Gray skies persist and the big awards show arrives tomorrow night as Sundance 2008 draws to a close. Yet there are still surprises.

Last year I pulled out all the stops and attended thirty films in a week, my Sundance personal best. I took quiet pride in my diligence. Yet I still managed to miss Little Miss Sunshine and many other buzz-worthy films. Do the math and you’ll see why. If Sundance programs 120 films and I managed to see 30, then I’ve missed 75% of Sundance’s best programming despite my best efforts. That’s why it’s often hard to have a conversation here about what everyone’s seen in common. Often we haven’t. more

Overcast again. Blues skies aren’t forever.

A slow day. Overheard a klatch of industry veterans planning a Walmart release of the DVD of a festival film, a well-regarded but talky interview-style doc. Can’t see how it could appeal to a mass-market crowd, Walmart’s or otherwise. Maybe it’s the thin atmosphere, the high altitude of Park City that causes Sundance’s storied reality dissociation. Over the years savvy buyers have learned to take a deep breath and count to ten (or ten days) before agreeing to a hype-inflated deal at Park City. Many have been burned in the past by acquisitions vibrant with Sundance buzz that sputter months later when introduced to the public. more

Park City’s weather continues its upswing, with optimistic blue skies, blinding daylight that makes snow banks dazzle like Hollywood teeth, and thin, icy mountain air that invigorates exposed skin and reveals your every breath.

No matter how good the films—and they are good this year–after being cooped up in the gloom of flickering shadows all day, a shot of cold air to the face is as bracing as a shot of strong spirits would be. Good thing, because the latter is a delicacy in Mondo Utah, where buying a round requires temporarily joining a club, usually for the duration of the imbibing.

Sundance is the ultimate temporary club membership, ten days of pretending that the world revolves around a resort festival of small films with limited commercial appeal. Where, absurdly, festival volunteers must shout, “Please turn off your Blackberries!” as the lights dim.

Not your Treos, your Motorolas, your iPhones… tellingly Blackberries are the official mobile communication tool of Hollywood, whose flying monkeys monitor Sundance premieres while compulsively stealing glances at their email in the dark—or is it the other way around? Do they really expect to find box office champions here? more

Director Sean Ellis and DP Angus Hudson sit on either side of me at the Filmmaker Lodge—Hudson, smart and earnest, Ellis, savvy and charismatic, with an actors expressiveness; they seem an unlikely team until they start trading thoughts about The Broken.

“I’ve never been so proud of something I’ve shot,” Hudson is saying, and that’s an understatement for what the pair accomplished visually. The two previously collaborated on Ellis’ short Cashback produced through Ridley Scott’s company RSA. But they had a much bigger canvas to fill on The Broken and an ambition to do something that has never been easy: scary movie that’s more atmosphere than gore.

Of course if anyone at this festival knows how to manipulate an image for atmosphere it’s Ellis, one of the world’s foremost fashion photographers, known for images that take their glamour from an almost impossible fluency with light and muscular storytelling that is often described as cinematic. It strikes me as he talks about the darkroom techniques of dodging and burning, as his hands make the familiar, urgent motions–shaping the volatile mix of chemicals and time–that he thinks reflexively, like a cinematographer. He describes making movies like making photographs, with the emphasis on making. more

Park City’s been overcast and gray since Day 1, but this morning a brilliant platinum light tore a hole in the endless cloud cover and ignited the overlooking Wasatch peaks, back-lighting a sparkly veil of glassy no-see-ums, tiny ice crystals too delicate to form flakes, that danced on wafts of air until they melted in my face.

Yes, I admit the night before I’d seen Academy-award nominee (Taxi to the Dark Side) Alex Gibney’s latest masterwork, Gonzo, the Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, but I deny any pharmaceutical inspiration, at least this early in the morning, as I stop before the Yarrow Hotel to marvel at this floaty, twinkly, sun-lit scrim. Inside the Yarrow a press screening of Morgan Spurlock’s latest saga-in-cheek, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, is almost underway, and I race into the theater to find a seat just as the lights fall.

Both docus, I’m happy to report, are polished to high theatrical sheen with eye-catching graphics, animated illustrations (the great Ralph Steadman in Gonzo), and well-crafted high-definition cinematography (D.P. Maryse Alberti in Gonzo). Both acquaint audiences with past and present avatars of U.S. politics: the tragic George McGovern, smarmy Richard Nixon, idealistic Jimmy Carter (Gonzo); the hubristic tag team of W. and Osama (Where in the World…). Both deserve and will likely obtain limited theatrical runs (though Sundance 2008 has been notably short of acquisitions so far). more

Brad Anderson liked working with Spanish DP Xavi Gimenez on El Maquinista (The Machinist) and wanted to do it again. Transsiberian would be a very different project—all shot on a train set; they’d have to get movement (and the view out the windows of course) through lighting effects, good green screen and compositing. And very good notes.

“The logical feel for the movie was very fluid, raw and handheld—that’s practical on a train, but it also felt realistic,” Anderson says as he briefly recalls the shoot during a forced march of interviews and photo ops at the Hollywood Life Lounge. The film (starring Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Ben Kingsley, and the rest) had its premiere here Friday and he’s a little swamped as a result. more

Kicking It Director Susan Koch

Nerakhoon (The Betrayal) Director Ellen Kuras

Mike Seymour of I Love Sarah Jane

Choke Director Clark Gregg

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? Editors Julie Lombardi and Gavin Coleman

Captain Abu Raed DP Reinhart Peschke

Anywhere USA Director Chusy Haney-Jardine

Be Kind, Rewind Director Michel Gondry

FLOW: For Love of Water Editor Caitlin Dixon

Check out reels from Sundance vets on Reel-Exchange:

Dick Fisher, cinematographer and editor on 1995 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner The Brothers McMullen

Jonathan Bekemeier, cinematographer on 1997 Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee Black & White & Red All Over

Michael King, 2nd unit on 2006 Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee A Lion In the House, DP on 2003 Sundance short Gravel

Jim Mann, colorist on 1993 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Children of Fate: Life and Death in a Sicilian Family

Want more? Go to Reel-Exchange.com. Want to see your reel up there? Use promo code REX016 to register.

Cinematographer Kris Kachikis has a few minutes before the Pats game. He’s here in Dramatic Competition with American Son which he shot for Neil Abramson during 20 days in bleakest Bakersfield.

This is Kachikis first feature (he’s a veteran commercial DP) and he laughs recalling that his whole “overspoiled, commercial crew” came along for the ride at $100 a day. Between a veteran camera crew and an experienced director, it sounds like a sane shoot—only one 12-hour day.

Kachikis shot 35mm Kodak Vision 2 5229, chosen in part by talking to Emmanuel Lubezki about the long 360 in Children of Men. “That stock carries a lot of detail into the highlights and we had a lot of daytime car interiors and no time or money to light,” Kachikis says. “I had to have detail outside the car windows while still exposing African American skin.” more

An afternoon session at the New Frontier center brought together representatives from some of the biggest behind-the-scenes companies in the film industry to discuss “How to Talk to the Big Guys when You’re a Little Guy.” The Big Guys were Lorette Bayle of Kodak, David Hays of Efilm, Allan Tudzin of Fotokem, Steve-O of Deluxe Laboratories, and Ric Halpern of Panavision. The little guys, of course, were the audience members.

Halpern spoke at length about Panavision’s New Filmmaker Program, under which a budding filmmaker might be lucky enough to score a free rental of a 35mm camera for their project. (Napoleon Dynamite, for instance, might not have been possible without this grant.) more