelves, but there it was not forgotten. Home Media Magazine reports that the flick topped the rental charts last week, deftly knocking Gran Torino out of #1. (Mr. Freeman, did you call and crow over your pal Clint for that one? If not, you should. I'm sure he'll get a good laugh.)

Scott Weinberg believes this is the first DTV movie to ever top the rental charts. If anyone out there knows of another one that has, you should correct him. But for now, history has been made by Mimi Leder!

The plot follows an aging jewel thief (Freeman) and the uppity young Turk he recruits to help him pull off one final job. They're not going after just any family jewels, but those most treasured by the Romanovs -- Faberge eggs! The ultimate goal of the heist is to pay off the Russian mob, and I'd like to think Banderas and Freeman are stealing the Faberge eggs just to really piss them off. Meanwhile, Radha Mitchell gets in between them, and makes things sexy. Check out the trailer below the jump, and contemplate renting it for yourself. It topped the rental charts, and millions of people can't be wrong!

Well, leave it to the comedy duo of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay to remind me of one of the better B-movie curios sitting on my shelf, a film that even combines their own site's merits of 'funny' and 'die' into one sharp satire that's already gone overlooked and underappreciated since its 2001 release (into a whopping ten theaters, it seems).

Series 7: The Contenders plays like a 90-minute marathon of a supposed TV show in which contestants are chosen at random and tasked with killing the competition. Everyday citizens have to take out other everyday citizens while the cameras are rolling, and the last man or woman standing wins, plain and simple.

It's funny in the ways it dead-on skewers the manipulations and absurdity of reality programming, and it's funny in more bleakly matter-of-fact ways as we grow slowly but surely engaged by the characters, just as the show itself would intend to. Besides, in what other movie would you see Paul Giamatti's mom from Sideways and the girl from the well in The Silence of the Lambs duke it out, with Will Arnett narrating throughout? Now that's something I would watch...

Hearing about a mixture of Lori Petty and David Alan Grier immediately brings to mind the wonderful '90s, when Petty was the tough-as-nails Tank Girl in a post-apocalyptic water-hungry world and Grier was one of the big names of In Living Color. But now the two have teamed up, and it's not for some quirky bit of comedy, but rather a super-heavy drama that's finally going to hit the big screen.

Variety reports that Phase 4 Films has picked up the U.S. rights to The Poker House, which just so happens to be Petty's directorial debut from a script she wrote with Grier. The Living Color alum stars with Selma Blair and Jennifer Lawrence in the story which can, simply and vaguely, be described as "a portrait of life in a poor small town in Iowa in 1976," as Variety says. But a little more specifically, it's the story of a young basketball playing girl who has heavy troubles at home -- think prostitutes, pimps, and the struggles of desperation and poverty.

For IGN, Todd Gilchrist compared the film to the heaviness of Boys Don't Cry, Monster, and In the Bedroom, but stated: "Ultimately, The Poker House just isn't a very good film, regardless of where it came from, who made it or what it's trying to say." So why bother? One, it's looking to be one of those films you love or hate. Two, it's based on Petty's actual experiences, so it could give you a look into the mind of our Tank Girl.

The film hits theaters on July 17.

Indie Roundup reviews the past week of news from the independent film community and provides a peek at what's coming soon.

Opening. Two films opened yesterday which couldn't have less in common: Agnès Varda's essay film The Beaches of Agnès and Nia Vardalos' I Hate Valentine's Day. Tomorrow comes Anne Fontaine's comedy The Girl From Monaco.

Deals. Xavier Dolan's family drama I Killed My Mother, Kenneth Branagh's The Magic Flute, and Asghar Farhadi's drama About Elly have all been acquired by Here Films, the company formerly known as Regent Releasing. All three are headed for theaters next year. [indieWIRE]

Online Viewing. The 4th of July weekend inevitably brings thoughts of America as a land of immigrants, and that's the topic of Home, which debuts on Amazon VOD this week, featuring interviews with Mike Myers, Alfred Molina, and Liam Neeson. Also somewhat topical: if Michael Jackson had an impact on race in pop music, what about African-American musicians playing rock 'n' roll exclusively? Raymond Gayle's Electric Purgatory examines the issue (at iTunes). If you're looking for love, you have something in common with two women in the comedy/drama Arranged (also at iTunes.)

Box Office. Kathryn Bigelow's lacerating bomb squad thriller The Hurt Locker earned a per-screen average ($36,338) that bested even the giant robots, albeit on only four screens. Woody Allen's Whatever Works expanded to 35 screens and grossed $10,280 per outing. The combination of star Michelle Pfeiffer and director Stephen Frears could stir up only a tepid $5,338 per-screen at 76 locations for Cheri, which is less than the average for Duncan Jones' Moon in its third week on 21 screens. [Box Office Mojo.]

After the jump: David Hudson's The Daily takes a permanent (?) vacation, portending the end of the world as we know it.

Guy Pearce just doesn't do enough movies for my liking. It's not as though he's vanished, but he seems to maintain a fairly low profile every time he blows everyone away with a big, meaty part like L.A. Confidential or Memento. But he has a lot of great projects coming up (the most exciting of which has to be The Road), and he's added a very intriguing one to his slate: the remake of 1973's telepic Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pearce and Bailee Madison have joined Katie Holmes in Troy Nixey's remake. It's a fairly loose adaptation of the 1973 original, which was centered around a couple, Sally and Alex, who inherited an old mansion from Sally's grandmother. Sally accidentally uncovers a hellish portal that allows a bunch of demons to escape and wreck bloody havoc. Naturally, no one believes her, and is convinced she's having a nervous breakdown thanks to all that home repair. Because it was the 1970s, it didn't even end well for Sally who just wanted a new fireplace. For those tired of seeing "remake" tacked onto everything, and for fans of the original, you'll be happy to know that the new Dark isn't so much a remake as a story "inspired by" those demonic creatures of old.

Check out the rest of the story at The Horror Squad