PERUGIA, Italy -- With her appeal rapidly approaching, Amanda Knox's reality behind bars is a far cry from reports of a carefree American soprano practicing her Christmas choir parts and scripting her role in "Tangled," the made-for-TV Lifetime film soon to be made about her.

"It was a very long and difficult summer for Amanda," said Knox's Perugia attorney, Luciano Ghirga, who visits her regularly in prison and counsels her about her upcoming appeal and slander trial. "Time simply passes more slowly now."

The Knox case is increasingly paradoxical. The fast pace of digital media and the entertainment industry contrasts sharply with the slow march of the Italian judiciary, and the mundane routine of Knox's uneventful prison life is at odds with the unpredictable mini-dramas that have spun off of her case along the way. Big name personalities like Donald Trump have stepped in (and out) of the fray, courtroom sideshows have put some high-profile careers at risk, and even politics have come into play.

In the months since her conviction, Knox has refused to take tranquilizers offered by prison authorities, cut her hair short to beat the summer heat and took part in a peaceful prison protest against the changing of meal hours. She put up American flag stickers in her cell, read books from the prison library, played guitar and participated, along with the other inmates, in various musical and cultural events.

"She's like the others," Ghirga said. "Those reports show a lack of respect for what it is really like for her. She has worries. She wonders how much hope she should have."

As the movie's working title suggests, she is "tangled," to say the least.

Knox, her Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and African immigrant Rudy Guede were found guilty of stabbing to death Briton Meredith Kercher, 21, in a violent and sexually charged confrontation that spiraled out of control. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison, Sollecito to 25. Guede's original 30-year sentence was reduced to 16 on appeal.

The slander trial

Knox will leave the prison for the first time in months Friday. She'll be shuttled in a police van into a protected side entrance to the courtroom, far from the media, which won't be allowed into the closed-door hearing where "mostly technical" issues will be discussed.

She is charged with slander for accusing the Perugia police of hitting her as she was being interrogated the night before her arrest. During the course of the questioning, police became suspicious and turned up the heat over the course of several hours. Knox testified that they called her a liar and cuffed her on the back of the head twice while urging her to tell the truth. Multiple police officers and two interpreters who were in and out during the questioning deny such abuse took place and tell their own gentler version of how the night unfolded.

Unless one side produces audio or video of the questioning -- which police and prosecutors have said does not exist because Knox was just a witness, not a suspect, when questioning began -- it is likely to remain her word against theirs.

The presiding judge Friday (Claudia Matteini, the same judge who signed Knox's original arrest warrant in 2007) could decide to hold an abbreviated trial, where everything is done behind closed doors and only documentary evidence is presented. She could decide there is enough evidence to move forward with a trial (or not). She could also simply choose to archive the case without passing judgment on its merit. Francesco Maresca, who represented the victim's family during the Knox trial, represents the police in the case.

The appeal

The real courtroom drama won't come until late November, however, when Knox's actual appeal begins. Knox's attorneys are soon expected to file "motivi aggiunti" or "additional motives" for appeal. That can include new evidence or witnesses defense attorneys think should be considered. The lead prosecutor -- a substitute sitting in while a permanent replacement for the position is considered -- will be joined by the two public ministers who originally prosecuted Knox and Sollecito: Giuliano Mignini and Manuela Comodi.

"We did not request to be involved," said Mignini, reached by this week. "In fact we thought we had wrapped up our duties with the conviction in the first trial. But when we were asked, we gave our availability."

The appeals trial process will differ in many ways from the first trial. Only the makeup of the court -- six lay jurors and two professional judges -- remains the same. It will likely proceed much faster because the court is mostly debating Judge Massei's judgment, not rehearing witnesses or re-examining evidence, though the court can specifically request to rehear key witnesses and the Knox and Sollecito defense teams have filed requests for an independent evaluation of certain pieces of contested evidence.

On appeal, the case is once again wide open, as the court could do anything from giving Knox a harsher life-in-prison sentence to turning over her conviction.

"The court can review all the same evidence presented in the first trial, but simply decide that there is reasonable doubt, that they don't believe it," explained University of Parma criminal procedure professor Stefano Maffei.

The court also can agree with prosecutors, who are also appealing the 26-year sentence and asking for life, and give her even more prison time. Or, the court can agree with the murder conviction, but find that mitigating factors outweigh the aggravated ones, which leads to a one-third reduction in sentence. That is athemost likely scenario, court observers such as Maffei say, especially since more than 18 Italian magistrates have reviewed the evidence in the Knox case and come to the same conclusion of culpability, which somehow ingrains the decision into the judiciary. For reasons that are sociological rather than legal -- such as good behavior, political pressure, changed public opinion or prison crowding -- sentences in Italy are often reduced on appeal.

