It used to be so nice and easy to see movies at Park City’s Eccles theatre during past Sundance Film Festivals. A volunteer would hand out 50 tickets to press, so all you had to do was show up a half-hour before and things would usually work out. The Eccles was a fairly easy groove in those days — the one place in Park City where you knew you’d probably get into a public screening without much hassle.

But last year (or was it the year before?) the Sundance press office junked the 50-ticket-handout deal in favor of a tiresome system in which journalists had to shlep over to festival headquarters at the Park City Marriott and request public screening ducats a day in advance. In writing yet. And then shlep back there the next morning to see if any had been made available. Thus forcing some of us (i.e., those who can’t spare the time to go through the ticket-request ritual) to become subservient beggars, cajolers, grovellers and suck-ups in the Eccles lobby. What a pleasant ritual to look forward to!

I can see most everything via press screenings at the Yarrow, but you know how it is — you try to see films whenever and however, depending on your always-tight schedule. On top of which it’s cooler to see Premiere selections at the Eccles — there’s a feeling of crackling excitement during some of those screenings that you just can’t get sitting with a bunch of critics.

My initial inclination regarding Humpday, a Sundance Dramatic Compettion movie about two 30something buddies who decide to fuck each other on camera as a kind of amateur-porn Zack and Miri art project, was to shine it. Any and all movies involving the spreading of male butt cheeks generally gets a pass from me. (And I don’t want to hear any homophobic dings about this. Saying “later” to the watching of gay boning in Park City isn’t quite the same thing as putting it down or condemning it, God forbid.)

But now I’m thinking “maybe, I don’t know, possibly” due to two factors.

One, a form of semi-infectious enthusiasm coming from the “friends and colleagues” of Spoutblog’s Karina Longworth, who recently wrote that it’s “definitely the domestic narrative competition feature that’s come up most in conversation.”

And two, my having been invited this morning to a Humpday party and a press day, which…I don’t know, conveys a certain confidence and a suspicion that the film, directed and written by Lynn Shelton, might not be a huge problem. Staking a claim to respectability with a party can sometimes mean something. In the same way that it made sense, conversely, that Thinkfilm’s Mark Urman decided against throwing a party for Zoo, the horse-fucking movie that played at Sundance ’07.

I still say “trust no one” and “caveat emptor” when it comes to any kind of smallish Sundance movie looking for attention by pushing any kind of sexual-behavior envelope. Because, as we all know, any kind of “whoa, haven’t seen that before!” buzz tends to turn heads. And the ability to turn heads means next to nothing. Okay, it means something.

Respect, compassion and admiration for 45 year-old Samantha Geiner, the unwilling and way-underage recipient of Roman Polanski‘s predatory lust 31 years ago, for standing up and telling the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office where to go yesterday. Back off, enough already, stop your prosecutorial bullshit and bring this protracted case to an end.

Geimer filed a legal declaration asking that the charge against Polanski be dismissed in the interest of saving her from further trauma as the case is publicized anew, and claimed she’s being victimized again by prosecutors’ focus on lurid details of what happened to her. She also said that the insistence by prosecutors and the court that Polanski must appear in person to seek dismissal “is a joke, a cruel joke being played on me.”

A hearing is set for 1.21.09 on Polanski’s motion for dismissal. But prosecutors have said he must appear in person — an act which would risk his arrest. “If Polanski cannot stand before the court to make this request, I, as the victim, can and I, as the victim do,” Geimer said in the declaration, which was signed at her home in Kilauea, Hawaii.