• The Hollywood Reporter has already summed up this year’s festival despite there still being a few more days left. The trade calls both the fest and its films “surprising, quality-filled and not as depressing as some expected.”
• Despite this year bringing quality, though, it didn’t necessarily bring buyers. The L.A. Times has a look at how this year was a buyer’s market, particularly noticeable in the low purchase prices and alternative distribution models. And many of the titles picked up, including The Winning Season, Adam and Black Dynamite, were apparently bought for their “broad” audience appeal over their quality.
• AJ Schnack at All these wonderful things writes on the terrible lack of documentary acquisitions so far this festival.
• Marc Webb, whose feature debut, 500 Days of Summer, premiered at this year’s fest, has already made a deal for his second film. He’ll direct The Spectacular Now, another coming-of-age drama also to be scripted by his 500 Days writers, for Fox Searchlight.
• indieWIRE has the 2009 shorts winners. Jury Prizes went to Short Term 12 and Lies while Honorable Mentions include The attack of the robots from Nebula-5, Protect You + Me, Western Spaghetti, Jerrycan, Love You More, I Live in the Woods, Omelette and Treevenge.
• Most of the coverage of Sundance yesterday consisted of report and commentary on the “Dude vs. Film Critic” non-fight. Karina’s mostly first-hand account can be found here.

Sundance just released their short film lineup, and though I’m still going through the release, I know for a fact that there’s at least one film on there that you can watch right this second. FCU: Fact Checkers Unit stars Bill Murray, Kristen Schaal, Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca; it was written by Karinen, Sacca and director Dan Beers. I watched it a couple of months ago on YouTube. It’s good; it didn’t change my world, but it’s polished and funny. In the 3+ months since it’s been available at YouTube and FunnyOrDie, it’s already been watched about 750,000 times. At that point, is playing at Sundance even a big deal? Depending on where it plays and how often, they’ll be extremely lucky if 1,000 people see it in Park City–but I guess the hope is that it’ll be the right 1,000 people.

In any case, it’s not like this is your standard viral video–it clearly has a budget, and did I mention it stars Bill Murray?–but this is, as far as I know, the first instance of a online video hit making the jump to a festival the size Sundance. Please correct me if I’m wrong. And watch the short above–I have a feeling it won’t be on YouTube for much longer.