Ty Burr here, fit, tan, and rested after my Sundance adventure/death-march (I'm reading Wesley's postings with a certain amount of schadenfreude -- drink lots of coffee between each screening, friend.)

Looking ahead, Tuesday morning comes the announcement of the 2005 Academy Award nominations at 8:30 a.m. eastern time, which means that some poor rising starlet has to be on-camera at 5:30 Hollywood time looking perky and serious. Which means that hair and make-up probably start around midnight. Anyway, here's my best guess of who's going to get the nod in the major categories. No winner predictions yet; let's just let the nominees bask in their deserved glory for a bit.

Best Picture:
"Brokeback Mountain"
"Capote"
"Crash"
"Good Night, and Good Luck"
"Munich"
Dark Horses: "The Constant Gardener," "A History of Violence," "Match Point," "Walk the Line"

Best Director:
Ang Lee, "Brokeback Mountain"
Paul Haggis, "Crash"
George Clooney, "Good Night and Good Luck"
David Cronenberg, "A History of Violence"
Steven Spielberg, "Munich"
Dark Horses: Woody Allen ("Match Point"), Bennett Miller ("Capote")

Best Actor:
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, "Capote"
Terrence Howard, "Hustle and Flow"
Heath Ledger, "Brokeback Mountain"
Joaquin Phoenix, "Walk the Line"
David Strathairn, "Good Night and Good Luck"
Dark Horses: Jeff Daniels ("The Squid and the Whale") Ralph Fiennes ("Constant Gardener"), Viggo Mortensen ("History of Violence")

Best Actress:
Judi Dench, "Mrs. Henderson Presents"
Felicity Huffman, "Transamerica"
Keira Knightley, "Pride and Prejudice"
Charlize Theron, "North Country"
Reese Witherspoon, "Walk the Line"
Dark Horses: Joan Allen ("The Upside of Anger"), Maria Bello ("History of Violence"), Ziyi Zhang ("Memories of a Geisha")

Best Supporting Actor:
George Clooney, "Syriana"
Matt Dillon, "Crash"
Paul Giamatti, "Cinderella Man"
Jake Gyllenhaal, "Brokeback Mountain"
Frank Langella, "Good Night, and Good Luck"
Dark Horses: Terrence Howard ("Crash"), Bob Hoskins ("Mrs. Henderson Presents")

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams, "Junebug"
Maria Bello, "A History of Violence"
Catherine Keener, "Capote"
Rachel Weisz, "The Constant Gardener"
Michelle Williams, "Brokeback Mountain"
Dark Horses: Scarlett Johansson ("Match Point"), Frances McDormand ("North Country"), Shirley MacLaine ("In Her Shoes")

I'll post predictions on the other nominees later, but now I have to run to the opening-day show of "Big Momma's House 2," the sort of movie they don't, uh, screen for critics. From the sublime to the ridiculous, I guess.

Every year the Sundance Film Festival seems to grow bigger, and the people seem to get ruder. Not the volunteers, of course, or the actual residents of Park City, who have every right to tell us to talk to the hand and never do, but the festivalgoers. Tonight, I went to see “Iraq in Fragments,” a boldly impressionistic documentary of Iraqi civilians during the current war. Before it started, I went on a concessions run. I’d just paid and was about to head back to the theater when a woman in a long cashmere coat on her way to the counter knocked the bag of popcorn out of my hand and proceeded to ask for her own in an expensive-sounding accent. I waited for her to turn around and at least offer a perfunctory “my bad.” She didn’t. I leaned in and said to her, “Excuse me?” She didn’t even look up. One of the two guys working behind the stand gave me the “no worries” face and offered to refill my bag. They had enough to be annoyed about without putting up with the likes of her -- like having to wear T-shirts that promote the upcoming “Pink Panther” movie. The people here are too nice.

