Stars set to come out for Sundance premieres
From Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES—The Sundance Film Festival on Thursday unveiled a roster of over 120 movies set to screen at January’s event, with a slate of world premieres featuring stars ranging from Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman to pop queen Lindsay Lohan.
Among the highlights, Spanish actor Antonio Banderas brings “Summer Rain” (“El Camino de los Ingleses”), which he directed, and veteran French filmmaker Luc Besson will screen his latest work, “Angel-A.”
Sundance, which is backed by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute for filmmaking in Utah, is the leading U.S. showcase for independent cinema and has increasingly grown into a key venue for movies on the international festival circuit.
Festival organizers pointed this year to numerous standout comedies to be shown at Sundance, an event that traditionally has favoured dramas. Moreover, the 2007 entries as a whole present a more optimistic vision in contrast with bleak, dark stories that dominated the “indie” landscape of past years.
“One thing that characterizes a lot of the work is an array of outstanding performances by filmmakers that, in some cases, are coming to Sundance in ways that will surprise audiences,” said festival director Geoffrey Gilmore.
Two films that mark departures for their directors are Tamara Jenkins’ comic-drama “The Savages,” which is billed as “an irreverent story about life, love and mortality,” and Tommy O’Haver’s “An American Crime,” about a young girl’s “torturous ordeal at the hands of her mother.”
Among the high-profile stars set for Sundance 2007 are Samuel L. Jackson in two films, “Black Snake Moan,” and “Resurrecting the Champ,” and Gwyneth Paltrow in “The Good Night,” which was directed by her brother Jake Paltrow.
Hoffman, who won the best-acting Oscar this year for his title role in “Capote,” stars in “The Savages,” and Lohan in “Chapter 27,” a fictional portrait of John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, in the days leading up to the former Beatle’s 1980 murder.
Festival organizers have long said the appearance of major stars brings added publicity to a festival designed in part to spotlight unknown filmmakers and actors.
Of the 122 feature films that will play at the 2007 festival, nearly 60 are from first- or second-time directors, and the selections come from some 25 countries.
Sundance is held in the ski resort of Park City, east of Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City. It opens on January 18 and reaches its climax on January 27 with an awards ceremony. The festival closes on January 28.