Frank Normile approaches the Sundance Film Festival catalogue methodically with a pen in hand, circling celebrity names and operative phrases, assigning each feature a number according to his point system. “Paul Schneider? I recognize that name One point an extra point for comedy,” he says aloud over the open book.

Nomile’s homemade method for picking the festival’s cream of the crop one part memory, one part intuition is one that’s served him well: When he follows his own rules, he can usually choose the films that will be award winners. For a few years he even taught a class on it, sharing his secrets in a University of Utah continuing education course he called “Picking the Sundance Hits.”

“In the old days, I had to pick the ones I was going to watch at the festival, because I decided I didn’t want to waste any time seeing films I wasn’t going to like,” he explains. “I said, ‘How am I going to figure this stuff out?’ And I tried to analyze the catalogue closely for the rhyme and reason to it.”

Normile says his method is akin to card counting and breaking down law documents. “I used to teach law and it’s a lot like deconstructing arguments,” he says.

Bar none, the best indication a film is going to fare well is to look at who reviewed the film in the catalogue, he says. He can narrow down his selections based solely on their names. Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore and Festival Programmer John Cooper “only do the big hits,” he claims, and as in the Normile system, those films score at least five points.

The other indicators he considers before reading the synopsis are based partly on personal preference, and partly on reading between the lines: Who wrote the film? Who directed? Are they noteworthy? Who stars in the film? Do I recognize them? Is it based on a novel? (If yes, it’s a good sign, he says. “It means the story’s been thoroughly vetted.”)

the time he gets to reading the descriptions, he’s already knocked out several films and needs only to read a few. “Then I look for the filler words, the ones that try to puff up the film,” he says. “And you’ve got to be ruthless, because if you start second-guessing yourself, the system doesn’t work.”

After some soul searching and meticulous scribbling, he arrives at two top picks for this year: Paul Schneider’s “Pretty Bird,” and the Russian film, “Mermaid.”

In Park City, Normile is not alone in his Sundance Film Festival forecasting. Matthew Prince, CEO of Park City-based Unspam, a anti-Internet spam company, has, with the help of a computer and his Unspam employees, successfully predicted the award winners for the last two years on their extracurricular project, deconstructingsundance.com.

Like Normile, the Deconstructing Sundance system is about identifying “filler words” in a film’s description and who reviewed the film in the catalogue, says Prince, only they remove the human element from the process and rely solely on statistics. Instead of a ball-point pen, Unspam employs a computer to crunch numbers using a Bayesian algorithm that predicts what happens next based on a history of events. To deconstruct Sundance, Unspam uses a 250-point system compiled from more than 11 years of catalogues. Before making its choices, the computer considers a range of factors from where the films screen their premieres to how well previous Sundance films rank on the Internet Movie Data Base.

Language, and particularly adjectives tend to be a good indicator of a film’s later success, according to Deconstructing Sundance’s method. “Sexy,” for instance, is not as winning a word as “sex.”

It’s nothing personal, insists Prince. It’s just math.

“It’s not some human being deciding whether or not the film is going to be good or bad it’s a computer trying to identify patterns,” he explains. “We just started doing it to have some fun during the festival.”

Prince says his crystal ball is only 81 percent accurate, though it did choose several of last year’s hits before the awards ceremony “Grace is Gone,” “Rocket Science,” “Nanking” and “No End in Sight” were all on his list. However, the system did miss “Juno,” which continues to be a hit in wide release and is in the running for “Best Picture” at this year’s Academy Awards.

Deconstructing Sundance’s top bets for Sundance 2008, include:

Dramatic Competition “Anywhere, USA,” “North Starr,” “Pretty Bird,” “Sugar”

Documentary Competition “American Teen,” “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” “I.O.U.S.A.,” “The Order of Myths”

Prince cautions that this information should not be the basis of million-dollar business deals. Additionally, he says, the predictions are less about which films will win at Sundance and more about their future in the marketplace.

“We’re not saying certain films should shouldn’t be screened,” he says. “We’re just predicting their box office success.”