"Draw blood!" shouts Bill Resler, a tax professor at the University of Washington. He's not encouraging the IRS, he's juicing up the girls' basketball team he coaches on the side. If you're thinking this is another of those cloyingly inspirational Disney sports dramas, such as Glory Road, Stick It and Goal!, think again. Director Ward Serrill, who spent seven years chronicling Resler's experiences with Roosevelt High School's Roughriders, has no stomach for turning documentary truth into a Hallmark card. By focusing on Darnellia Russell, one of the few black players on a white team, Serrill digs deep into the social and economic conditions that threaten to keep Darnellia down and the no-bull spirit she finds in her coach and her own bruised heart. It doesn't matter that the acclaimed Hoop Dreams played the same game. There's no denying the exuberant energy and emotional force of this movie. It gets to you.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."