And now Billy Mays is dead. Hours later, I received, yes, a press release associated with what we can legitimately call a tragedy. He was 50 years old and seemingly in good health, and leaves behind a wife and kids.

But this press release wasn’t opportunistic at all: it’s from an agency representing the CEO of TeleBrands, who knew and worked with Mays for more than 15 years. It struck me as sweet and thoughtful. The family has indicated a desire to grieve in private and this press release comes across as a desire to help relieve some of the family’s burdens as media outlets prepare their coverage and try to gain a better knowledge of the man. There’s not a single mention of the accomplishments of the CEO or his company. Just a simple notice that he knew Mays well and is making himself available to comment on the story.

It’d be unprofessional and awkward for me to reply this way to a press release, so I’ll say it here: this release is PR done exactly right.

Okay, I’m making a new rule: whenever I’m reading something online and I see the phrase “The Mainstream Media,” I’m instantly deducting 40 credibility points from the author. It’s a meaningless phrase its use indicates laziness, sloppiness, or a line of thought that was only half-formed to begin with.

Worst, it’s often a cheap debating technique, best used by con men to imply a closeness with the reader. “You know that individual or organization that you can’t stand? C’mon, you know the one I’m talking about, right? Well, hey! I can’t stand it or him or her either! Why, buying an above-ground pool from me will be like buying it from your best friend!”

But chiefly let’s stick to the problem that “the mainstream media” is a meaningless term. I write a column for a great metropolitan newspaper. I’m part of the Mainstream Media, right? But what happens when I blog here? Whoops, no. I’m a Citizen Journalist. Damn, and then I screwed it all up by appearing on CBS. No! Wait! I think I saved it by doing a podcast.

What?

Well, yes: MacBreak is sponsored by ads.

Oh, come on. At best, that makes it part of the “…am Media.”

Do you see the problem? When you say “the mainstream media” you’re not communicating. You’re just making mouth sounds.

If you have a problem with a certain journalist, publication, or newscast, then why dilute the impact of your commentary by spreading the blame? Aim both barrels where they belong: blast your target full-force. The Boston Globe is willfully ignoring a police crackdown on peaceful protests during a lucrative national medical convention, in the interests of protecting a huge advertiser: the Boston tourism industry. Wow! Well, they’ve definitely been very, very naughty. I hope you shine the Spotlight of Truth on their disgusting dereliction of duty.

You waste your shot by blaming it on The Mainstream Media instead. When I get to the end of your heroic screed I’m tempted to click the “Comment On This Post” button and ask you to explain what role, precisely, the Kansas City Star played in this hypocrisy and how they benefitted.

“Oh, all those Mainstream Media organizations behave the same way,” you counter. Ah. Is that why you won’t rent an apartment to one?

Again I say: it’s a meaningless term. Look at the state of publishing today. Does this look like an industry that’s good at working together on any kind of a common agenda?

So blame CNN for what you saw Sunday morning. Don’t blame all of professional journalism. Actually, better still: blame the producers and reporters who were involved in the Washington roundtable show that ticked you off. Leave the Saturday night sports guy out of it.

For bonus points on the Credibility Index, you should take a moment to consider if there’s an alternative explanation for this journalist or organization’s behavior that doesn’t somehow help to underscore your existing frustrations with the industry as a whole or with a reasonable point of view that you don’t happen to share. You want to know why stories don’t get published? For exasperatingly dull reasons. The reporter wasn’t able to convince his or her editor that it was worth the X inches of limited space available, in a newspaper that gets smaller and smaller with each passing quarter. In TV, it’s because they couldn’t convince a news producer that the story had enough of a “hook” to catch and hold the viewer’s interest and prevent him from changing the channel.

Is this sort of censorship a common failing of this so-called “mainstream media”? While we’re at it, is the “reliably consistent” perspective (to put it charitably) of certain news outlets an endemic problem?

Maybe. But a good story is a good story. Each outlet puts its own spin and its own lens on the day’s events. Some do so with an active agenda. Some are oblivious to their own slant. Some reporters and even some whole outlets aren’t worth a damn. But most strive for fairness and good practices. You’re committing a big whopper when you presume that the failings of each individual commercial news outlet can be quantified, summed with those of all of the others, and then averaged in a single figure of irresponsibility that represents the behavior of thousands of workers.

Oh, and one final addendum to this policy: if you write that this “mainstream media” of yours is “at it again,” “up to its old tricks.” or “still doesn’t get it,” then I get to jab you in the ribs hard with the blunt end of a Sharpie marker.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just received an IM from the Monsanto corporation. If I don’t write something positive about genetically-engineered corn in the next 90 minutes, they’re gonna take my free biodiesel Prius away.

When I heard about Michael Jackson’s death (while navigating from the channel Dad’s TV was on to the Red Sox game on NESN), I sort of braced myself for what I knew was coming: a barrage of insanely opportunistic and optimistic press releases.

It follows every Big, Sad News Event. It’s terribly unfortunate that tens of thousands of people died in that tsunami off the Indian Ocean, but if nothing else it only underscores the need for a reliable, offsite network backup service such as BackRemotePro.com…et cetera.

