Dining across the room from Eddie Murphy.

Watching Diddy, entourage in tow, stride into a screening of "Grace is Gone," the John Cusack antiwar movie that I had just been turned away from. Attempting, without success, to get Anthony Hopkins to say something interesting.

These are the celebrity highlights of my Sundance Film Festival, which ends Jan. 28 after 10 days of below-freezing temperatures.

Those celeb sightings are different from the movie highlights. It's a kick to see even bad flicks and odd, experimental short films here. I must admit feeling a bit of a guilty rush at the sight of dozens of audience members walking out in the middle of "Weapons," following a scene in which somebody urinates on a drunk guy in a bathtub.

The best movies I've seen are "In the Shadow of the Moon," a triumphal yet moving documentary about the Apollo missions, and "Rocket Science," a charming feature about a stuttering kid who falls in love, by the director of the equally charming documentary "Spellbound."

And all of that stuff is wrapped up in the delight that is Park City — a sleepy mountain town that holds a love-hate relationship with the annual fest that draws thousands of industry types from L.A. and New York.

This can be seen in most restaurants, where wait staffs are far overworked and just getting a sandwich took more than an hour during a break between movies at the Racquet Club theater.

This is a small town that refuses to make itself too big, even during Sundance. KPCW, the local radio station, actually has a segment where they read out lost and found items like "two gloves found last Thursday at the Canyons lodge."

An exception: Nightly parties that accompany the festival — which seem to begin at 3 p.m. and continue well past midnight — are highly exclusive and bouncers won't bat an eye at leaving you stuck out in the cold if your name's not on the list.

My name was on the list for the Entertainment Weekly party. I ducked past Nick Cannon on the press line outside, and downed DirecTV-branded shots — everything is branded here — in a crowd that included Diddy, Tara Reid, Chris Klein, Diego Luna, Paul Rudd and the makers of "The Ten," and Crispin Glover, alone and dressed in black.

As for Diddy, nobody can quite figure out why he's here; other celebs like Reid at least have some connection to a movie playing the festival. But he is here. And so am I.

My interviews have been hit-and-miss so far; there've been fascinating exchanges with young, first-time directors like "Padre Nuestro" director Christopher Zalla, oddball chats with David Wain and Paul Rudd ... and like-pulling-teeth talks with established actors who seem bored with the festival.

I talked to Anthony Hopkins at one of the many "lounges" — sponsored by corporations like Delta or AOL — that line Main Street. He wrote and directed an out-there movie called "Slipstream" that's here, and we spoke at a table with his wife and two actors from the film.

It is Hopkins' first time directing, and he kept telling me that it was "easy if you make it easy" and "hard if you make it hard." I tried to get him to explain, but it came to nothing. He was too much of a pro, especially in a controlled setting like the junket that had been set up here. Christian Slater, one of the actors in the film, was good for a laugh or two.

Tuesday night I attended ChefDance, which was basically an opportunity to eat good food while occasionally gawking at Eddie Murphy or Cuba Gooding Jr., who were across the dining room at a soon-to-open restaurant called Onassis.

I sat next to an Entertainment Weekly reporter and a Yugoslavian hair stylist who had been styling celebrities at a condo before they had their pictures taken. The stylist told me that in the past few days he'd stuck his hands in the hair of Steve Buscemi, Heather Graham and Antonio Banderas, who directed a movie here.

Sundance is strange.

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