Yesterday we brought you the competitive lineup set for next month’s Sundance Film Festival, and today it’s time to run down some of the notable films playing out of competition. The festival opens on January 15, 2009 with the claymation feature Mary and Max, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette and narrated by Barry Humphries. It’s “the tale of two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.”
Premieres that caught my eye include:
500 Days of Summer. “When an unlucky greeting card copywriter is dumped by his girlfriend, the hopeless romantic shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days 'together' in hopes of figuring out where things went wrong.” OK, maybe that doesn’t sound so promising, but Zooey Deschanel is in it and that’s worth something in my book. (That’s my book Zooey Deschanel, You Will Be Mine, coming to a bookstore near you once she lifts the restraining order.)
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