I can sort of forgive most of these things. PR people are like lawyers. They’re not paid to serve the needs of the public or even good taste; they’re paid to think of their clients and their clients alone. And frankly, it’s not completely irrational to think that a tech columnist might be interested by the fact that your social networking service stayed online and in operation even when traffic exploded a hundredfold in the space of just ten minutes.

That is, I don’t think I’ll be writing about this today, while the tabloids are still bidding on Jackson’s autopsy photos. But in a few months, when I need to make a point about load balancing and traffic spikes? I just might search my Inbox for it.

So noted. But the world’s PR agencies are on notice that the contest is closed and the Honeybaked Ham Gift Voucher has been awarded. No more entries, please: I have officially received the most bald-faced and shameless bit of self-servery possible. Names and contact info have been censored to protect…

…

Well, I’m not sure why. But I did it and it’s too much work to change it back. Click to enlarge.

Congress has not seen fit to OK a national Free Slab Of Hot, Crisp Bacon Day. But the comics industry has Free Comic Book Day, which is a step in the right direction.

I’ve just made my rounds of my usual shop: The Outer Limits in Waltham, MA. They had a great turnout in the past hour…and of all the right people. Lots of parents were bringing their kids in, which was a cheery sight.

Best quote of the hour, overheard as a father pored through back issues of “Iron Man” with his son. “Look for ones where the armor is simple red and gold,” he counseled. “The ones where they do weird things with the armor are usually the bad ones.”

It brought a tear to my eye and made me wish I had a child to share my accumulated life wisdom with.

I also liked the sibling dynamics on display. The shop imposed a limit if six free comics per person. Most of the big publishers produce an array of Free Comics for the event, which this store augments with some of it’s own inventory. Call it 18 to 20 different free comics

So here comes the child psychology. You’re here with your two siblings. If you pool your resources, you can run the table and come home with the whole library.

OR…you can come home with just a third of them. AND you won’t have to share them with anybody.

I honestly don’t know which response indicates a better-adjusted kid and family.

VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD: “Let The Right One In” is probably a good movie to go in and see without any advance knowledge of the subject.

Just when you think that horror is dead and that vampire movies are deader than undead, along comes “Let The Right One In.” This movie restored my childlike faith in a perfect world populated by unstoppable, remorseless mockeries of all of God’s creations.

It was a welcome throwback to good old-fashioned creepfest horror of the Seventies. Modern horror is utterly toothless. It’s torture porn. You walk into the theater where you watch attractive people make their way through a charnel-ey edition of Willy Wonka’s candy factory. You make a note never to backpack through Ecuador with horny teens without first checking with TripAdvisor to see if there are any secret colonies founded by former Third Reich senior officers along the route. And then you move on with your life.

True horror is inescapable. I exit the theater and (goddamn it) I’m in a world that’s not different enough from the one I just left. Any kid in a stroller I see on the way to my car could be Rosemary’s Baby.

Doubly-creepy: a happy ending. We know better, of course, but we can’t rap on the screen in the final shot of “Let The Right One In” and tell Oskar, a middle-schooler who from his limited perspective has been given everything a bullied adolescent could ever hope for, that he’s completely screwed.

In fact, “Let The Right One In” is probably less about vampires than it is about adolescence. You feel like you don’t fit in; you give up on acceptance and hope to find someone to be alone with. The other kids at school treat you like crap; you give up on trying to understand them, or learning to at least somehow share a school with the little bastards, and instead pray for them to be torn apart by a wild animal. Instead of trying to understand the world, you build a smaller world around yourself in which you feel as though you have more control.

If a vampire does not move next door, chances are excellent that you’ll learn all of the skills you need in order to become a functioning adult with a full range of skills and options for these problems.

If a vampire (apparently) your age does move next door…things get complicated. You now have someone to hang out with late at night. Bonus: he introduces himself to you with a slick, emo line like “We can’t be friends.” He trusts you with secrets, makes you feel normal, and the big bonus is that your comeuppance against the school bullies is far more immediate, tangible, satisfying, and profoundly bloody than simply showing up at your ten-year reunion with a better career and more hair.

Oskar gets his happy ending. At the start of the movie, he’s a latchkey kid who’s persecuted relentlessly at school and mostly left to himself by divorced parents who don’t seem to have any time for home. His life is so devoid of hope that his one major hobby is playing with knives. By the end, he’s running away from home with his new best friend, his “steady,” in a lightproof box next to him on the train.

He’s joyful for probably the first time in the whole movie. But he’s missed an important point about relationships with vampires. If a vampire tries to avoid drawing you too closely into his life, he’s your friend. If you only learned he was a vampire after he accepted your offer to become blood brothers and then you started to look at people’s throats with a new kind of interest, then he wants to share eternity with you.

Otherwise, you’re just the hired help.

As creepy and bloody as the rest of the movie is, “Let The Right One In”’s ending tops it all. Fifty years later, Oskar will be the creepy old man living with the twelve-year-old boy, whose role is to go out alone at night with a black leather bag and an empty gallon jug and not come back until his hands are bloody and the jug is full.

