I can't work out why there is an interactive section since there is no way of actually interacting with the content once you start up the RealPlayer, at least, when I tried it. Elsewhere, the problems are less technical and more creative. Alex Orelle's Freeware , while highly competent in the 3D visual and soundtrack departments, has a thin storyline about an action heroine shooting her way out of a futuristic corporate stronghold. It felt a bit like looking over someone's shoulder as they played a computer game. I don't want to do it down too much though - I did enjoy it all the same.
Storylines are always a problem with shorts.
The Great Big Cartoony Show , a retro-styled carnivalesque kiddies' theme for a fictitious cartoon show, simply avoids having an ending, closing where the show is supposed to start. The male vocalist races through a tongue-twisting shopping list of toonies with funny names. The animation and tune are brilliantly pulled off, but it would have been nice to see the cartoon go somewhere. Marco Bertoldo's Gone Bad , a stylish animation about a priest's unorthodox methods for carrying out the Lord's work, blends spaghetti western and zombie genres with a dry wit. In fact, the animation strand is easily the strongest element of Sundance's Online Film Festival - which probably is a fair reflection of the current situation with video on the web at large.