Here is what’s happening at Eric D. Snider Enterprises these days!

As you may recall, I’m on the Governing Committee of the Online Film Critics Society, and we’re trying to increase the group’s relevance in the lives of people who aren’t film critics. To that end, we have a blog in which items of interest to movie lovers everywhere are recapped, and a Twitter feed that will link to some of the same things. May I humbly insist that you follow @OFCS on Twitter and also politely demand that you bookmark our blog, or subscribe to its RSS feed, or whatever it is you kids do with your websites nowadays? Thank you very much indeed.

While you’re at the Twitter, remember that I can be found @EricDSnider thereat.

My good friend Dawn Taylor (@DawnTaylor666) recently launched a new weekly podcast, called Ham-Fisted Radio, in which all manner of topics are addressed, but mostly movies. She has a guest each week; so far, of the nine episodes she’s done, I’ve been the guest on five of them. I’m practically a co-host!

If you want to hear me and Dawn talk about stuff — and why wouldn’t you? — all the podcasts are archived at her site, where you’ll also find a link to where you can subscribe at iTunes. The podcasts have the “Explicit” tag on them, but that’s really just a precaution, in case somebody uses a salty word or two. The episodes I’ve been on have stayed at the PG-13 level. And in the most recent one, we performed a scene from “The Golden Girls” in which I played both Blanche and Sophia.

Alert readers may have noticed that it is January, and that January is when the Sundance Film Festival is, and that I usually go to the Sundance Film Festival. Sure enough, it starts Thursday night and runs through next week, and I will be there again, for the 11th year, writing reviews and commentary for Film.com and Cinematical.

Ever since 2003, I’ve also written a daily Sundance diary for your amusement (or, if you were not visiting my site in 2003, for the amusement of those who were). It is my intention, as of this moment, to continue the tradition. However, you should be aware that Sundance is exhausting enough by itself, and that writing a daily diary only increases the exhaustion factor, and that I have recently been trying to divest myself of things that add undue mental stress. It might turn out that the daily diary is one of those things, in which case I reserve the right to not do it. Either way, I’ll keep you apprised here at the blog.

I left Utah on Saturday, stopped in Boise for the night (making sure not to stay in the hotel where I almost got shot), and arrived safely in Portland yesterday afternoon. But echoes of Sundance still reverberate, and here we shall address them.

First, Cinematical has a handy list of which Sundance films have been purchased by distributors, which means they will eventually play at a theater near you. These are just the ones that sold during the festival; if history is any guide, there will be several more deals made this week, with a few more trickling in over the next few months.

Next, here are the films I reviewed during the festival:

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Day 9 (Friday, Jan. 23)

I did some more sleeping around last night. With Childress having gone home a few days ago, Weinberg was now sharing Davis’ room, and I was kindly permitted to sleep on the floor. Weinberg and Davis were furnished with earplugs, and everyone passed the night peacefully, except for me, as I was sleeping on the floor.

But sleeping at the Yarrow, even on the floor, has its benefits. It makes it easy to stumble to an 8:30 a.m. screening that’s being held in the same hotel. Theoretically, you wouldn’t even have to put shoes on, since it’s just down the hall and the hall is carpeted. I’ll have to try that next time.

The 8:30 a.m. movie in question was “An Education,” written by Nick Hornby and starring new up-and-comer Carey Mulligan (she was also in “The Greatest” at Sundance) as a British teenager in the 1960s whose stuffy, unimaginative parents don’t understand her love for art and literature and French things. It had been widely acclaimed throughout the week, which is why Sundance posted another screening (at the last minute, as was the festival’s wont this year). I’m not sure I loved the film, but I definitely liked it.

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Day 8 (Thursday, Jan. 22)

What I’ve learned about film festivals is that when the chips are down, you can always count on the movie geeks to lend you a hand. Weinberg helped me put out feelers to see who had someplace I could crash on last night, and Drew and Dan of HitFix came through with a couch. I felt bad for Dan, who had to share the room with me and had not been informed of my snoring tendencies, but as it turned out there wasn’t much sleep in his future anyway, as he had to be up early to cover the Oscar nominations. Drew, a snorer himself, had already been quarantined in the other room. They should just put us all on an island together and let us snore each other to death.

