The cost of the just-announced N.Y. Times digital subscription plan, which kicks in as of 3.28, seems a wee bit high. We’re looking at three different kinds of flat-fee buys. Access to NYTimes.com on smartphones will cost $15 per four-week month, access to the same on phones and the iPad2 and other tablets will cost $20 every four weeks, and an “all device” access will cost $35 bills per month. In other words, if I want full access on my laptop I’ll be getting the $35 plan…right? I don’t know, man. I’d go $25 to $30 bucks a month, or roughly a dollar per daily issue, but $35 leaves a bad taste.

Summit Distribution has acquired a rep for timidity in the matter of The Beaver. So it’s likely that even if star Mel Gibson didn’t have an appointment last night to be booked and then released for misdemeanor battery at L.A.’s El Segundo police station (which he kept), Summit marketers would have advised him not to join Beaver director-costar Jodie Foster, costar Anton Yelchin and screenwriter Kyle Killen for last night’s SXSW premiere showing in Austin.

But what’s the point of hiding at this stage? If you ask me there’s only one thing to do — man up, face the press, point to Charlie Sheen and say, “Look at that guy and then look at me and tell the truth — am I not looking a little better since he took the stage and sucked all the crazy out of the room?

“I’m a non-drinking alcoholic and a racist arch-Catholic nutbag loon, okay, but grossly offensive antisocial behavior…call it madness if you want, I don’t care…can be gauged in degrees, and…c’mon, listen to that fucker. Admit it, guys — I don’t seem as gnarly to you right now. Britney Spears put it succinctly: I’ve been working on myself and I’m not that bad.

“Plus I’m a better filmmaker than Sheen, a better actor, a lot of good people have stood by me, I’ve struggled with alcohol and humiliated myself beyond all measure, and I’m trying to rid myself of my demons just like Walter in The Beaver, and you definitely have to give me points for not having revolting homie suck-ups in pork-pie hats hanging around downstairs in my home.”

If I were Gibson, I’d ask for a meeting with Summit staffers and say the following:

“Okay, so the South by Southwest screening….that went okay, right? It didn’t? What did Eric Kohn say? What about Variety? And Wells? But the people in the audience were down with it, no? That’s what I read. And even the critics who beat up Jody and the film in general have been saying good things about my performance.

“But let’s face facts besides. The Beaver, good as it is in many respects, is simply too sad and morose to make a lot of money. Jodie emphasized the heartstrings and suppressed the crazy. I would have gone there if she’d wanted to, believe me, but she didn’t and that’s that — fine, I love her, she knows what she’s doing, no worries. But the movie isn’t funny or crazy enough. It’s not a comedy or even a half a comedy, and when people figure that out, it’s going to sputter and stall and make a beeline for the DVD bin. You know it. I know it.

“The thing we need to do is not act like we’re scared of our own shadow, and so far…well, no offense, but no one had done that better than you guys. But you know as well as I do that chickenshit is not a marketing strategy.

“Do you guys want to…what, hide me forever? Don’t want to let me talk or get out at all or sit down with any interviewers at all? I want to ask you a question, and I want you to try and answer me honestly. Are we men or are we mice?

“The Beaver will hit the beach in less than two months, and it’s obviously not a bad film and I give one of my better performances in it so let’s just stop trembling in our boots and deal with it, man up and tell the truth. I’ve got issues….duhhh….but the movie is about a guy with issues besides, and in the end it’s about love and family and not hiding from ourselves and owning up to our frailties and vulnerabilities. So let’s stop with the trembling and embrace what the film is saying, and embrace who and what we are and stop all the terrified shilly-shallying. The movie’s going to be gone in two or three weeks anyway so what do we have to lose?”

Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver, which showed to a packed house tonight at Austin’s Paramount theatre, is occasionally amusing but is mostly a sad and red-eyed and rather distressed family drama. Everyone thought early on that the basic story (i.e., a man surrenders his life and personality to a Beaver hand puppet) would be at least half-comedic, but it’s not. Everyone thought that the hand-puppet schtick would give Mel Gibson the freedom to go really manic and nutso, but he doesn’t. Because Foster doesn’t want that.