The third way to truly creep me out? Make me feel respect or even sympathy for evil people. You can’t condone Hannibal Lecter’s actions, not when he rips a prison guard’s face off and wears it like a mask, no, not one tiny bit. But you respect him. And there’s something about Eli the vampire, stuck at 12 years old forever, that evokes pity. This is no dignified, stately Count. It’s essentially an unbathed parentless kid with no fixed home and no real future, apart from limitless time.

I truly feel sorry for Eli, even knowing what he’s done to about eight people in the movie and what sort of life to which he’s selfishly doomed poor Oskar. It seems as though Eli is stuck at age 12 in both body and emotional development. I can think of no worse hell than spending 200 years with the same limited understanding of the world and skills for getting by that I had when I was in junior high.

Note: “Let The Right One In” is not to be confused with the 2000 Jonathan Lipnicki film, “The Little Vampire. (Trailer)

Day Four of the film festival. Is it common to start to imagine universal themes connecting each of these films? After seeing and liking “Frozen River” yesterday (despite its flaws) I’m regarding “Nothing But The Truth” as a film in the same vein. Two strong women, who…

…

…Okay, and that’s pretty much the end of the similarities. I suppose the idea of seeing two films that feature two strong, independent female leads is freakish enough to seem like a binary miracle, like the Red Sox (1) making it to the World Series and (2) not screwing it all up in Game Seven.

“Nothing But The Truth” is totally not about the Valerie Plame Affair. See? There’s a disclaimer at the top of the movie stressing that the story isn’t based on real events. Just like the one at the top of that episode of “Law & Order” with the manchild-like pop music superstar who invites sick kids to his amusement park-like estate and is accused of acts of profound impropriety.

The story is about a Washington reporter who prints a story “outing” a political writer’s wife, an undercover CIA agent, and the aftermath to both women as the Justice Department tries to force the reporter to reveal her original source.

But the performances transcend your familiarity. I’m a little surprised that this film apparently didn’t make it past the festival circuit. With other movies you can sense that the subject is too esoteric, the potential audience too mysterious, the movie itself too rough and unpolished. For lack of a better word, “Nothing But The Truth” runs like a real, bona-fide “release it during November, with the rest of the high-profile dramas” flick.

As with other movies I’ve seen at EbertFest, I liked it but was left unsatisfied. It simply runs on for far too long. The reporter passes time in prison, and we pass it along with her. In the meantime, the positions and motives of other key characters (I’m thinking chiefly of Matt Dillon, as the special prosecutor with boundless energy for keeping the reporter in prison) are mostly left incomplete. The Special Prosecutor is an absolute hardass. But why?

SPOILERS AHEAD

I should mention that the identity of the reporter’s source seemed obvious to me early in the story and yes, I was correct. Was I merely impatient for The Big Reveal? Maybe. I don’t think I was. I’m a huge fan of 1970’s episodes of “Columbo” and there, you know who the killer is in the first ten minutes. Instead, you’re keen on seeing how the story plays itself out; that’s due to the extreme skill of the storytelling.

Seeing so many movies in such a small span of time makes me realize that I prize elegance in a screenplay. Is there a simpler creative solution to a dramatic problem? Is the story enhanced by concealing information instead of revealing it?

Chiefly I want the filmmaker not to screw around. “Nothing But The Truth” has lots of that, broken up by the occasional spinning of wheels. It plays with several ideas but leaves the best ones on the table. Is it a character study, in which we get to see how two different women are effected by the publication of this story? It looked that way…until the CIA operative was shot and killed by a random nut halfway into the story.

Just at the juncture where her story was about to get interesting, too. Her life is being torn apart and she’s quit her job, sensing that her own co-workers don’t even trust her. She has a big problem on her hands — her life is being taken away from her and she feels betrayed by those whom she’s trusted. But she’s been trained to find independent, assertive solutions to problems.

So there goes all of our investment in that character. A damned shame. The film clearly invested a lot in her, as well; it’s as if the actor suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack in the middle of filming and they suddenly had to throw out the rest of her story and scramble to come up with a new direction for the movie.

Okay! Well, then surely the rest of the story will be about the reasons why the reporter is defending her source so relentlessly, and at such great personal cost?

Er…sort of.

It actually plays out more like a “Frontline” documentary. She waits in jail. An appeal is filed. She waits to hear the results. Her attorney tries to have the case heard by the Supreme Court. She waits to hear how that goes. Her editor tells her how public reaction is playing out. She waits to see if that puts more pressure on the prosecutors.

And all the while, the filmmaker was sitting on the identity of the reporter’s source. The reporter had to conceal it from the prosecutors. But the identity alone explains everything about her behavior and the full dimensions of her ethical dilemma. It’s revealed in literally the final shot of the movie, which is like handing me a map and a compass at the end of the journey instead of at the beginning, when they could have been useful to me.

The journalist’s ongoing sacrifice isn’t nearly as meaningful to me if I have no idea what’s at stake. It’s a massive source of drama and tension. Why the bloody hell did the filmmakers just leave it on the shelf? C’mon, Mr. Lurie…you can trust me. I promise that I won’t jump in through the screen and tell Matt Dillon or the judge or nobody.

(See? I’m not even telling the readers of this blog! Have you left Urbana yet? We should get a coffee and talk out the problems in our relationship before things degenerate further.)