What do you get when you send Joan of Arcadia to a therapy session with the White Witch? For starters, the first excellent movie I’ve seen at Sundance. Hilary Brougher’s “Stephanie Daley” is a beautifully shot, written, acted, and edited drama about an upstate New York teenager (Amber Tamblyn) who’s accused of killing her newborn baby. Before a trial, the prosecution asks a forensic psychologist (Tilda Swinton) to determine if the girl is sane. The shrink is several months pregnant herself, and her condition starts to bear on her perception of Daley, who claims she didn’t even know she would give birth.

In another decade, this movie would launch into hysterics, but Brougher, in her filmmaking debut, is a skillful and tender director. The scenes set in the local school are some of the most naturalistic, realistic American high-school sequences ever. And by the end of this movie the shrink and her patient have an almost palindromic relationship. Watching it provides me with yet another example of how Lars von Trier might have turned out it with a few more hugs.

The movie is shaping up to be a gender-splitter. Every woman I know who’s seen it finds it powerful. The men who were at my screening spent a lot of time checking their Blackberries – presumably for messages from Mars. The strangest thing about that showing, though, were the crying babies in the theater, something I’ve never experienced before at this festival. Under the circumstances, it would have seemed wrong to shush them.

When people get wildly excited about an unexciting movie at this film festival, often they’re described as suffering from Sundance altitude sickness. You’re about 4,200 feet above sea level, watching five movies a day, and, film-wise, your “see level” gets thin. Dementia takes over, and terrible things start looking great. On the shuttles and standing in the bathroom line, you overhear people going gaga over garbage. There are two great sufferers of altitude sickness: Studio executives who pay top-dollar for so-so flicks and star-struck festivalgoers, who’ll eat something up if the stars happen to be sitting in the same auditorium.

Finn Taylor’s “The Darwin Awards,” which had its world premiere last night, raised the bar for the second sort of altitude sickness. Critics and studio executives seemed to agree that the movie stinks. But the crowd howled with laughter for the duration, while Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes happened to be relaxing in the next row. They play two insurance claim detectives crossing the country looking for people who died the stupidest deaths. (The film’s inspired by the real-life awards.) Ryder and Fiennes are funny, but the movie at every turn is ineptly made. There’s no idea guiding it, just the director monkeying around with his buddies (Juliette Lewis, David Arquette, and the late Chris Penn, to name a few). Fiennes suspended naked in a harness? Not funny. The film needs Preston Sturges's wit. Instead, we get the worst movie David O. Russell never made. Despite this, the lines to get in went around the theater. But all the cheering might be the result of something worse than Sundance altitude sickness. It’s Stockholm Syndrome.

Getting up this morning, I was ready for the apocalyptic fun and philosophical dread of Chris Gorak’s “Right at Your Door,” a terrorism nightmare that started at 8:30 a.m. – actually, because nothing ever starts on time here, a little before 9. I wish I could say it was worth the wait. The idea was certainly promising. Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack play a married couple (Lexy and Brad) in a new Los Angeles bungalow. She goes off to work. He stays home (he’s a musician). And the regular radio programming is interrupted with breaking news: A series of explosions downtown and at LAX. We see little of it and know only as much as Brad. The TV doesn’t work (the cable guy was supposed to come today), but soon enough we hear word that dirty bombs are detonated and everyone is instructed to seal themselves off, which he does with the help of the gardener (Tony Perez), who barges into the house. Eventually, the wife finds her way home but because she’s infected, she has to stay on the back porch.

If this sounds philosophically ripe and absolutely gut-wrenching, it’s not. Telling a disaster movie from the disaster’s margins is a great idea, and the movie concludes with a “Twilight Zone” sort of irony. But the dread is leavened with too much sentimentality. The thriller never thrills. And we’re provoked to second-guess everybody’s choices, especially when it comes to communicating: All Lexi and Brad seem to do is bicker. The dialogue is mostly a variation on “I’m gonna get you some help” and “[Expletive]!” But my favorite line comes after an infected co-worker of Lexi shows up and makes Brad jealous. (Is this “War of the Worlds” or “As the World Turns”?) Anyway, the co-worker offers to lead her to where she and the infected little boy she’s found can get medicine, and Lexi tells a miffed Brad she’s leaving. “We’re dying. I gotta go. I gotta take Timmy, too.” With any luck they’ll run into Lassie. She’d know what to do.

