I never really fully grasped the old writer's saw "kill your babies" until it came time to map out my Sundance screening schedule. With 120 offerings, a lady can view but so many. I've been fortunate enough to catch some sneak previews of a few (the estimable Friends with Money and Somebodies), so I've already knocked a few off my list. Still, if I had my druthers, my screening schedule of 30 would really include all 120. Sleep is so 2005.

So herein lies my Top Ten. Do understand that I deliberately didn't overlap too much with Jocelyn. And that for every selection here, three babies died in the bathwater. At least!

10. Art School Confidential (Premieres)
Unlike Jocelyn, I dug Terry Zwigoff's last film, Bad Santa (2003), especially the (even) darker version released on DVD. But I do hope that this film, with its jewel box of a cast (Angelica Houston, Jim Broadbent, Katherine Moennig), lives up to the standard set by 2001's sweet-faced, potty-mouthed Ghost World. Plus: my ex-boyfriend worked in art department on this sucker!

9. Thank You for Smoking (Premieres)
The early word is that this film lives up to Christopher Buckley's satiric novel about big tobacco's queasy marriage with Washington and Hollywood. Second-generation Hollywood director/screenwriter Jason Reitman, who has mostly flopped about in middling Hollywood projects until now, is a big question mark. But the cast (Mario Bello, Aaron Eckhart) rocks, and I'm an American sucker for Wag the Dog-style winks at the American public.

8. Princesas (World Cinema)
This drama about lower-middle-class prostitutes was nominated for all kinds of awards in its native Spain but were it not for Sundance, it's not clear whether it'd even come stateside. We Americans labor under the impression that Spanish cinema begins and ends with the Almodóvar family, but this film about the alliance between two working girls should nip that misconception in the bud.

7. Don't Come Knocking (Premieres)
Two words: Wim Wenders. Two more words: Sam Shepard. Two more: Jessica Lange. Three final words: I. Cannot. Wait.

6. Stephanie Daley (Premieres)
J'love psychological thrillers, even embarrassing ones like Primal Fear. And this one stars the incandescent Tilda Swinton, the where's-he-been-lately Timothy Hutton, and Amber Tamblyn, possibly the last young Hollywood actress who hasn't paraded her coke habit at Bungalow 8 in the last six months.

5. Little Miss Sunshine (Premieres)
This first feature film effort from music-video directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris could either be a too-madcap movie about an endearingly dysfunctional family, or a just-madcap-enough film about a stone-cold, beyond-Thunderdome dysfunctional family. My money's on Door Number 2. The team's last big project was Mr. Show. And Alan Arkin, Steve Carell, and Toni Collette round out the cast. Yes, please.

4. Wordplay (Documentary)
As one of the New Yorkers who cannot descend into the city's subway system unarmed by a Times crossword puzzle, I am clamoring for the mysterious puzzle editor Will Shortz's two cents — not to mention the coverage of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Here's hoping that it's like Spellbound, but more grizzled and much savvier.

3. So Much So Fast (Documentary)
I grew up with the Heywoods, the family whose struggle to find a cure for ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) before it completely fells son/brother Stephen is the subject of this doc. But that's not why it intrigues me so; or maybe it is. Since Stephen, now in his mid-30s, was diagnosed, his brother Jamie ditched his career and launched a "guerrilla science-research group" while the rest of the family has similarly jumped head-first into the race against the clock — and the established medical and scientific community. By knowing the Heywoods, I know that they've never done anything half-ass in their life. This film, directed by Sundance award-winners Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, should be no exception.

2. Come Early Morning (Dramatic)
Remember Joey Lauren Adams? Next to Parker Posey, the clever, squeaky-voiced Puckina was one of the most omnipresent twentysomething faces in '90s indie cinema. But she's mostly been a no-show this decade, an absence mentioned only when the rumors of the Southern belle's DUIs that drifted aboveground from time to time. Now she's directed and written (and not performed in) this film about a Southern women's struggle with alcoholism and lousy lovers. I am very intrigued.

1. The Science of Sleep (Premieres)
With all due respect to Spike Jonze Michel Gondry may be the only director truly fit to helm Charlie Kaufman's scripts: Not only did he direct the writer's befuddling Human Nature but he transformed Eternal Sunshine of the Mind into the best modern American romantic picture ever made. Somehow Gondry applies that uniquely French philosophy about passion to largely unearthly subjects. So with him as the director and writer of this project, and with Charlotte Gainsbourg and the still largely untapped Gael Garcia Bernal as the stars of this dreamworld about a dreamworld, Sleep crowns my list of What Not To Miss.