'Watching 'Americanese' after movies like 'Failure to Launch,' I felt like I'd wandered into the grown-up cinema. ...It's a strange thing about characters in movies: The more 'universal' they are, the more provincial. The more specific they are, the more they are exactly themselves, the more we can identify with them.'…

(Check local listings) We'd call this the sweetest bird documentary since "March of the Penguins," but "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" actually came out in 2003. It's making its television debut here, and you shouldn't miss it. Filmmaker Judy Irving chronicles the story of Mark Bittner, a homel…