The stars of Sundance

The annual film festival, which screened 120 feature movies, uncovered some real winners. It wraps up today.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 28, 2007

PARK CITY, Utah - Dog fanatics and domesticated zombies. Irish street musicians and writers wrestling with recalcitrant characters. Mournful military families.

The latest edition of the Sundance Film Festival, which presented its awards Saturday and wraps up today with final screenings of top prize winners, offered a rich range of strange, colorful characters and stories.

Some highlights among the 120 feature films that screened:

MOLLY AND MIKE'S YEAR: Writer Mike White, who has found Hollywood success as Jack Black's scribe and producing partner, makes a howlingly funny directing debut with Year of the Dog, giving Molly Shannon a chance to break out from bit character parts and show her chops as lead player. Shannon alternates between hilarity and heartbreak as a woman who can't quite connect with people but has all the love and affection she needs from her adorable pup - until he dies. What follows is a happy-sad story of obsession and near-lunacy as Shannon's wallflower struggles to fill the void in her life with a variety of companions from the human and animal kingdom, ultimately learning that bipeds don't necessarily make for the best company.

A BOY AND HIS ZOMBIE: Ozzie and Harriet meets Dawn of the Dead in Fido, director Andrew Currie's clever tale set in a gleaming 1950s world where the flesh-eating dead walk among us, as domesticated gardeners, paperboys and other menials, thanks to containment collars that curb their taste for live human red meat. The horror comedy stars Carrie-Anne Moss as a homemaker whose husband (Dylan Baker) is terrified of their new house zombie (Billy Connolly). But the couple's young son finds a faithful friend in Fido the zombie, who becomes both pet, surrogate dad and protector, when he's not off on an occasional carnivorous rampage.

DEPARTING WITH GRACE: John Cusack and young newcomers Shelan O'Keefe and Grace Bednarczyk left hardly a dry eye in the house with Grace Is Gone, a tearjerker about an emotionally restrained father struggling to break the news to his daughters that their mother has died in action in Iraq. Director James C. Strouse has crafted a timely and timeless tale, a portrait of one family's grief and confusion over the cruel reality of the battlefield and the heartache it leaves on the homefront.

AN IRISH INTERLUDE: With Once, director John Carney captures a moment in time between potential soul mates passing in the night - or passing on a Dublin street. Glen Hansard plays a street busker who connects with a Czech immigrant (Marketa Irglova) who peddles roses and likes the sound of his songs. Despite a boatload of baggage they carry from past relationships, a strange personal kinship ebbs and flows between them as they share the sweet possibility of romance and learn to make some great music together.

WRITERS WRITING: Frank Langella gives a career performance as an ailing, out-of-print novelist trying to finish one last work in Starting Out in the Evening, his efforts helped and hindered by a young admirer (Lauren Ambrose) and a daughter (Lili Taylor) caught up in interpersonal crises. With restraint and fierce intelligence, the class-act production from director Andrew Wagner offers a grand study of the artist as imperfect mortal and the beholder as unreasonably demanding audience.

The winners

Grand Jury Prize, U.S. drama: Padre Nuestro

Grand Jury Prize, U.S. documentary: Manda Bala

Audience award, U.S. drama: Grace Is Gone

Audience award, U.S. documentary: Hear and Now

Grand Jury Prize, world drama: Sweet Mud

Grand Jury Prize, world documentary: Enemies of Happiness

Audience award, world drama: Once

Audience award, world documentary: In the Shadow of the Moon

Grand Jury Prize, U.S. short films: Everything Will Be OK

Grand Jury Prize, world short films: The Tube With a Hat

[Last modified January 28, 2007, 00:08:30]