The Beaver is more of “heart” thing about healing and family and forgiving. And it uses lots and lots of closeups of Gibson’s lined and weathered face and his graying, thinning hair. What he does about 70% of the time is look forlorn and gloomy and guilty about his shortcomings. Foster is making a film, after all, about putting demons to bed and climbing out of our personal foxholes. So at the end of the day The Beaver, which is essentially a chick flick, guides Mel’s Walter character, who goes through major hell in this film, back to health and vibrancy.

So it’s a nice soulful movie, a film that cares and gives hugs and feels sad for poor Mel during his aberration period when he goes absolutely everywhere with that brown hand puppet and acts peppy and talks like an Australian Ray Winstone. But the Beaver scenes, unhealthy as they may be for Mel’s Walter character, give the film its sass and vigor, and when the Beaver goes away near the end, the movie loses its fuel and loses its raison d’etre.

As everyone knows, The Beaver is about Gibson’s Walker being depressed and on the verge of suicide, but then snapping back to life when he surrenders his identity and personality to the Beaver puppet. The Beaver takes over and Walter is alive again — his wife (Foster) falls in love with him again, his toy business becomes revitalized, he and The Beaver go on a lot of talk shows and appear on magazine covers, his younger son loves his aliveness….although his older son (Anton Yelchin) hates the whole Beaver routine and thinks his dad is an asshole.

I took Gibson’s decision to hide behind the hand puppet as a metaphor for the way all of us hide the weaker, softer, more vulnerable aspects of our personality from society and the business world especially. Gibson isn’t “himself” during his Beaver phase, but his Beaver personality is alert and creative and crackling, and he’s walking around all day with a spring in his step and paying his employees and steering a winning ship, etc. What’s so bad about that?

I’ll tell you what’s so bad about that. The real Gibson isn’t “there” for his family. He insists on bringing the Beaver into everything, including family dinners and his intimate moments with Foster in their conjugal bed, and that’s not good….or so the movie tells us. But what about people who are into being furries?

There’s a subplot about a relationship between Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence that involves Yelchin being a paid term-paper and speechwriter for Lawrence and a few classmates — an extension of the idea of the real person hiding behind a “front.”

The Beaver is all right, not bad, a decent film, a respectable film…but nobody’s going to do cartwheels over it. Gibson deserves points and respect for nailing the Walter role and giving it hell in both senses of the term. Foster, Yelchin and Lawrence are fine.

The Beaver director Jodie Foster during the post-screening q & a.

Beaver costar Anton Yelchin.

Life is worship, celebration, current, ecstasy…all in this together. Wearing Adidas sneakers. Doing Katy Perry. Listening to “Civilization,” the new single from Justice’s second album, out April 4th. Under the visual guidance of Romain (son of Costa) Gavras.

A longtime HE confidante caught a research screening last night of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody‘s Young Adult, which Paramount will release sometime after Labor Day (probably with a kickoff screening in Telluride). I’m not going to share his reactions except to say that (a) the recently-reported-about narration by J.K. Simmons was not heard during the showing in Pasadena, and (b) the film sounds like something of a brave departure for Reitman and Cody in that the screenplay is on the raw and gnarly side in a somewhat “dislikable,” non-backrubby Greenberg vein. I mean that as a good thing.

I’m writing this, of course, as someone who loved every minute of Greenberg. I’m implying that people who go to movies looking for an emotional quaalude experience may encounter some speed bumps with this. Or so I’ve been told.

I haven’t read the script, but this guy’s impression (along with the impressions of others online) is that Young Adult doesn’t offer the usual forms of emotional comfort and/or assurance, which Reitman arguably did provide in Thank You For Smoking, Juno and Up In The Air. But Charlize Theron may come away with laurels for her performance, and Cody could rack up some awards for her script. Maybe. I know that it sounds more mature and blistering and unadorned (i.e., less in the way of slangy smartass dialogue) than anything she’s written so far.

Young Adult has been repeatedly described as vaguely reflective of (if not literally channeling) Cody’s own Midwestern history, and basically being about an unstable, divorced, semi-alcoholic teen-market book writer (Theron) stalking her ex-high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) in a small Minnesota town, with Wilson now married and expecting a baby and not receptive for obvious reasons, and with Theron exhibiting some fairly alarming fucked-up behavior. The film is apparently comedic in a quasi-Sideways or Greenberg-y vein, but also dark and not what your typical mellow-vibe Up In The Air admirer would call divertingly cheerful.

The costars are Elizabeth Reaser (as Wilson’s wife) and Patton Oswalt.

