· While the festival itself is as cutthroat as it's ever been — this year admitting only 32 American films to competition out of 1,900 submitted — founder Robert Redford acknowledged to THR that he can foresee a day when Sundance runs its swag-choked, over-hyped, deflated-market course: "[W]hen we're no longer providing the mission we started with — not creating something new for audiences, not creating opportunities for new artists to have a place to come and develop — then we shouldn't be here, and we won't."

· And if/when the sponsorship pool recedes to near-wading levels, symptoms of which are apparent this year after festival partners Volkswagen and Adobe have backed out and party budgets have been slashed by millions of dollars? "What might be a positive is that if there is less hoo-ha," Redford says."Less of a circus atmosphere." Meh. "Get off my lawn" sounds so much better coming out of Clint Eastwood's mouth.

· Worst-case scenario, we can export Sundance to Abu Dhabi, where investors are in talks to introduce their own version of the fest — surely at an 600,000 square-foot indoor mall inside which Park City's Main Street will be rebuilt, five feet of man-made snow will line the street, and puddles of fake vomit will greet filmgoers exiting midnight screenings at the Egyptian.

· Again, 1,900 filmmakers vied for spots in this year's American competition. Less than 2 percent of them received this phone call from Sundance programming chief John Cooper. Show-offs. [via /film]

Here's what we find intriguing about this video. After noticing that someone was videotaping him in the parking lot of the Starbucks, Quentin went on a slapping and (attempted) kicking rampage. However, after tempers cooled, the two engaged in a very un-QT like conversation (meaning, no N-bombs were dropped and no early `70s car chase films were referenced). From the clip, it appears that Mr. Brown initially mistook the largely non-verbal `razzo for a local on the lookout for some celebrity footage, which makes the whole slapping thing seem that much more insidious. After all, it's one thing to take a crack at a professional pap for getting up in your mug (just ask Sean Penn), but it's another thing entirely to jump on someone that you think is either a local or some sort of tourist. Come on, QT; we think it's high time to dial it down a notch.

Playing the tried-and-true role of bleeding-heart teacher (perfected already by Michelle Pfeiffer first in Dangerous Minds and Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson), Coogan's annoyingly named character Mr. Marschz will save his drama department by writing a sequel to Hamlet. Judging by the dearth of updated Shakesperean knee-slappers in the last decade of cinema (does 10 Things I Hate About You count?), we're not really sure how Coogan pulls this off, but we are hoping for a Courtney cameo in which she slithers onto the stage of the inevitable High School Musical-like finale and whispers "Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" in her crackheadiest voice.

As laughable as his faux-sincerity is during the intro (especially considering the fact that our turtlenecked thespian just received a court date for that whole assault fiasco last year), things turn from funny to oh-so-sad once we actually get the "gift" of seeing Sean Combs, The Actor at work in the trailer. If you're able to stomach his skillz long enough, don't miss his climactic rendering of the classic line, "You damn right I'm bitter! I'm a volcano!!" Who knew Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lorraine Hansberry had Tupac in mind as her antihero?

• Sean Combs "A Raisin In The Sun" Trailer [Youtube]

While it's always encouraging to hear that talented people like Stanley Tucci don't suck, our hearts are actually warmed considerably more by the thought that Grenier, our favorite card-carrying Democrat, blew off a scheduled interview to attend a competing film festival. Before, of course, an earnest round of blanking in his hotel room.

While the docs have fared well at the fest, with HBO snapping up Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and American Teen on the verge of going for big bucks, buyers looking for another Juno or Little Miss Sunshine have pretty much thrown up their hands and begun tallying exactly how many Amstel Lights and ski lift tickets they can slip into their expense accounts without getting a red flag from accounting. While this could simply mean that, yes, maybe letting the Dodgeball guy direct Mysteries of Pittsburgh was a dumb idea and the Robert DeNiro movie What Just Happened? got its title from an audience feedback card, the media has thrown themselves into the daunting task of unraveling this head scratching whodunit.

Fingers have been pointed at Paris Hilton, who had the gall to show up and be mobbed by drunken D-girls who were so bored they mistook the celebutard for an actual celebrity, and, yes, bloggers. Tom Bernard of Sony Picture Classics told the New York Times that the true slayer of hype is, yes, text messaging:

In the well-received documentary American Teen, he noted, a photograph of a girl's breasts is circulated to her classmates in a matter of hours. "It's sort of like that here," Mr. Bernard said. "I had to leave What Just Happened? early to go meet a director, and where I was, these bloggers were getting text messages about how the movie was playing, while it was still playing. In a sense, the press is too immediate for the sellers, because they can't really dupe people anymore."

Just think, some mean-spirited blogger is simultaneously squashing a hack's career AND saving you 11 bucks. How cool is that?

• Caution's In The Air As Sundance Opens [New York Times]