Ever since Sundance and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences got on the same cycle a few years ago, like sorority sisters, the Oscar nominations have been announced during Sundance week. Today’s nods, including one for Heath Ledger, came on the one-year anniversary of Ledger’s death. As usual, the nominations were 95% what everyone expected and 5% UNFORGIVABLY OFFENSIVE SNUBS AND NO ONE WILL EVER TAKE THE OSCARS SERIOUSLY AGAIN!!!!!! Or at least that’s the word on the blogs. I know that by failing to nominate “The Dark Knight” for Best Picture, the Academy angered a lot of nerds. And we all know that movie geeks aren’t easily outraged.

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Day 7 (Wednesday, Jan. 21)

My Cinematical overlord Erik Davis was kind enough to let me sleep on the second bed in his hotel room last night. This may not sound like much of a sacrifice until you know that I’m something of a snorer. I’m registered in the national database and am required to notify my new neighbors whenever I move. Apparently I have sleep apnea. I once shared a hotel room with someone who officially has it, who sleeps with a machine and everything, and he confirmed the self-diagnosis I’d already made. If I ever have health insurance and/or several thousand dollars of extra money again, it’s the first thing I’ll look into. Anyway, I equipped Erik with earplugs and tried to minimize my output by sleeping on my side. I survived the night without being murdered, so it must have been OK.

Today was a slow day, screening-wise. Almost everything on the schedule was something I’d already seen or that I had absolutely no interest in seeing based on its description or reputation. So I requested a ticket for a public screening of “Cold Souls,” which I’d heard good things about, and made my first trip of 2009 to the Eccles Theatre. The movie, best described as Charlie Kaufman lite, is about a man who stumbles across a company that can extract your soul and put it in storage for you. The reason you would want to do this is that souls can be burdensome. Without one, you don’t have to deal with any dark thoughts or major emotions. Oh, and you can borrow someone else’s if you want. The main character is Paul Giamatti, played by Paul Giamatti. Very meta-referential. It’s nothing compared to the very similar “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but it’s good enough. Love that Paul Giamatti.

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Day 6 (Tuesday, Jan. 20)

Laremy and I had to check out of our Film.com-funded condo this morning, but first we had to watch a few minutes of the inauguration proceedings on the telly. Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair, presumably because his powers are diminishing as his empire slips out of his grasp; by the end of the day, he was nothing but a withered bag of skin. Laremy said it would be funny if, as Obama took the oath, he announced that he was a secret Mormon. Nobody would have seen that one coming!

But then we had to go watch movies. My first screening, a sparsely populated press event at Holiday Village, was “Mystery Team,” starring the comedy troupe DerrickComedy as a trio of child sleuths (think Encyclopedia Brown) who are now high school seniors but still act like child sleuths. (All their usual suspects are 7-year-olds.) And now they’re trying to solve a double murder. It’s funny, sometimes hilarious, but it’s way too long. It’s an 80-minute movie trapped in the body of a 105-minute movie.

Immediately after this, with hardly a moment to spare, was “Sin Nombre,” a violent drama about gangs in the southern reaches of Mexico who cross paths with immigrants on their way to the U.S. It was interesting to be reminded that Mexico has another border, i.e., the one with Guatemala, and that apparently that border is significantly easier to cross than the northern one.

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Day 5 (Monday, Jan. 19)

I didn’t mention this before because I was hoping it would prove to be a non-issue, but now it’s gone too far. There is someone else in the Sundance press corps who has the same laugh as my pal Erik Childress. I heard it during “Humpday” and again last night during “Paper Heart,” and Childress wasn’t at either one. When I hear it, I try to look around and see who it’s coming from, but I’ve been unable to identify the source.