For that matter…why didn’t the reporter at least reveal the name to her superstar attorney? Understanding the full dimensions of her problem would have opened more options to him. I’m not satisfied that “prosecutors keep her in jail long after it’s clear she isn’t going to reveal her source and the courts emphatically defend the government’s rights to go after her” is a logical answer.

But to hell with the reporter and her legal case. I wanted the reveal to happen earlier because that sort of additional tension would have been catnip to an audience. It’s tough to form an emotional connection to the abstract principle of a free press. Put a name and a face on the person who will suffer unbearable hardship for life, and you’re finally cooking.

It’s a huge fault in the story. For 108 minutes, the film told us that the reporter’s position was one of principle, principle, principle. Well, that was a lie. And not a lie that makes the story more engaging.

These creative decisions are baffling. They had tension between two strong leads, and they threw that away. They had drama with the actual identity of her source, and they refused to use it in the story.

“Nothing But The Truth” is made up from top-quality ingredients but they’re in the hands of an Olive Garden line cook. This dish is edible, even palatable. But nothing like what it could have been.

(Hmm. Y’know, I bet it’s bitchy comments like that one which cause Rod Lurie to not answer my emails. So clearly there’s fault on both sides of this relationship.)

EbertFest was originally called “The Overlooked Film Festival.” It may have ditched the name but it retains its purpose: to give a proper audience and attention to films that may have passed beneath the average filmgoer’s radar.

So “Sita Sings The Blues” is the only film in the festival that I had already seen and one of only a few that I had even heard of.

Hell, you’re probably a nerd: I bet you’ve seen it, too. It’s famous. Cartoonist Nina Paley handbuilt this animated feature on her desktop computer, making out-of-copyright 1920’s jazz music an integral part of the story. Ah, but she belatedly discovered that the tracks weren’t quite as out-of-copyright as she had thought, which made the movie unreleasable under the traditional system until she came up with a fortune in licensing feed.

As part of the adventure of bringing “Sita” to audiences, Nina learned about the various alternatives to copyright and traditional distribution. Result: “Nina isn’t my movie,” as she said during the post-film Q&A. “It’s mine and it’s yours and it’s everybody’s.”

She did indeed secure a license to the music (the birdlike singing of Annette Hanshaw) but she took a leap that few professionals would have made: she released it under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. Anybody can host the movie. Anybody can show the movie. Anybody can make their own edits, subtitles, and variants of it.

I introduced myself to Ms. Paley at dinner about half an hour ago and thanked her for being the first penguin to jump off the ice floe. Other creators (myself included) are watching closely. Her experiences, which have been 100% positive so far, will give the rest of the creative community the courage to take the plunge themselves.

The movie itself is like a wall tapestry come to life. Seeing it here in the Virginia Theater underscored the credibility of Nina’s “Give it away” mentality. Yup, I saw it on the smallest of small screens — my iPhone — for free. And I enjoyed the film so much that I would indeed have paid twelve dollars for the opportunity to see it on a huge screen in a real theater with a live audience.

EbertFest showed it on HDCAM video. I might have worried that the simple shapes and lines of Nina’s animation would have seemed grotesque when blown up so huge. On the contrary: the strength and power of such an austere design was even more emphatically in evidence.

I don’t really need to tell you how spiffy this flick is. I can just give you the link and send you on your way.

Instead, I’ll make a few comments on the controversy barring its traditional release. I was pretty annoyed by the outrage. Lots of anti-copyright activists tried to paint this as The Man preventing an artist from getting her work in front of an audience, and a call to arms against the tyranny of copyrights.

Okay, well, you know what? Nina Paley is an experienced professional creator. It’s easy to assume that 80-year-old music is out of copyright but the source of the film’s legal problems was all Paley’s. It’s not right to blame the system and it isn’t right to blame the copyrightholder.

Even a lunkhead like me chose to license music for my YouTube and podcast intro and outro, instead of just grabbing something and trusting to luck.

I feel as though if I were outraged at the insistence of the copyright holders to get a license fee for their music in this case, then I’d have to be just as outraged by a streetcorner musician trying to get Dreamworks to pay up for using her songs in their latest $200,000,000 release.

I think there are plenty of problems with copyright and I think that it’s a damned shame when a creative work winds up locked in copyright hell.

But nothing changes my opinion that copyright is a good concept. Every creator should get to choose what happens with their creationws. Take copyright away from me and a lot of my motivation to bring brand-new things to an audience away goes with it.

(”The Fall” is available for immediate streaming via Amazon On Demand.)

I think I ruined the clutch on my Personal Movie Criticism transmission with this room. I went from devoted love, to violent hatred, to seething, grudging acceptance, all within the space of the final fifteen minutes.

First off, movies this gorgeous are the reason why you want to see flicks in a real theater, on a big screen, and in 70mm if possible. This is a movie that shows off the skills of the art director and the costume designer and the actors and screenwriter are just doing their best not to screw things up.

Cross “Baron Munchausen” with “The Princess Bride” and you’ve got the general idea behind “The Fall.” A story is being told with flair and panache, to an audience consisting of a single child. As the story progresses, you gradually learn the story of the storyteller himself…who has very much his own secrets and agenda.

