I always get a curious thrill from looking down the list of films selected to compete at the Sundance Film Festival — the 2010 batch of which has just been announced by festival directors John Cooper and Trevor Grath.

You know there are at least one or two titles there that we’ll all be talking about in precisely one year’s time, just as “Precious,” “An Education” and “The Cove” have blossomed from festival darlings to surefire awards contenders in the space of 11 months. What’s far harder to tell is which of the 58 titles listed here might be “the one.”

Still, last year I played something of a guessing game with the lineup, singling out one film from each of the competition’s four strands that seemed of particular interest to me: my faith in “An Education” was, obviously, handsomely repaid, while “Big Fan” (a winner at this week’s Gotham Awards), “Afghan Star” (the UK’s foreign Oscar entry) and Doors documentary “When You’re Strange” have done respectably for themselves.

OK, I missed “Precious” — so as far as that particular game goes, I’m going to quit while I’m behind. Still, what follows is a selection of ten titles that I’m keeping an eye on.

In the US Dramatic competition, Derek Cianfrance’s non-linear marital drama “Blue Valentine” is at the top of my “ones to watch” list, largely on the strength of its star pairing of Michelle Williams and the lately-absent Ryan Gosling. (If you read my Top Actors Under 30 list, you’ll know why.)

Just as intriguing, however, is “Winter’s Bone,” director Debra Granik’s long-awaited follow up to “Down to the Bone,” (I guess she just likes the word), the film that put Vera Farmiga on the map in 2005. The new film features young Jennifer Lawrence (the standout of Guillermo Arriaga’s recent “The Burning Plain,” for my money) as an Ozark girl tracking down her drug-dealing father. Also of obvious interest is the Allen Ginsberg biopic “Howl,” which many have been touting as a potential career milestone (and awards vehicle) for James Franco.

As usual, plenty of starry ensembles are to be found among the American titles, including Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rainn Wilson in “Hesher,” James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Kristen Stewart in “Welcome to the Rileys” and Mark Ruffalo, Laura Linney, Juliette Lewis and Orlando Bloom in “Sympathy for Delicious,” which also marks Ruffalo’s directorial debut.

Meanwhile, the US Documentary strand sees the return of several big names, including recent Oscar winners Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) and David Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”). Gibney’s latest, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money” examines the high-profile political scandals surrounding DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff, while Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” takes the American public education system.

The World Dramatic strand serves up a surfeit of less familiar names, though British TV aficionados will be keeping an eye on “Four Lions,” a comedy about Islamic terrorism in the UK (now there’s a bold proposition) from  much-admired satirist Chris Morris (“Brass Eye”).

Meanwhile, the World Documentary strand includes one title that I can already wholeheartedly endorse: respected Irish documentarian Ken Wardop’s “His & Hers” was one of my personal highlights of the London Film Festival, though it was unfortunately caught among the films I never got to writing about in the later stages of the fest.

The film is built on a startlingly simple conceit — over 70 Irish girls and women are interviewed in their homes about the men in their lives — but as the film methodically progresses from its youngest interviewees to its eldest, the emphasis shifts from childhood to parenting to bereavement, essentially amounting to one life told via a multitude of subjects. It’s a deft, witty and very moving piece of work, and I suspect (and hope) it will generate some heat amid the frosty Utah chill.

Check out the full Sundance lineup here. What catches your eye?

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