For the third year in a row, Sundance is partnering up with the Brooklyn Academy of Music to present the "Sundance Institute at BAM" series, where flicks from this year's film festival will play for New York audiences May 29-June 8. It's just like going to Sundance, only without the snow and ice. Oh, and Brooklyn is actually big enough to handle large crowds. So maybe it's nothing like going to Sundance, except for the movies.

The movies -- 22 features and 36 shorts -- include several must-see titles, some of which have not played anywhere yet except for Sundance. Hot-buzz documentary American Teen (pictured) is on the schedule (complete with a prom-themed BAM party!), as is the soldier drama American Son. Anvil! The Story of Anvil was one of the most popular films at this year's fest, and the heavy metal band featured in it will perform live at BAM. There's the Chuck Palahniuk adaptation Choke, Stacy Peralta's L.A. gang doc Made in America, the South American cannibalism doc Stranded, and award-winning documentaries Trouble the Water and Man on Wire. If you've been paying attention to the indie/film-fest scene this year, you've probably heard of some of these, so it's pretty cool that the Sundance/BAM partnership will give wider audiences a chance to see them.

Tickets for the "Sundance Institute at BAM" series go on sale to BAM members on April 21, and the general public on April 26. Neither Sundance nor BAM has the complete info on its website yet, but here's the BAM page to keep your eye on.

It is a very disconcerting thing to wake up at 8 a.m., and an hour later to be watching a documentary about cannibalism, but that is how yesterday began for me.

The documentary Stranded recounts the famous story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the mountains of Chile in 1972, forcing some survivors to resort to drastic measures to stay alive. It is a reasonably good documentary, and obviously the story -- told here, for the first time, by the survivors themselves -- is compelling. But at over two hours, the film feels too long. I realize what a jerk I sound like making that complaint when I am watching a movie about people who avoided starvation in the frozen mountains by eating their dead friends, but there you go. They were up there for 72 days; I'm stuck in the screening room for 125 minutes and I'm whining.

But here's the thing! The film guide says the movie is 113 minutes, and let me tell you, there is nothing worse for a Sundance-goer than a movie that turns out to be longer than advertised. You plan your schedule very carefully, and sometimes you decide against a particular title specifically because the running time does not suit your needs. When it goes longer than expected, we get antsy and fidgety and frustrated.

On the other hand, when a movie comes up shorter than the film guide said it would be, it is a miraculous and joyful event. We dance merrily out of the screening room on those occasions. I'm sure I've given a few films better grades than they deserved solely for that reason.