When you tell people you're going to Sundance, they tend to get this excited look in their eye as if part of the assignment involves sharing a tent with Heath Ledger. In reality, you're sharing a large tent with a lot of volunteers who have tickets to movies you want, and the Badge-ism begins. Some venues set aside only five press tickets, handed out on a first-come-first-serve basis to people with a General Press badge. It's the best press badge one can have; at least that's what a volunteer tells me every year before she makes me wait an hour for a hard ticket. In the Sundance chain of command, there is Robert Redford (absentee landlord that he is) and right below him are the volunteers.

If you have a General Press badge you get to know the most powerful volunteers pretty well, but you can't just breeze into a Sundance movie. That's an Express Badge privilege, and in the badge hierarchy those people are filthy rich. Having a buddy with an Express Badge can try a friendship. Being the lone General Press badge holder in a party of Express Badgers can try a soul. A real test of devotion is whether, once inside, an Express Badger will hold a chair for her lowly friend. You learn a lot about people that way.

I could argue for a ritzier badge, I suppose. ("Do you know who I am? ...Yes, I gave the 'The Transporter' three and a half stars. What of it?") But I'd like to think I've come to value the stress of arriving barely in time for the press ticket giveaway. I'd like to think it's made me and my badge stronger.

Today, all my badge got me was a seat in "Wristcutters: A Love Story." This is a road comedy, and it's pure Sundance, meaning somebody's depressed, and our challenge is to find it funny. Patrick Fugit, Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" alter ego, slits his wrists in the opening scene and winds up in a washed-out limbo full of other suicidals. He hears that the girlfriend who provoked him to take his life is around somewhere, so he, his Russian pal, and a pretty girl go looking for her. Goran Dukic is the director, and he applies an Eastern European sense of irony that at its best feels like a deadpan "Wizard of Oz" or an inside-out science-fiction. But this is a conceit (based on an Etgar Keret novella) that's been stretched too long. (The wrists aren't what need cutting.) There are beautiful patches, but more awkward ones. Once Tom Waits and Will Arnett from "Arrested Development" show up, the whole thing starts coasting on cool. I hope not everyone else in the festival is this thrilled to be dead.

The Neil Young concert film, "Heart of Gold," directed by Jonathan Demme, screened to a packed Sundance theater tonight with the director and singer in attendance. Filmed at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in August of 2005, the acoustic show took place a few months after Young had brain surgery to remove an aneurysm. His father also died around the same time, so it's not surprising that resignation, resilience, and acceptance blow through every song, from the new tunes off "Prairie Wind" to suddenly relevant chestnuts like "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold" ("and I'm gettin' old," indeed).

Demme directs with the same no-nonsense clarity that he brought to the Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense,” but this evening is elegiac rather than avant-hip. The crowd at the Ryman often erupts into applause and so did the crowd watching the film in Park City, knowing Neil was in the audience but also simply moved by what we were seeing and hearing. At the end of one such outburst, the movie-Neil said “Thanks” in a looming close-up, and for a brief, spooky moment, it was as if the line between audience and film had dissolved. As a part-time Young fan, I went in expecting a pretty good concert film; what I got was something much more.

“Heart of Gold” made up for some disappointments earlier in the day. “Factotum,” adapted from Charles Bukowski’s second novel, featured a surprisingly acceptable Matt Dillon as a boozing, womanizing reprobate (i.e., Bukowski himself) and who else but Lili Taylor as his barfly girlfriend, but Norway’s Bent Hamer is the wrong man to put behind the camera. The director of the extremely dry comedy “ Kitchen Stories” misses the poetic rawness of the writer’s work and delivers instead a tidy and well-shot film about an unholy mess of a man.

