My laptop crisis has been solved. Whew! It turns out to have been just a confluence of coincidences — no wifi signal, a dodgy DSL router, and an overtaxed CineVegas server — that made it seem like my computer had lost all connectivity. The fact that these things happened at midnight made it hard to troubleshoot, too.

Several readers here in Vegas e-mailed to offer help, which I appreciate. I am glad to see strangers come together in times of trouble.

I no longer have the ancient laptop, by the way. I bought a new one (well, a new used one) several months ago, and it’s fine for on-the-road purposes.

So “In the Dark” has been sent out. There is no podcast, but that’s because I’m traveling, not because of technical difficulties. “The Incredible Hulk” is good. I just barely saw “The Happening” this afternoon and don’t have a review written yet, but it’s remarkably dull, flat, emotionless, and surprise-free.

In limited release: “The Foot Fist Way” and “Mongol,” both good.

My laptop has stopped accessing the Internet, whether by Airport or by a hardline ethernet connection. It was working fine this afternoon when I plugged my friend’s DSL modem into it, then wouldn’t work at the CineVegas press office, and still won’t work back at my friend’s house tonight. I’m not accustomed to having this kind of major problem with my Macs, so I’m not sure what to do about it.

The reason this affects you is that all my Friday materials — reviews, “In the Dark” etc. — are on that laptop, with no convenient way to post them to the Internet. The fastest method would be to burn the files to a disc and transfer them to my friend’s iMac (which I’m using to post this), then post them from there. But it’s very late at night and I’ve already spent an hour trying to fix my connection problems. Maybe I’ll try the disc-burning tomorrow. 

It’s kind of a serious problem, since I’m supposed to be covering CineVegas for Cinematical, and now I don’t have any way to do that. So hopefully I can figure out why my computer has suddenly stopped accessing the Internet. In the meantime, everything is on hold.