Visiting Sundance From the Comfort of a Home PC

A day at the Sundance Film Festival is a lot like a night in Las Vegas for the lucky filmmaker who arrives amid a throng of aspirants cradling their film cans. By nightfall, one may become the toast of Park City, the sizzling hot commodity sporting a shiny new development deal and an attractive entourage.

Fast-paced, high-stakes wheelin’ and dealin’ is so de rigueur in the snowy Hollywood outpost in Utah that the Internet has emerged as the medium of choice to report on the nanosecond-to-nanosecond permutations that make up a New York minute at this preeminent film festival.

While a coterie of cinephiles will hazard frostbite and interminable lines to sold-out films, why not couch your potatoey self and catch the commotion from the comfort of your mouse pad?

The Sundance Film Festival is visited by three journalists to every filmmaker, and a good number of that press corps will be uploading scoop, as well as digital multimedia, from the aisles at the movies. Start at festival headquarters at https://www.sundancechannel.com/festival99/, where you can read synopses of each film to be shown this year, from star-studded premieres like Robert Altman’s “Cookie’s Fortune” to midnight screenings like “Samurai Fiction,” a digital rock ‘n’ roll take on the samurai genre.

To feel like you’re really a part of the action, download the Sundance Film Trailer, the same introductory mini-film that festival-goers grow to hate on the umpteenth viewing before each and every screening.

The Sundance Channel will provide daily Webcasts throughout the festival, from sidewalk encounters with actors and actresses to panel discussions from the new media and technology center.

Recently nominated for a Webby award, Film.com is sending a gaggle of reporters and critics who will provide text-based reviews from the fest as well as phoned-in audio updates via RealPlayer.

Supplier of the popular e-mail indie-industry newsletter, IndieWIRE has established Park City Central at https://www.indiewire.com/parkcity. There you’ll see interviews, feature articles, party buzz and photos from Sundance and its renegade cousin, Slamdance (https://www.slamdance.com/). Daily dispatches will provide breaking news, interviews and the latest gossip and reviews via Webcast from this site and an affiliate site, filmbytes.com.

Playboy.com, which sponsors the Freedom of Expression Award (given to a Sundance documentary each year) will also provide Webcasting at its site’s POP section (https://www.playboy.com/pop/). Playboy will feature a gallery of film clips and stills from films in the documentary competition, along with clips and information from past winners of the Freedom of Expression Award.

An image and audio gallery of the top parties, premieres, insiders and celebrities will also be available at the Web site.

While Mr. Showbiz (https://www.mr.showbiz) will also be in attendance with its official Sundance report, get the lowdown on this year’s recipient of Sundance’s Piper-Heidsieck tribute for independent vision, Laura Dern, at its celebrity sub-site, https://www.celebsite.com/people/lauradern/index.html.

Other Sundance-related sites include https://www.sundancefilmstore.com/index.html, where you can buy festival apparel and video collections of past winning film fare. Variety Online has established a special corner for Sundance coverage at https://www.variety.com/sundance/. News and film reviews will go up there daily. Also providing coverage are ET online (https://www.etonline.com/), E! online (https://www.eonline.net/), Entertainment Weekly online (https://www.ew.com) and Popcorn Q(https://www.planetout.com/pno/kiosk/popcornq/).

Rubbing elbows with the ab-fab icons of the indie film scene was never so effortless.

Erika Milvy writes about things arty and cyberesque from her home in San Francisco. She can be reached at erika@well.com.