I’m a big fan of director Terry Zwigoff (“Crumb,” “Bad Santa”) and his previous collaboration with alterna-comics artist Dan Clowes, “Ghost World.” My high hopes for “Art School Confidential” were dashed, though, by a scattershot script that traffics in true romance and murder mysteries, two Hollywood subjects Zwigoff has adroitly sidestepped until now. The most dead-on parts of the movie expose art-school pretensions and posers – much like Clowes’ original comic did – but for the first time Zwigoff loses control of his dark comedic tone, and the results are wildly uneven. Pros like John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, and Jim Broadbent do what they can in support but lead Max Minghella (son of director Anthony) is too young and unformed to convey the necessary angst. Zwigoff was bound to make a lousy movie sooner or later, and here it is,

On the deal front, Warner Independent bought the Michel Gondry romantic whimsy “The Science of Sleep” for $6 million, the only action in a slow day. As I mentioned below, I’ll be leaving tomorrow and passing the blog-reins on to Wesley Morris, who’ll report on the back half of Sundance. Wesley, here are some of the movies I wish I’d been able to catch: “Come Early Morning,” “Iraq in Fragments,” “Stephanie Daley,” “A Lion in the House,” “Thin,” “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” and “An Unreasonable Man.” All have good and growing word of mouth, but at Sundance, you roll the dice and you takes your chances.

I'm glad I'll be passing the festival reporting baton to Wesley M. when he arrives tomorrow -- I've reached the point where the screenings are starting to blur into one long movie and it's hard to tell real from reel. And if you think I've got it bad, think of the buyers who have to see 120 films and then negotiate and commit to million dollar deals.

Since the Fox Searchlight buy for "Little Miss Sunshine" went down two days ago, there's been a lull in the dealmaking. Rumors continue to fly that "Half Nelson" will sign with a distributor as early as today, and "The Science of Sleep" is the center of much interest -- see previous blog entries for my take on both movies -- but the only deal announced yesterday was IFC picking up "Factotum," based on the Charles Bukowski novel with Matt Dillon in the lead. I'll be seeing the film in about an hour, and will let you know what I think. "Wordplay," the documentary about New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz is also rumored to be in play, which makes sense, since it should hit the same audience sweet spot as "Spellbound," "Word Wars," etc.

But maybe you don't want to hear about the deals. Maybe you want to hear about celebs. I got an e-mail from a reader asking if Jennifer Aniston was here, what she was wearing, if Vince Vaughn was around, and whether anyone had asked her about Brad Pitt. The respective answers: Yes, a lovely blue pullover when I got to meet her on Saturday, no, and no. A handful of journalists got to talk with the star of "Friends with Money" and her co-star Catherine Keener in a PR tent fenced off from the hordes trying to get a glimpse of her royal Jenniferness; friendly and engaging, Aniston let Keener do most of the talking, but allowed as how working with a woman director with a cast of strong actresses provided a whole new comfort zone for her.

No one asked about Brad -- while there were no restrictions put on our questions, the fact that we could only talk with her in tandem with Keener put the focus on her work rather than her celebrity. And she seemed fine with that. (And so did I. Sorry, "Us Weekly" readers.) I did ask her exactly how one researches the role of a pothead housemaid; Her straightfaced response: "Um... Google." I'll write up the full interview for when "Friends with Money" comes out later this year, but trust me, there were no tabloid bombshells. You may not want to hear this, but the woman's human.

My first screening today was "Stay," written and directed by comedian Bob Goldthwait and a hell of a way to wake up. A one-joke idea that Goldthwait manages to stretch beautifully for almost all the film's 90 minutes, it's about a young woman (Laura Linney lookalike Melinda Page Hamilton) engaged to a nice young man (Bryce Johnson) and uncertain whether she should tell him about a dark sexual secret in her past. I know, everybody's got secrets, but, trust me, this is one you wouldn't want to share with anybody. Cheap, rude, and very, very funny, "Stay" takes a turn for the serious toward the end and winds up looking like just another low-budget Sundance indie, but this is a promising second feature film for the Bobcat, 14 years after the infamous "Shakes the Clown." More, please.

