Day 10 (Saturday, Jan. 28):

This entry is kind of a sham, since I didn’t do anything Sundance-related today. The festival officially ends tomorrow, but it was really done yesterday. There were no press screenings today, and no public screenings I was particularly interested in attending. (I had other obligations tonight anyway. I do have a life outside this festival, you know.)

The awards were announced tonight. I note that I saw very few of the films that won them. I hardly saw any of the documentaries in competition, so it doesn’t surprise me that I didn’t see the winners. Among the dramatic films, I saw several, but not “Quinceañera,” which won the Grand Jury Prize AND the Audience Award (which is a rare double-dip, at least according to my memory). It’s sort of my own fault: I heard buzz that it would win, yet I still failed to see it.

Most of the very best films I saw — “Neil Young: Heart of Gold,” “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” “The Science of Sleep,” etc. — were not in competition but were in the “Premieres” category, where they are showcased but not judged. Among the films eligible for jury awards that I saw, I would have been hard-pressed to choose a winner. None of them seemed great enough. But again, I didn’t see everything.

I saw 37 movies during the festival. I feared that figure would be much lower than usual because of the pre-festival screenings I used to attend that I missed this year due to not living in Utah anymore. (That’s the one drawback to not living in Utah anymore, by the way.) But by the end of last year’s festival, I had seen 43 films, only six more than this year — and I only saw 32 of those DURING the festival. So in fact 37 during the festival itself is pretty good. I feel good about 37. It’s a respectable total. So shut up.

Another different thing about this year’s festival is that I didn’t walk out of anything. I saw a few bad films, to be sure, but nothing SO bad or SO useless that I lost all patience with it. No F-grade movies this year.

Unfortunately, A-grade movies were in short supply, too. Yet even a so-so Sundance Film Festival offers more entertainment, illumination and imagination than any 10-day period at the local multiplex. Talking about a “mediocre festival” is like talking about a mediocre episode of “Arrested Development”: It’s still better than most of the alternatives.

My thanks to Scott Renshaw of Salt Lake City Weekly for including me in his paper’s Sundance coverage, and for the posh accommodations the first few days. My hat is also off to the energetic, hard-working people in the press office who keep things running. The volunteers are to be commended as well, flying in from all over the country for 10 days in exchange for nothing more than the chance to see a few free movies. The festival absolutely wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for them. This was my seventh year at the festival, and I’m already looking forward to No. 8. See you in 2007!