Jay and Mark Duplass on the set of Cyrus

Right now most journalists, bloggers, and other film obsessives are hedging their bets on which movies will enchant audiences and/or earn distribution deals at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It’s an increasingly trickier guessing game since the specialty film market (an all-encompassing business term for indie/foreign/oddball projects) of late has endured many failures and had few successes to celebrate, and smaller-minded studios getting wiped out in the economic downturn. Yes, it’s totally depressing; however, there’s a silver-screen lining here: Sundance has shaken up its personnel and revamped its rosters with expanded midnight selections as well as an intriguing crop of “no-budget” films — two signs the festival is looking to earn back its reputation for breaking films first.

So who’s on the guest list? At Sundance, veteran directors, as always, mix with first-timers and emerging filmmakers, and some of the best-known names this year include the Hollywood-bound Duplass Brothers with Cyrus, Nicole Holofcener with Please Give (who to me is like the female Neil LaBute, though she’s still making relevant projects), and Michael Winterbottom whose The Killer Inside Me has already earned super-sexy buzz. These feature filmmakers join experienced documentarians such Davis Guggenheim with Waiting for Superman and Ricki Stern with what I think could be one of the biggest hits of the festival, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.

The World Cinema Documentary Competition features stories of Russian citizens in space (Space Tourists), Pablo Escobar’s son, Juan, who has been living under an assumed identity in Buenos Aries since his father’s murder (Sins of My Father), and a first-person account of Cambodia’s Killing Fields (Enemies of the People). This section tends to produce some of the most talked-about films of the festival, though I feel like few of them ever get picked up for distribution — a telling sign of definite popularity losing out to a lack of potential marketability.

I have my eye on a couple films from the World Cinema Dramatic Competition category: Boy, a 1984-set comedy from New Zealand’s Oscar-winning director Taika Cohen, and Animal Kingdom, David Michôd‘s first film set in Melbourne’s underground (Michôd also wrote the screenplay for another Sundance pick, Hesher, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-starring drama that might walk away with a major buy.

Looking at the midnight specials, two films look to lure attendees away from the myriad opening-night parties: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and Splice, the latter of which was almost a release late last year, but is looking for festival buzz to propel its theatrical launch.

And lest I forget Howl, the Allen Ginsberg biography which opens the festival and heralds the return of directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Celluloid Closet, The Times of Harvey Milk), who spent the last 10 years in semi-obscurity. And who could blame them? Succinctly put: James Franco playing a gay cultural revolutionary is the kind of bold move that earns our continued respect.

Chances are we’ll begin to know over the weekend which films are in prime position to turn festival buzz into signed distribution deals. Last year saw a healthy crop of future success stories, Precious, An Education, The September Issue, Humpday, Sin Nombre, Good Hair, and (eventually) The Cove. For trivia’s sake: joining The Cove on the hunt for this year’s Best Documentary Oscar includes another 2009 Sundance vet, Burma VJ.

In fact, Burma VJ represents the type of film we’re hoping to spotlight for you this year; alongside all of the celeb-soaked movies, we hope to uncover some gems that will be cresting in popular culture this time next year.

–Arno Kazarian