From there, on to "Allegro," a Danish puzzle-box of a movie from director Christoffer Boe ("Reconstruction"). It's about a concert pianist (Ulrich Thomsen from "The Celebration") who has walled his broken heart and memories where he can't get at them and is invited into a mysterious sci-fi "zone" in the middle of Copenhagen to retrieve them. A headscratcher on the surface but emotionally direct, even sentimental, just beneath that surface, it's an interesting update on the old Bergman classic "Wild Strawberries."

After "Factotum," I'll be seeing "Art School Confidential," from the writing-directing duo that gave us "Ghost World," and a Neil Young concert film directed by Jonathan Demme -- I've got high hopes for both. Tomorrow, Wesley flies in, I stagger home, and he gets to report on all the goodies I'll be missing. "The Darwin Awards" starring Joseph Fiennes, Winona Ryder, Juliette Lewis, and Metallica? Lord, I wish I could see that one.

It's 2 a.m. again after another day of many movies, so here's a quick rundown of what I've seen and what people are talking about:

"Half Nelson" - a solid indie drama about an inner-city junior high teacher (Ryan Gosling) who's both a gifted educator and a drug addict, and the 13-year-old student (Shareeka Epps) who discovers his secret and befriends him. A lot of people loved this film and there were rumors that at least two companies were bargaining for it (or, alternately, looking to sign up director Ryan Fleck), but the performances by Gosling and striking newcomer Epps are the best things about this earnest, harrowing, occasionally schematic character study of two lost souls. The implicit message here seems to be that having parents who were unsuccessful leftists will make you a junkie, but that can't be right.

"The Illusionist" - What on earth is this doing at Sundance? A lushly filmed period drama about magic and revenge set in late-19th century Vienna, it's the antithesis of the scrappy, willfully hip features and documentaries that define the festival. Oh, right, Paul Giamatti's in it - the actor's such an indie-film godhead at the moment that any film he makes instantly qualifies. He's a gruff, hammy hoot as Chief Inspector Uhl, head bloodhound for the evil Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell) and implacable foe of the celebrated illusionist Eisenheim (Edward Norton wearing an industrial-strength goatee). Somehow Jessica Biel fits in here, too, as Sophie, Countess of Teschen. Yes, it's a big old piece of cheese but it's watchable and fun, and Giamatti is clearly in on the joke. I'm not sure that director Neil Burger is, though.

"The Science of Sleep" - the much-anticipated new film by Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), who seems to have set out to prove he could make a Charlie Kaufman movie without a Charlie Kaufman script. Close enough for horseshoes - "Sleep" is probably the film I've enjoyed most of all the ones I've seen at Sundance so far. What plot there is concerns a man-child named Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) who falls in love with the free spirit next door (Charlotte Gainsbourg) only to be driven from her by his own insecurities. Really, though, it's about our dreams and inner fantasy lives and the way they rule our waking hours. Lots of sight gags and extremely funny flights of fancy, and the two leads are endearing, but the film is much less structured than "Eternal Sunshine." Instead, the reference points are "Amelie" and the early, playful Godard, and that ain't bad at all. I loved this quirky little romance and hope you get to see it soon.

"The Foot Fist Way" - a midnight comedy about a pottymouthed small-town Tae Kwon Do teacher (Danny McBride, coming on like Billy Bob Thornton's chunky cousin) and his struggles with his students, his trampy wife, and the Hollywood action star who comes to town. Made in Concord, NC, by hometown director Jody Hill, it's a labor of rude, crude love, and the bellylaughs come fast enough to disguise the thinness of the material. Playing a potbellied legend in his own mind, McBride is fearless and the film's a cute low-rent diversion, less stylized than "Napoleon Dynamite" but in the same general chicken-neck of the woods (albeit with much rougher language).