Here’s a reasonably decent short from Ian Albinson for the opening of the SXSW Title Design Finalists Screening, which happened two nights ago at the Vimeo theater in the Austin Convention Center. He should have included more studio-era titles than just the obvious ones. (Wasn’t Gone With The Wind‘s huge horizontal title crawl fairly revolutionary for its time?) And the music by RJD2 doesn’t make it.

The Beaver “is not a mainstream movie,” director-costar Jodie Foster has told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Galloway. “It does have mainstream actors, but that’s not this film.” One guesses/presumes she’s partly alluding to a third-act moment in which Mel Gibson‘s character forges a kind of bond with James Franco‘s in 127 Hours.

Foster has everyone’s admiration for standing by Gibson. “I know that he’s got troubles,” she says, “and he’s not saintly and [has] a big mouth, and he’ll do gross things your nephew would do. [But] when you love somebody you don’t just walk away from them when they’re struggling.”

“The performance he gave in this movie, I will always be grateful for. He brought a lifetime of pain to the character that we’ve been talking about for years, that I knew was part of his psyche and who he is. It’s part of him that is beautiful and that I want people to know, too. I can’t ever regret that.”

In his just-up “Rundown” column, MSN’s James Rocchi has singled out five South by Southwest films that he considers the “best of the fest — so far.” I haven’t seen two of them — Ben Wheatley‘s Kill List and Joe Cornish‘s Attack The Block. And I half-agree with Rocchi’s choice of Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop — an agreeable, smoothly assembled profile-of-a-celebrity-comedian piece. But my eyeballs popped out of my head on coiled springs — boiinnnggg! — when I saw that Spencer Susser‘s Hesher and Evan Glodell‘s Bellflower were ranked third and fourth.

Joseph Gordon Levitt in Spencer Susser’s Hesher.

I saw Bellflower almost two months ago at Sundance, and my general reaction was split between pique, boredom and watch-checking agony. There’s nothing going on in this film of any interest or intrigue whatsoever…nothing. It’s a portrait of backwater hell and grungeballs and lackadaisical scrotum-scratching. No story tension, a handmade flamethrower, no pizazz, no humor (or at least not the kind I was able to laugh or even smirk at), crappy-looking photography (which Rocchi calls “darkly gorgeous”), no job or vision or income, godawful wardrobes, no rooting interest, no emotional involvement.

It farts out a stunningly lame story about two low-rent 30something guys nursing some asinine notion of a coming apocalypse and one of them, a slacker beardo played by Glodell, getting lucky with a nice girl and beginning some kind of serious relationship and then the ex-boyfriend wheedles his way back in, etc.

Rocchi calls Bellflower “one of the most strong and stylish critiques of the idiocy and confusion in young manhood since Fight Club” — not a chance.

Hesher does have a startling, amusing-at-times Joseph Gordon Levitt performance as a hair-trigger hippie Rasputin slash animal-house provocateur. And a very fierce and touching one from the tweener-aged Devin Brochu. And there’s some nicely twisted humor going on in the story of Levitt moving uninvited into Brochu’s San Fernando Valley home and gradually rousing him and his depressed dad (Rainn Wilson) out of a stupor-like depression over the death of Brochu’s mom. But Levitt’s numerous provocations seem to be more about fart-lighting improv and acting on whatever extreme-scuzzball instinct has popped into his (or Susser’s) head. It all kinda sorta of pays off at the end, but you have to endure a motherlode of WTF? consternation before this finally happens.

I also enjoyed/respected the performances by Natalie Portman, a financially struggling checkout girl whom Brochu befriends, and Piper Laurie, playing Brochu’s ailing grandmother and,as it turns out, the one character who seems to “get” Hesher/Levitt most of all. And Wilson’s catatonic dad (who delivers his second agonized-crying scene of the festival, after the one in Super) feels like truth every moment he’s on-screen.

Hesher is not shit — it has its own vision and personality and delivers a form of anarchic-idiot behavior that I’ve never quite seen or contemplated before — but to call it one of the five best of SXSW 2011? Better than Super and Source Code? Or Robbie Pickering‘s Natural Selection and/or Tristan Patterson‘s Dragonslayer, which won the top SXSW awards last night? Highly disputable.

Cindy Meehl‘s wise and winning Buck, winner of the 2011 Sundance Audience Award for Best Documentary, played yesterday afternoon at South by Southwest. It seems at first like a straightforward portrait of Buck Brannaman, a renowned horse-trainer who was the real-life inspiration for The Horse Whisperer (both the book and the film). But it gradually becomes more of a meditative heart-warmer about healing and parenting.

Like Brannaman himself, with whom I had an agreeable chat after yesterday’s screening, Buck has a spiritual, settled-down vibe.

At first I had a notion that Buck was just a nice emotional atmosphere film that didn’t have any wider echoes or implications, but I gradually began to see that it’s as much about healing humans as horses.

As it reveals more and more about Brannaman’s work and personal life, Buck passes along lessons about getting past childhood trauma and correcting parental errors and ways to heal…all that good stuff. The fact that youngish horses are the recipients of said therapy doesn’t obscure the fact that many if not most of Brannaman’s teachings apply to troubled kids and teens also, and for that matter (in theory at least) troubled adults.

Buck Brannaman, Buck director Cindy Meehl during our interview following yesterday afternoon’s screening.

Feeling unloved and ganged-up-upon and pressured isn’t a good thing for any man or beast. We all just need to chill and feel safe and unthreatened, and to not be so afraid of making a mistake that we can’t move. What I got from the film is that if all afraid, angry and unhappy people had someone like Brannaman to calm them down and steer them in healthier, more positive directions, the world would be a much calmer and better place.

The irony and ultimate lesson of Buck is that Brannaman was himself raised by a highly abusive and alcoholic dad. He and his older brother were adopted by foster parents when it became evident what they’d been going through, and that plus getting into horse training and discovering an exceptional empathy and communion with horses led to Buck’s becoming centered and secure and ending the abuse cycle. Brannaman is happily married and by all appearances a good dad.

Buck will open theatrically in June via Sundance Selects, and then become available via on Demand and cable and DVD/Bluray.

Meehl is from Redding, Connecticut, which is just a town or two away from my high-school stomping grounds in Wilton. So that was another soother.

It was 6:45 am in Austin, and instead of posting yesterday afternoon’s material before having to schlep down to the Austin Convention Center to snag a front-of-the-line pass for tonight’s screening of The Beaver, I watched the first 10-plus minutes of Sebastian Guiterrez‘s Girl Walks Into A Bar, which is now playing entirely free on YouTube. That indicates something, right?

For a film driven by a series of stories about people conning, scheming and playing each other, it didn’t seem half bad. Good but not-quite-Mamet-level repartee. Taut, brittle. Or at least, the opening scene with Carla Gugino and Zachary Quinto felt that way; ditto the pool-playing scene that followed.

Girl Walks Into A Bar was watched by more than 250,000 people last weekend, which is “more viewers than some of the ten biggest grossers from the 3.11.11 weekend,” according to the Wiki page.

“Gutierrez claimed at the South by Southwest Film Festival premiere of Elektra Luxx that Girl Walks Into a Bar is the first major motion picture with a cast of notable stars created exclusively for Web distribution.

“‘We want to prove that web distribution is a viable medium for theatrical quality movies which rely on story, characters and dialogue as opposed to special effects,” he said in a release. “For many reasons the theatrical indie landscape has changed drastically in the last few years, leaving many potential breakout hits without an audience. We are excited to break the rules of feature films by letting people watch our movie for free online.”

“Shangri-La Entertainment has entered into an agreement with YouTube and Lexus to present Girl Walks Into a Bar free, exclusively in the YouTube Screening Room, a platform designed to showcase top films from around the world, premiering March 11, 2011 at http://www.youtube.com/screeningroom. The presentation marks the first time a major motion picture was created exclusively for web distribution.

“With Girl Walks Into a Bar, the cast and crew came together to create something different – a high quality, really fun character-driven film that we could present to audiences for free using a new distribution model,” said Gutierrez. “We found great partners in Lexus and YouTube to support the film while providing us with the stage to draw the largest audience possible.”

The bottom line is that audiences generally don’t respect “free.” Obviously 250,000 viewers indicates interest and possibly good word-of-mouth, but there has to be some level of cost or difficulty in seeing a film, or it probably isn’t worth it. That, at least, is the thinking in my circles. Take The Beaver, for instance. A lot of time and effort have gone into being here in Austin for tonight’s showing, and more effort is still required.