I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending of this flick for you. When you read the preceding paragraph, I’m certain that you immediately understood the potential for A Series Left Turn Into The Darkness. An adult’s world isn’t a child’s world. A child sees bandits rescuing a princess from an evil governor. The adult lives in a world where the princess might have gone off with the bastard willingly, and that the rescuers are betrayed and die without ceremony.

Fine.

I don’t have the right to demand that a movie goes the way that I think it will. In fact, as a moviegoer, “movies that get me upset for some reason or another” is one of the many genres that I seek out.

But there’s a problem with “The Fall,” and it’s a simple and common one. There’s a basic contract that the filmmaker makes with the audience:

1) The audience allows the filmmaker to choose the rules for his or her movie.

2) The filmmaker has to follow those rules.

Nothing releases either party from their obligations. “The Fall” spent its first hour promising one thing. And then they spent ten minutes in the world of “Clockwork Orange,” which made me pretty steamed.

Dear reader, I did indeed mutter “Oh, **** you,” at the screen. This can be a sign that a film is truly working, if I’m aiming it at a character. When I’m lobbing it at the filmmakers, though…no, that’s no damned good.

What a huge mistake those ten minutes were. Mind you, I don’t mind that it was a tough ten minutes to sit through. I’m angry on behalf of the film. Those ten minutes were clumsy, they were inelegant; the work that the scenes achieve could have been accomplished far more simply and directly and would have guaranteed that this movie would have gotten an MPAA rating that would have allowed children under the age of 17 to see “The Fall.”

A potentially thrilling and satsifying film, damned-near ruined by a director’s lack of self-restraint. No, more than that: a lack of trust in his audience.

I don’t think “The Fall” sucked, on balance. It’s a beautiful house with a big stink in it. You can sort of work your way past that but on the whole, you wonder what kind of idiot architect puts an outhouse in the middle of a living room.

The Virginia Theater (spiritual and actual home of EbertFest) is something like 1.7 miles from my hotel (located in the middle of campus).

It’s the worst possible distance. It’s just far enough away that my lesser demons grumble about not having a car and driver assigned to whisk me to all points of the compass at my slightest whim. But it’s also categorically near enough that it’d be cheap, petty and childish to complain.

“I had to walk every morning!” I might say to my friends when I get home with my Tales of EbertFestery. “Can you believe it?”

“Isn’t that a half mile less than your usual morning Constitutional?” they will respond. And then they’ll probably refuse to pick up the check for breakfast, just to be churlish.

No, it’s a fine morning bracer. But you don’t want to be 1.1 miles into it and then realize that you left your VIP pass at home.

Ah.

The whole point was to get here early to secure my seat for the day. Three flicks, boom-boom-boom. Fortunately I was able to unleash a Leona Helmsley-sized can of tantrum on the poor innocent kid at the gate and I was whisked right into the premium seating section.=

(More accurately: I explained that I was an ass and they got me another pass.)

This is the first day when I feel like a true festivalgoer. I have ditched the “Making A Good Impression On An Audience” outfit and am in basic togs. I have a backpack filled with illegal snacks from the outside world. A sack of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish goes a long way to get you through nine hours of movies and Q&A.

And of course I have the Hackintosh in my lap, hooked up to the Sprint wireless network for internet access. I have long stringy hair (rushed from the hotel this morning; showered, but did not shampoo) and am overweight; both are important tools when blogging from a film festival.

Chaz Ebert is on stage right now, introducing “The Fall.” Roger appears with the filmmakers. His MacBook is on the podium and he’s using text-to-speech to sub for the voice he lost during his successful cancer treatments.

I first heard him “speak” this way a couple of weeks ago at the Conference On World Affairs. He uses a very Malcom McDowell-like voice (from his modern “Star Trek: Generations” era. Roger is one of the most skillful and charming men on the planet and I’m not sure I’d enjoy hearing him speak like Emperor Caligula or Alex from “Clockwork Orange.”

It’s a very natural effect.

“There isn-t a single frame of computer generated effects in thnis film,” he said, to an applause I don’t understand.

This is my first film festival. Already it occurs to me that festivals don’t try to book “Hello, Dolly!” or any other film in which the sun shines and people dance and the morning mail is hand-delivered by birds and squirrels. So if you’re gonna sit through three festival selections, it’s best to get yourself good and fortified in the morning so that you can blame your depression and sour mood on the gin.

“Begging Naked” is a simple and effective documentary, free of topsy-turvy or artifice. It’s nine years in the life of Elise Hill, a New York artist who paints, sculpts and strips, making just enough to get by. At the start of the film, she’s living in a tiny, Terry Gilliam-esque servant’s flat near Central Park. By the end, she’s homeless and living inside the park. The cameras are there for most of the slide.

It’s tempting to wonder whether her mental illness created her circumstances, or if it was the other way around. Mental illness doesn’t work that way, of course. But you can’t help but compare the Elise from the first few frames — in a mainstream romantic comedy, she’d be the artist friend of the female lead; zany, but together — against the woman living on the streets at the end of the film nine years later, wondering if her living circumstances will jeopardize her chances of being hired by the CIA.

I wonder if the right person, with the right words under the right set of circumstances, could have steered the earlier Elise into treatment and a program of medication.

