In these supposedly progressive times, gender equality is one of those touchy issues relegated to the last paragraph of a trend piece nobody reads. When Katherine Heigl suggested to Vanity Fair that Judd Apatow's movies were sexist, the assertion came across like an after-the-fact shrug of acceptance. Ever the galvanizing provocateur, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis confronts the issue head-on with a thorough analysis of the gender bias in this year's summer blockbusters.

With "Iron Man, Batman, Big Angry Green Man" and other massive expressions of virility invading the box office, female roles appear to be relegated to the back of the multiplex. Dargis touches on the rumors that Warner Bros head Jeff Robinov believes no woman has been able to sell a movie since Julia Roberts (a point that Natalie Portman might contest, but not Paris Hilton) before sizing up numerous upcoming studio releases, with particular attention paid to Anna Faris, "who could be the next Judy Holliday but without the right material will, alas, probably end up the next Brittany Murphy." It's the kind of pronouncement that hits you in gut.

Fridays haven't been the same for me without Roger Ebert. Sure, I read a number of other movie reviewers and film critics, locally and nationally, but it was always nice to check in with the Chicago Sun-Times to see what Mr. Ebert had to say. My poor husband's routine of reading and reporting on Ebert's review after we watched a movie together was shattered. (We were thrilled to discover, for example, that we were not the only two people on Earth to loathe Napoleon Dynamite.) The film critic has been recovering from surgery for salivary-gland cancer and related complications since early summertime. Various personalities such as Kevin Smith and Jay Leno have been filling in for him as reviewers on his TV show with Richard Roeper. Although Smith was certainly a colorful substitute, especially in his review of Half Nelson, it wasn't the same.

But today, it feels like a proper Friday again. If you check out the Sun-Times website today, you can find a review by Ebert for Stephen Frears' new movie The Queen. He also has posted an update on his own website to explain his current health situation. He won't be able to return to TV until next year, and he won't publish reviews as regularly as usual, but he's still watching and writing. He also thanked everyone for their get-well wishes -- my favorite example of which is the Flickr pool of Ebert fans, who took self-photos with Ebert's traditional thumbs-up gesture. I hope he continues to recover speedily, and look forward to his next reviews.

CNN film critic Paul Clinton died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in  Los Angeles. According to his family, Clinton, who was 53, died of natural causes, although he had suffered from respiratory ailments over the past several years. CNN's entertainment editor Todd Leopold has a moving tribute to Clinton; like any good website, it has abundant links to many of Clinton's reviews.