Day 8 (Thursday, Jan. 26):

At some point today, I lost my little pocket notebook where I jot down miscellaneous data and observations. It’s not the book I take notes in during movies, thank goodness, or I’d never be able to review all the movies I saw this week. But it was still kind of important, because it’s where I wrote down things that I wanted to talk about in this report. So I’m relying on my memory, which is erratic.

City Weekly’s coverage of Sundance ended yesterday, and so did our residence at the swanky condo. Last night, then, I slept on the couch at my friend Smacky’s place in Salt Lake City. But the real news is that I got eight hours of sleep — down at 1 a.m., up at 9. I faced the day with new vigor, aided by the brightly shining sun and the warmer temperatures and an extra dose of heroin with my morning Slim-Fast.

Contrary to custom, the festival showed few signs of slowing down today. Press screenings were still full, the public screening I attended was jam-packed, and traffic on Main Street was still horrific. (Why anyone actually attempts to drive on Main Street during Sundance, instead of parking and using a shuttle bus, is beyond me.)

Another reason it didn’t seem as late in the festival as it actually is: I haven’t walked out of anything yet. Thursday is usually the day I lose patience with movies that aren’t going anywhere, that clearly aren’t going to get any better, and stop wasting my time with them. Yet here we are, at the end of Thursday, and I’ve finished everything I’ve started. Am I growing more tolerant of mediocrity? That seems unlikely. (See my review of “Big Momma’s House 2″.)

My HBS.com pals were gone, though — Erik back to Chicago and Scott to Philly — and that’s how I can tell the festival is almost over, when Erik and Scott are no longer around to joke and laugh and rant and rave with me. I kid them in this diary sometimes, but I tease because I love. (Except with Rosie O’Donnell. I tease her because she’s annoying.)

First up today was “The Night Listener,” in which Robin Williams plays a public radio personality who initiates an ongoing telephone friendship with a 14-year-old boy who is dying of AIDS. There’s something fishy about the boy, though, and especially with his foster mother (played by Toni Collette), and the radio guy sets out to determine the truth, even though it means going to Wisconsin, which I’m sure would deter many of us.

It’s not a bad film, and its prestigious cast virtually ensures it will be picked up for theatrical release at some point. I noticed something odd, though: It was the first non-documentary I’d seen at the festival this year that had homosexuals as its central characters and homosexuality as a central theme. (Williams plays one, and part of the film deals with his recently failed long-term relationship.) Meanwhile, I’ve seen three movies — “Somebodies,” “Come Early Morning” and “Eve & the Fire Horse” — that depict church-going and religious faith as positive, commendable things, a theme that is unusual in ANY movie today, let alone one playing at Sundance. Whether all of this is representative of the 120 features showing at the festival, or whether it’s a coincidence, I don’t know. It’s an interesting trend, though: less gay, more church. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It was lunchtime next, and though Burger King has been a regular festival destination, I considered giving the Chinese buffet next to the Holiday Village Theatre a try. I ate there a few years ago and was not pleased, but those places are always changing cooks, managers, selections and so forth, so I thought it might be worth checking out again. But when I walked in the door, whom should I see greeting me and offering me a table but the inattentive waiter/manager at the Yarrow Hotel’s Corner Cafe! Apparently he has two jobs. His presence here struck me as a bad omen, so I skedaddled and headed for Burger King, where I belong.

I was planning to attend a 10 p.m. press screening of “The Darwin Awards,” but after lunch a crazy idea struck me: There was a public screening at the Library at 2:30. Could I catch that and still make it back to Holiday Village in time for the 4:30 press screening of “Art School Confidential”? It might be tight, but I thought I could do it. The Holiday Village isn’t far from the Library; I could walk it in 10 minutes if I had to, though of course I hoped it didn’t come to that.

“The Darwin Awards” premiered at the Eccles last night and has been highly anticipated, if only because of its subject matter. You know the Darwin Awards, of course — people who are “praised” for dying as the result of their own stupid actions, because it means they have removed their inferior genes from the gene pool. The movie is about an insurance adjuster who seeks to find common risk factors among people who died in a Darwinian fashion. It stars Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder and features comedic re-enactments of some famous Darwin deaths (like the guy who strapped a rocket to his car and smashed into the side of a mountain).

The Library screening was packed, with many would-be wait-listers being turned away. The director, Finn Taylor (who also made “Cherish,” a highlight of the 2002 festival), and his group sat behind me. I told him before the screening that I had enjoyed his last film and was looking forward to this one. He seemed very gracious and humble. I overheard him amazedly telling his companions that he’d heard about a pair of tickets to last night’s premiere being scalped for $1,000. I doubt that actually happened, but it was charming to hear a filmmaker be so genuinely surprised and awestruck by his own popularity.

Unfortunately, “The Darwin Awards” is not a very good movie at all. For one thing, it focuses not on the actual news stories that become Darwin Awards, but on the urban legends that never really happened (like the guy who strapped a rocket to his car and smashed into the side of a mountain). For another thing, if you’ve heard the stories before, the surprise — and therefore the humor — is ruined.

More importantly, though, it’s just kind of a mess of a film. For no reason, the main character is being followed around by a film student doing a documentary. (The kid is often clearly not in the car with them, yet he always seems to wind up where they’re going.) Also for no reason, the two main characters fall in love with each other, in a development that is the very definition of “obligatory.” There’s an absurd subplot involving a serial killer who eluded the insurance investigator back when he was a cop — eluded the entire police force, in fact, even though his face and voice were caught on camera and he therefore ought to be pretty easy to find.

Disappointed in the film, I scurried out of the venue, onto a shuttle bus, and down to Holiday Village for “Art School Confidential.” Were we just speaking of disappointments? Yes, yes we were. Directed by Terry Zwigoff, of “Ghost World” and “Bad Santa,” I had been warned that “Art School Confidential” is funny for 45 minutes and then falls apart, but I didn’t even think the first 45 minutes were very funny. It’s set at a liberal arts college, and it makes fun of the types of students — vulgar filmmakers, gay fashion designers, vegan hippie artists, etc. — to surprisingly little comedic effect, considering how easy those targets are. And then the movie is like, “Whoops, we have this subplot, where there’s a killer bumping off students, and I guess we’d better deal with that. Shoot.”

That was it for me today. Only three movies, which is a rather light load for Sundance. The other press screenings either didn’t interest me or were for movies I’d already seen. The public screenings were similarly unappealing. So maybe the festival is winding down after all. Soon it will stop altogether, and all the movie people will have to go back to their real lives, which luckily aren’t very realistic anyway.