There’s no such curiosity about the later Elise. Her paranoia and delusions seem to have formed a thick resistance to help. Her perception of the world prevents her from trusting a person enough to accept medical intervention.

The movie wasn’t as depressing as I’d feared. “Begging Naked” contains no messages, no admonishments, no dire warnings; it’s too confident a film to stoop to that sort of thing. Above all, it doesn’t want to distract our attention from the simple facts of Elise’s life.

“Begging Naked” left me in mood for thought, not for drink. Which makes it a far more effective engine for changing perceptions and attitudes about mental illness. When you’re drunk and phoning your Mom for an audio hug, you’re really in no shape to do anything about the problem.

Just wrapped the first of my two public appearances at EbertFest. This was a ten-person panel entitled “Movies and Everyday Life.” I listened quite carefully to the moderator’s introduction which was a good idea because it turned out to be about something completely different than what I had assumed.

(Oh, well. And I’d gone to the trouble of hunting down a can of Sterno at 1 AM for my big fire-juggling bit, too. Adapt, react, and improve, kids.)

It turned out to be about reality in movies; about the need to use movies for real, human stories instead of just spectacle, spectacle, spectacle.

The panel seemed to consist of nine exciting filmmakers plus a technology columnist so my theme for those 75 minutes was “Speak when spoken to.” I can be a very shrewd man when I’ve had my morning Coke.

I really wanted to jump in on a number of points. “People have to be taught to watch movies,” someone said. Well, no, they don’t. People teach themselves. Their curriculum is self-imposed. You don’t need to see an Ozu film. If you see enough great movies, you’ll be seeking out other great movies and your path will intersect with “Floating Weeds” in due time.

There. I said it and I feel better now.

If I had one point to make (besides praising “Jackass”) it was that folks see the movies that they want to see. It’s as simple as that. If you’re troubled that they tend to see many of the same kinds of movies over and over again, well, look in your kitchen cupboard. Well, I’ll be…you bought the Progresso Minestrone! Again! Not even a different brand, either!

You bought it because you liked it the last time. People see this year’s romantic comedy because they liked last year’s big romantic comedy.

The other way folks see movies is when they’re recommended by people whom they trust. And here we have the seeds of a new golden age of film-watching. Never had I had more opportunities to nestle in with a group of smart people who introduce me to new flicks.

And never before have I had so many opportunities to influence other film fans. I saw “My Winnipeg” yesterday. While the end credits rolled, I was Tweeting my enthusiasm…and the Tweet contained a link to where the movie can be immediately watched via Amazon Streaming!

Isn’t that remarkable?

You weren’t there at the panel so you’re just going to have to trust me that it was totally relevant to the topic at hand and that had I said it, I would have been carried out of that room not on a rail, but triumphantly on the shoulders of a weary proletariat desperate for Truth and Hope.

(Swear to God. Who are you going to believe? Me? Or anybody else on the panel or in the audience?)

The Andy Ihnatko Pan-American Collegiate Goodwill Tour continues. Now I’m in Urbana, Illinois, attending and speaking at EbertFest. It’s my very first film festival, I’ve been here since Wednesday, and I do believe that this is the first full night’s sleep I’ve had.

It’s been an education and I started learning even before I left home: I have now proven that it is categorically impossible for me to leave for the airport with more than two hours of sleep under my belt. My flight left at noon. Noon! Which seems like plenty of time for a lie-in and then what-ho for blue skies and bluer women and yet I made housecleaning and office organization a priority.

Well, it was kind of necessary. I’ve been traveling so much this month that when I got home from Penn State last week and went shopping, it was the first time in weeks that I dared to put a few days’ worth of perishable food items in the fridge.

I had to grind through my taxes this month, too. Result: I gave myself a mulligan on housecleaning. Late on Tuesday night, I looked around and thought “Do I really want to return to this?” I decided that a few hours of cleaning would be easier than finding a new place to live while I was away.

I’m going to try hard to blog about all of the movies I see while I’m here.

I wish I could have seen this flick under better conditions. A new 70mm print in a great old theater with a full house is a great start. But I had arrived at the Virginia Theater immediately from the airport, and the film’s 225-minute running time represents almost twice the amount of sleep I got when I left the house that morning.

Yes, I was a Human-Shaped Object, rather than an active and engaged audience member.

It’s weird to watch a concert movie with so many acts, after growing up with access to a Next Track button on all of my music players. The Who did two numbers and I was metaphorically standing up and shouting “#&@* YEAHHH!!!!” But then someone let Joan Baez get at the microphone and my thumb started tapping the inside of my index finger, trying to punch a button on an iPod that wasn’t there.

But then Janis Joplin steped on stage and once again I was cheering and shouting words that could only be printed in the form of high-ASCII characters.

I had a lot of trouble staying awake. It wasn’t the fault of the movie, of course. It’s a fantastic concert film and a hell of a document. I felt like I missed a huge opportunity.

I wish the film were released in two extended forms. The “documentary” scenes are endlessly compelling. A city of 400,000 appeared in a field and was gone (apart from uncountable cigarette butts) four days later. People showed up, they had a good time, they tried very hard to get along with each other and not screw things up, and then they left. How did that happen?