I heard it — Erik’s Chuckleganger — again today at my first screening, “Big Fan.” This is a somewhat dark comedy about an obsessive New York Giants fan, played by Patton Oswalt, who gets into an altercation with his quarterback idol that results in the QB being benched — which means the fan has unwittingly sabotaged his favorite team. It’s a solid film that mocks sports obsession specifically but is just as applicable to other obsessive types (coughmoviegeekscough).

In addition to the impostor Childress, this screening also contained several beautiful French women. I don’t know if they were journalists or what, but they traveled in pairs, going so far as to ask someone to move so they could sit together. Since they were beautiful and French, no one had a problem with that. I was slightly annoyed by the pair who sat right next to me and whispered Frenchly to each other during the film, but perhaps one had to explain some of the nuances of Patton Oswalt’s performance to the other one. I would have shushed them, but I don’t know how to say “Shh!” in French. The glare-accompanied-by-throat-clearing apparently is not a universal language.

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Day 4 (Sunday, Jan. 18)

No doubt about it, the festival is less crowded this year, at least in terms of journalists. The press screenings have been full-ish but not at capacity, nothing has really blown anyone away, and there’s a general lack of euphoria. Not a bad fest, not a great fest, just … so-so. A little bit off.

Then again, the week is still young, and things could pick up. The festival might be building to something. Anything could happen! It’s a season of miracles! Someone said they saw Ben Lyons actually attend a movie, but that’s probably apocryphal.

My day began with a visit to press headquarters to pick up press kits, mostly for movies whose publicists didn’t provide any. (Keep up the good work!) I wrote for a few minutes, then headed to Holiday Village for “Amreeka,” which is playing in competition. It’s a charming and pleasant comedy about a Palestinian woman and her teenage son who move to Illinois to live with relatives, where they experience your standard racism and other hardships. Which doesn’t sound charming and pleasant at all, now that I look at it, but trust me, it is. It’s one of those nice films about the importance of family and the inherent decency of most people. You know, crap like that.

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Day 3 (Saturday, Jan. 17)

It was a little past 3 a.m. when I crawled into my very comfortable bed last night, and only 9:00 when I had to expel myself from it this morning. I had to get up because I really wanted to see the movie about the obese illiterate teenager who’s impregnated for the second time by her father.

The movie is called “Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire,” and yes, that’s actually the onscreen title, perhaps to distinguish it from “Push It: Based on a Song by Salt ‘n’ Pepa.” It screened at 10 a.m., which is far too early to see a film about an obese illiterate teenager who’s impregnated for the second time by her father, and whose mother fostered the abuse and sees the girl as a rival for her man’s affections. And the abusive mother being played by Mo’Nique? What time of day WOULD be right for that??!

Lo and behold, it’s a fantastic movie, harrowing in its details but consistently tactful and un-gratuitous in its depiction of them, and ultimately hopeful and redeeming. The 16-year-old Harlem girl in question is played by a new actress named Gabourey Sidibe, and man alive, what a performance. There’s no question about it: She really is very fat. No, also, she’s fantastic — heartbreaking, funny, and unforgettable.

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Day 1 (Thursday, Jan. 15)

Gentlemen, start your lesbians! The 2009 Sundance Film Festival has commenced in the quaint mountain town of Park City, Utah, with 120 independent features and goodness knows how many short films scheduled to play here over the next 10 days. Insiders are predicting quite a bit less whining this year, as the weather forecast calls for sunny skies all week long. Apparently Robert Redford got my angry letter after last year’s constant snow.

This is a milestone year for the festival: It was in 1985 that Redford’s Sundance Institute took over the Salt Lake City-based United States Film Festival — it was a bloody coup, hundreds of filmmakers were slain — making 2009 the 25th year that the fest has appeared under the Sundance banner. It is also a milestone for me, as I first covered Sundance full-time in 2000, making this my 10th. With my punchcard, I get the next one free!

The first day of the fest, as longtime readers know, consists only of an opening-night gala screening, with the film playing simultaneously for the press in another location. We do not object to being segregated from the public; having been to the gala before, we know that it’s not worth the hassle. We’re fine with being kept among our own kind in the screening room.

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