Park City, 1/30.

"Sundance has meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people in its 23 years of existence, but if its awards were ever important, they aren't now." Andrew O'Hehir argues in Salon that the juried competitions "have become a sort of sidebar to the main event, and an increasingly confusing one at that." That's Page 1. On Page 2, he lists "five narrative features and five documentaries that premiered here and ought to make some noise."

"In the seven years I've been coming to Sundance, I'm not sure that I've ever seen a film so completely captivate the public and the critics alike as John Carney's Once, the Irish musical drama whose little-movie-that-could odyssey was completed Saturday night when it collected the audience award in Sundance's world dramatic competition," blogs Scott Foundas. "But as I learned from speaking to the film's producers, before Once was selected by Sundance it had been rejected by several high-profile North American and international festivals, which says something telling (and unfortunate) about the kind of snobbery that can infect the festival selection process."

He's got more at the Voice: "Always important to remember when discussing Sundance: The festival is ultimately at the mercy of the films being made - and if one is to take the festival's 2007 dramatic competition as a barometer of today's American indie-film landscape, the news is not encouraging."

Also, Rob Nelson: "Even by the lacerating standards of recent Sundance docs Why We Fight and Iraq in Fragments, the nonfiction at this year's fest felt, well, real - alarmingly so. Indeed, after doing battle with films about US policies on Iraq, Darfur, and global warming, this critic was nearly moved to rescind his American citizenship."

"Going into the festival, word was not good," writes Kirk Honeycutt for the Hollywood Reporter. "Coming out of the festival, you realize how little value this 'word' actually possesses.... If anything epitomizes Sundance 2007, it is the acknowledgment not just in the documentaries but also in the lightest of feature films that the world is in a bad place right now."

Anthony Kaufman ranks the films he caught: "Best," "Strong," "Solid," "Fair," "Weak."

Karina Longworth takes one last look back. Well, two. Maybe eight, depending.

Ray Pride's posting the pictures he snapped.

IndieWIRE and IFC News gather all their Sundance coverage on handy single pages.

Online viewing tip. Attendees name some of their favorites for indieWIRE.

Posted by dwhudson at January 30, 2007 1:58 PM