"The tradition in this country remains that the court of appeal is usually more lenient than the court of first instance," Maffei said.

The sideshows

The case has attracted a large international following, provoking blogosphere rancor as well as a trans-Atlantic split in public opinion. Some Americans view Knox as an innocent abroad being railroaded into an unjust conviction, while many Europeans agree with the guilty verdict handed down by a six-person lay jury and two judges.

Several Europe-based journalists who attended court hearings have published books based on court documents and trial, and dozens more have jumped on the Knox gravy train. An American noir novelist tacked his take of things onto the end of one of his bestsellers, despite not setting foot in Italy since the murder. A blogger wrote a West Coast version. An Italian parliamentarian from Umbria used his political privilege to enter the prison to check on conditions in order to gain regular access to Knox, then turned around and wrote a book about his prison conversations with her. A Brazilian woman who was incarcerated at Capanne penitentiary with Knox recently published a memoir called "Walking with Amanda." She told last week in an e-mail that she plans to tell even more in her next memoir.

"Amanda and I talked about a lot of other things, which I will tell in my second book," said Florisbela Inocencio de Jesus. "I don't care what the others say. I alone had the opportunity to hear Amanda from so close and it remains that my account is real fruit of observation, sensations, moments of sadness, not conclusions from one or two visiting hours."

Early on, Knox's family hired a public relations firm to handle media inquiries, promote her innocence and cultivate their daughter's image. But the real Amanda -- in her own words -- is still a mystery. And anything she may be writing in prison isn't likely to be leaked anytime soon. An Italian journalist who published leaked diaries from Knox's first months in jail was eventually hit earlier this year with a $54,000 court fine for invading Knox's privacy. But that hasn't stopped two film adaptations -- one made for TV in the U.S. and another by a U.K. filmmaker who has made movies for the big screen -- from being negotiated, researched and written. That has triggered criticism from Italian lawyers on all sides.

"It seems very premature and inopportune to prepare a film before the legal process has been completely concluded," said Valter Biscotti, lawyer for Guede.

This month, A&E Television Networks greenlighted "Tangled" starring Hayden Panettiere ("Heroes") as Knox in a Lifetime original movie. According to the company producing the film, Pilgrim Films and TV, it will be directed by Robert Dornhelm from a script by Wendy Battles. The producers include Craig Piligian ("Ghost Hunters"), Battles, Trevor Walton, Craig Anderson and Randy Sutter. The company has not announced who will play the victim, Kercher. The Knox family is not connected to the Lifetime film in any way, a family spokesman said Monday, but isn't trying to block it.

Across the ocean, another deal is also in the works between The Daily Beast and Revolution Films to adapt a film from the book "Angel Face" by Rome-based journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau. Local Perugia newspapers reported over the summer that Colin Firth met with several key players in the case as research for a part he may play in the film, directed by Michael Winterbottom, whose previous film include "A Mighty Heart" starring Angelina Jolie as the wife of murdered U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.

Certainly the case has not lacked drama -- inside or outside the courtroom.

A little more than a month after Knox was convicted, prosecutor Mignini was himself convicted of abuse of office related to illegal wiretapping on a separate case. He is appealing the sentence. The lead attorney on Sollecito's conflicted defense team, Giulia Bongiorno, has had her hands full defending her most high-profile client, president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini. Fini is embroiled in a bitter political duel with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that has put the current coalition government at risk.

When Bongiorno steps into the appellate courtroom to defend Sollecito, the judge will look familiar. Respected magistrate Sergio Matteini Chiari represented the prosecution during the controversial Andreotti appeals trial a decade ago in Perugia over the mafia murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli. Biscotti also defended a Cosa Nostra mafioso in that case.

Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile, who represented Guede, have picked up a number of other high-profile Italian cases while awaiting Guede's supreme court trial, scheduled for Dec. 16. The duo also represent the family of a murdered transvestite embroiled in a political scandal, as well as the family of a young girl gone missing from Taranto in August.

Stateside this year, Robert "Joe" Halderman, the CBS newsman who produced an episode of "48 Hours Mystery" about Knox, went to jail for four months for attempting to blackmail David Letterman. His documentary about the case was nominated for an Emmy award but did not win.

In Seattle, high-profile Seattle lawyer and Friends of Amanda spokeswoman Anne Bremner spent two days in jail earlier this month after pleading guilty to driving while under the influence. She maintains the incident was exacerbated by a combination of a hit-and-run accident and an imbalance in her bipolar-disorder medication.

Also in the Seattle legal community, King County Superior Judge Michael Heavey last week was admonished by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for violating the judicial conduct code by "using his status as a judge to attempt to influence a criminal proceeding in another country; thereby exploiting his judicial office for the specific benefit of another." The commission's full findings are posted here.