But there were a wide range of acts and nobody’s a fan of every single act on the bill. It’s not a comment about Joan Baez. It’s just me and my particular taste in music. This is one of those bits when I dozed off despite my struggles.

My favorite scenes: John Sebastian, embodying every bad stereotype of Hippie culture. He dressed and spoke like a character that a 50-year-old comedy writer would have created for an episode of “That Girl.”

And then there was the guy cleaning the Port-O-Sans. “I have two sons,” he explained, as he sloshed a bucked of disinfectant around and replaced the toilet paper in an efficient and cheery manner. “One is here. One is flying hueys in Vietnam. I’m proud of ‘em both.”

The director yanked on my ponytail during dinner last night and called me a “dirty hippie.” I loudly protested “I love America as much as you do, sir” and when I had a private moment assured him that I was an undercover narcotics officer and that I hated those filthy Bolshevik bastards just as much as he did.

Yes, it’s the second week in April and as usual, you find me in the first week in February. They specialize in that sort of thing here in Boulder. The calendar says Spring but the falling snow says otherwise.

I mean, New England isn’t exactly known for its balmy climes but at least we make an effort.

Time for another Conference On World Affairs. Is this my tenth one? Maybe. All I know is that I’ve been speaking at this conference for so many years that I no longer even know how many years I’ve been speaking at this conference.

I sure felt my age tonight. There was a big reception for the speakers and despite my being seriously in the bag owing to lack of sleep, I wasn’t about to miss my first opportunity to meet some people. I think the ratio of Newbies to Veterans is about two to one, so I wound up answering a lot of questions about what to expect.

Nearly everyone in the room is a seasoned speaker; many command five-figure fees, in fact. But the CWA is a unique beast. The conference only announces the schedule of panels a few weeks ahead of time and all you have to go on are brief titles. Tomorrow, for instance, I’m on “”Movie Pseudo-Science” and “Reality: the Next Moment Of Truth On TV.” You now know as much about these sessions as I do.

(Would you like to go on my place? Anybody?)

(Please?)

My advice is always the same. I became much more confortable on these panels when I realized that the folks in the audience are more interested in what you think than what you know, if you follow. That is, if you can cite facts and figures and quotes, that’s fine. But hard data isn’t as valuable as a logical, well-expresed point of view.

I got to hook up with Close Personal Friend Phil Plait, aka the Bad Astronomer. Met Kiki Sanford, whom I’ve podcasted with but had never met (v.cool individual). Very pleased to sit down with Mr. Ebert for a good while. We’ve been regular emailers for (good God) nearly half my life but the Conference is usually our only opportunity for facetime. He’s had to sit out the past couple.

Got to hug Oscar Castro-Neves. An utter guitar God and the embodiment of the sort of person for whom a handshake simply will not do. He always asks me to send him some more of my ukelele recordings and I really want to but it’s a bit like sending Frank Lloyd Wright photos of the shed you put up in the yard last Spring, isn’t it? And yet I’ve promised to send him a new recording within 30 days.

Met Ramin Bahrani. He has volunteered to have all of his skin peeled off one layer of cells at a time. Which is to say that Roger will be screening his film “Chop Shop” in front of a 1000-seat audience over the course of four days while every scene and detail is discussed and questioned by Ebert and the audience.

Ebert calls this procedure “Film Interruptus” and it’s an incredible experience for any film fan. I watched “Fargo” and “The SIlence Of The Lambs” this way and it was as if I was seeing these fave films for the very first time.

Yet I hardly have the patience and stamina for it. I remember a moment in “Fargo” when Chief Marge was bringing Grimsud back to Brainerd in the back of her cruiser. There was a dramatic shot of the roadside statue of Paul Bunyan, which loomed over them they reached the outskirts of town. Many people had their own interpretations of why the director had put that shot there.

“It’s a reflection of the bedrock morals of Midwestern pioneer America, underscoring the triumph of simple values over modern avarice,” one audience member opined, after calling for a freeze-frame.

“I think he’s using this symbol of American tall-tales, which on the surface is so cheery and reassuring, to symbolize belies a far greater horror that lurks underneath at all times,” said another.

“I think he’s saying THEY’RE BACK IN BRAINERD!” I said, testily, With that, the movie continued.

And I know that this story says far worse things about me than it does about that audience.

But I remember what it was like in college to be in a creative writing seminar and have nine people picking apart my work while I sat there wondering if “it’s possible to kill a person with a ballpoint pen” was actually true or just a funny little phrase that pops into mind under certain situations.

So my hat’s off to Ramin. I haven’t seen “Chop Shop” but I’m looking forward to attending the screening tomorrow afternoon (when it’ll be played in its entirety without any interruptions).

My chat with Ramin was exactly the reason why I keep coming back to this conference. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of him or his film. I was just talking with this dude, who impressed me as being quite interesting; I sort of bookmarked him as someone I’d like to chat with again later on in the week.

Then I get back to my Boulder digs and I Google the name and discover that hey, cool: Cannes, Toronto, Berlin…his films have been screened in some of the world’s most selective festivals. “Hi, I’m Ramin,” was how he’d introduced himself. If they give you a medal or sash when your film is accepted at Cannes, he kept it discreetly tucked under his shirt all evening.