I'm also hearing very good things about "Come Early Morning," the directorial debut of actress Joey Lauren Adams ("Chasing Amy") that stars Ashley Judd, and the documentary "God Grew Tired of Us," about the lost boys of Sudan. Two movies that made a splash at Toronto last fall, the outback western "The Proposition" and the acerbic comedy "Thank You For Smoking," are also finding new converts.

In general, though, the deal-making is soft this year and there's a general sense that the best movies are good without being great. But it's early yet, and tomorrow it could all change again.

A quick entry between screenings: I just got out of "So Much So Fast," a documentary by Boston-based filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan about the Heywood family of Newton, whose son Stephen was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in his 20s. Over five years of filmmaking, the directors track the family's response, including older brother Jamie Heywood's driven creation of a foundation to practice "guerilla science" in hopes of coming up with a cure.

The movie's a heartwrencher of the best, most inspiring kind, because the Heywoods and especially Stephen approach his situation with grace, a goodly amount of humor, and no self-pity whatsoever. You come out of "So Much So Fast" feeling privileged to have met them. It's also a triumphant Sundance return for Ascher and Jordan ten years after winning a Jury award for "Troublesome Creek".

There wasn't a dry eye in the house when the lights came up to reveal the entire Heywood clan in the audience -- including Stephen (immobile in a motorized wheelchair), his wife and their son. "So Much" has already been sold to PBS, but here's hoping a distributor picks it up for theatrical release. The movie's an emotional killer and it deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.

"Little Miss Sunshine" was the first of the class of Sundance '06 to land a distribution deal, as Fox Searchlight snapped up the audience favorite for a reported $10.5 million plus 10% of the gross (going to who? The producers? The directors? The key grip?). While it was hard to find anyone who had anything bad to say about the adorable comedy, it was also hard to find anyone who didn't think Fox had overpaid. Indeed, immediate second-guessing from the industry hordes on the shuttle buses raised the specter of "Happy Texas" and other festival favorites of years past that were bought for big amounts and went on to make bupkus in theaters. Will the Sundance high-altitude fever translate to a collective shrug from real-world moviegoers? Hard to say. Marketed correctly, "Sunshine" could be a genuine word-of-mouth indie hit. Mismanaged, it'll be just another festival success that died on the vine.

Some good celebrity sightings today: the cast of "Friends with Money" caused a near-riot on Main Street during the afternoon, which really means that Jennifer Aniston caused a near-riot. Crowds blocked the busy street for a chance to see the actress get into an SUV limo, which took off with paparazzi sprinting behind. How come this stuff never happens to Frances McDormand?

Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, and rocker-screenwriter Nick Cave were seen at a soiree celebrating "The Proposition," the gritty Outback western that summons up the ghosts of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah; First Look will be releasing it in May. My favorite star-spotting of the day, though, was seeing Crispin Glover ("Back to the Future," "Willard") striding unnoticed through the throng on Main St. wearing a natty pin-striped suit and a purposeful stare.

In the evening, the big premiere was "The Night Listener," a creepy little number starring Robin Williams as a gay radio celebrity and Toni Collette as a woman who may or may not be the guardian of an ailing young fan. Based on the novel by Armistead Maupin ("Tales of the City"), the movie's both unsettling and unsatisfactory, playing like a version of "Misery" that doesn't want to stoop to being a horror film. Collette's terrific, though, and this marks the second (and third and fourth) fine performance I've seen her in today. I'm beginning to wonder if there's nothing the woman can't do. Williams is also effective, but overall "Listener" is a little too reminiscent of "One Hour Photo" in too many ways: it doesn't trust the genre it's flirting with.

Tomorrow: more deals, more movies, and maybe a bit of sleep.