Small town, large impact

The Sundance Film Festival is always the most paradoxical of events, and this year's edition is shaping up as no exception.

This most important of American film festivals opens Thursday night in an enthusiastic town -- Park City, Utah -- that is unexpectedly small for an event of this significance. The fest prides itself on discovering the unknown, but its opening-night film, the British thriller "In Bruges," will be in theaters just a couple of weeks after the festival closes.

Sundance also celebrates independence, but it has become known as a site for celebrity swag. What do places like the Eco Lounge & Hotel ("the hippest Earth-friendly style suite") and the St. Ives Sensory Spa & Gallery have to do with independent film? And what sane purpose does it serve for Ray-Ban to give a Visionary Award to Quentin Tarantino, who likely has sunglasses of his own?

Everything gets bigger and bigger at Sundance, from the pioneering Queer Lounge, now located in a multilevel storefront on Main Street, to the number of features that apply to get in, which this year totaled just over 2,000 for the mere 32 slots (16 dramatic, 16 documentary) in the competition.

But the most intriguing Sundance paradox was articulated by festival director Geoffrey Gilmore when he said recently, "The films people talk about when they're going to the festival are not the ones they're talking about when they leave."

Still, because Sundance can launch a film (think "Shine" and "Little Miss Sunshine") like no other American festival, there is intense interest in what it will show. This is especially true for the dramatic competition, which traditionally features few names for seers to hang on to.

Among the films that do have names attached in varying capacities are "Sugar," the latest from the team that gave us "Half Nelson"; "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," an adaptation of Michael Chabon's debut novel; and "Sunshine Cleaning," an evocative, unconventional drama from director Christine Jeffs ("Sylvia") featuring a vibrant performance by Amy Adams that not even the work she's done in "Enchanted" and "Junebug" prepares you for.

As always with Sundance, the documentary competition offers the most reliably involving films. This year things roughly break down into two categories, the personal and the societal. The best of the personal include: