I won’t touch that comment except to suggest that it’s due to the computer animation common to all these movies. The large groups of people required to build a scene just aren’t capable of the balletic sequencing of regular films, I’d guess.

– “I think the turning of pages is clear enough, but what do the 21 vs 54 buttons achieve that 4, 5 or 0 could not?”

Think of the first Sharp Wizard circa 1989 http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/123950-Gadget48-Sharp-Wizard_b.jpg and all of the buttons required to keep your schedule, compared to the ubiquitous (and probably dying) Palm circa 2007 http://www.bargainpda.com/assets/4272.jpg — button-mania vs. decent-restraint — I suspect that we’re looking at the early, poorly-thought-out Wizards of the ebook reader evolutionary path. With that said, I see these current devices as attempts to lock down the sales of electronic documents, or to cement the use of a particular DRM scheme, not as particularly well intentioned introductions to the delights of reading sans paper.

Speaking of the Palm, I might nominate the Palm TX as the easiest device to read texts with — though the screen is small, it was easy to pick a title from a list, scroll through a document (or click), and the backlight was nice.

And the iPhone might be good in a similar vein, though I’m surprised to find that the lack of physical buttons is actually kind of hard to get used to. The screen is better than a Palm TX, and it’s easier to carry around than a Kindle would be (pockets!), but I miss having an actual button that I can feel. Maybe someone will re-purpose the up-down volume button for paging when the iPhone SDK is released in February?

– “Are these films/devices only lip service to the wonders of reading? Can we consume the written word within the electronic one without being hopelessly distracted?”

I can certainly read without distraction on any of these devices, with a little practice… and it took some practice to be able to read a regular book, if I recall 1st grade accurately. But I think you’re right about the current devices only paying lip-service to reading — they’re really about selling files and locking down markets.

– “Or having to read the manual?”

Oh come on — the only things you don’t have to “read the manual” for are things that already exist, or are similar enough to things you’ve already mastered that they’re indistinguishable from that pre-existing device. That would mean they’d have no new capabilities!

P.S. Real books won’t disappear. We’ll just have more to read!