You get a lot of that sort of thing. More than once I’ve belatedly realized that during lunch, I fixed the iPhone of a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Plans for tonight: finish and file a piece that’s due by lunchtime; watch the last 43 minutes of “Hello, Dolly!” which I rented from iTunes yesterday and is due to expire; test out the microphone I’m going to record my 10-minute bits with tomorrow; oh, yes, and I probably need to figure out just what the hell I’m going to say during my two panels.

I should put a star or something next to that last item. Seems to stick out, doesn’t it?

My Kindle 2 review is up on the Sun-Times site for your glorious edification. I thought some of you might also like to see a few screenshots of the K2 in action.

First page of my library. Here be all your books & papers.

Basic reading. This is a Fast Company article that Stanza downloaded and converted to Kindle format.

Okay, let's go do some web surfin'. Menu...ACTIVATE!

Google Reader might justify the cost of the Kindle all by itself. It turns every blog into a Kindle-friendly format, easy as pie.

Yes, you can even Twitter with it! The screen really isn't fast enough for long typing, but hey, it works!

Happy Pancake Tuesday! AKA, the day before Ash Wednesday on the Catholic calendar. There’s also a tradition that before you start your Lenten sacrifices, you go off and have a rich, hearty pancake breakfast.

(Ha! See? I’ve just gone and proven that Richard Dawkins is just a big stupid idiot who’s head is filled with stupid! Next time he says nothing good ever comes from religion, spit in his eye. A good, maple syrupy-scented gob of spit.)

My UPS guy met me on the way out the door. And what did he have for me?

The Kindle 2!

So I kept my date with the diner. But I was Pancaking with my right hand while I was Kindling with the left.

Initial impressions:

1) Damn, this thing finally feels like a real, richly-designed consumer product. It’s metal, and has that MacBook Air vibe where the case tapers down into thin edges. You get the impression that it’s a lot slimmer than it actually is.

2) Hallelulia! That flimsy cheap plastic back-cover is now gone. The back actually looks like a generation-one iPhone…a vast, unmarked plain of brushed metal, topped by an inch of plastic (where the wireless antennas live, npo doubt).

3) The transition from your old Kindle to the new one is simple. Natcherly it knows who you are when it arrives. Click into a setup menu and it re-downloads all of the content you’ve purchased via the Amazon Kindle Store. But none of the docs or public-domain ebooks that you might have emailed into the device will show up…that’s on your shoulders.

4) WhisperSync works fine. I was in the middle of re-reading Michael Palin’s wunnerful Python Diaries on my Kindle 1 yesterday and when I clicked the book on the 2, it opened it to (almost) the page I was on.

5) Text-to-voice is…functional. As expected, it sounds like very, very good text-to-speech. I do think it’s more of a feature for people with vision problems than any sort of replacement for the audiobook edition of a title. But it’s perfectly understandable, if a little American Idol-ish vis a vis artistically and convincingly interpreting and performing a piece. The speaker’s kind of weak. I was in a not-at-all-busy diner and I had to hold it up to my head to really hear it. The speakers are flat on the bottom-backside of the device.

6) The new interface is a five-click joybutton instead of the rolling elevator. But the MO is mostly the same. Instead of having a separate LCD stripe on the side of the screen, the thing you’re about to click on is underscored with a line. It works fine.

7) The device is devoid of all but a single mechanical sliding switch, which powers it up when it’s off and wakes it when it’s asleep.

8) I might have to take back my longstanding complaint about Kindle 1’s paddle switches for page turns. It annoyed me that I couldn’t put down the Kindle, take a two-handed bite of my sandwich, and pick it up again without being one or two pages away from where I was. The Kindle 2 has some conventional pushbuttons mounted flush with the surface of the device and I find that I have to push them with a little but of authority to get a buttonclick to register. Whereas the paddles on the K1 responded to a gormless flick of the thumb.

(I stress that this is a brand-new, out of the box device. So it’s possible that the K2’s page-turn buttons haven’t been broken in yet. It’s also possible that I’m just used to the feather-touch of the K1. But let it be noted that it’s the first thing that struck me as a step back, after a whole 21 minutes of experience with the Kindle 2).

(Added: Now I’ve been reading with it for about a half an hour. A little experimentation indicates that the “most clicky” part of the button is the edge nearest the screen. Now I’m finding it much more comfortable to use.)

9) The tech specs say that the display has been upgraded. But it’s a subtle thing. I don’t find it any more readable than the Kindle 1’s perfectly-fine screen. The only spot where I actually noticed the improvement was in the “sleep” wallpapers. So now these dead publishers’ faces are smoothly-shadded instead of stippled. Which is a win; it was kind of creepy to glance and think “Wow, Harriet Beecher Stowe really needs a shave.”

10) Damn…the “standard as hell” USB connector on the bottom of the K2 is now a “Crap! I forgot to pack the cable that charges my Kindle!” connector.

My full review for the Sun-Times will come in a couple of days. My overall first impression is that this is a step forward.

Hey, photos!

The only way to kill it is with a Ticonderoga #2 through its heart!

One click syncs all of your K1's purchased content onto your new K2. Note "underscore" highlighting of the item you're about to click.

From back to front: Kindle 1, Kindle 2, YUM.