“Five Things to Know About the Sundance Film Festival—Besides That It Starts Today!”

“It is never too early in the year to start talking about next year’s Oscar race or the newest, hottest face on the planet.

We’re smack in the middle of the best-of-2011 awards season, the 2012 Sundance Film Festival kicks off today (and runs till Jan. 29) in Park City, Utah, and there is so much going on both onscreen and off, we felt it necessary to prepare a cheat sheet for the indie-film extravaganza.

Here’s what—and who—will be making noise in the next 10 days:”

“…2. The Guest List: The stirrings of a real-life romance between Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana will be on display in The Words, which also stars the ubiquitous Olivia Wilde. Sean Penn does his best Robert Smith impersonation in This Must Be the Place. After winning big at Cannes with the depressing Melancholia, the Kirsten Dunst gets her funny back at Sundance—along with Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan in Bachelorette. Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy and Robert De Niro bring the chill in Red Lights. Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon play dangerously with others’ money in Arbitrage. Chris Rock costars with director Julie Delpy in 2 Days in New York, the follow-up to Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris. More star power than William H. Macy and Helen Hunt may have been needed, however, to get The Surrogate (about a guy in an iron lung who wants to lose his virginity) off the ground.“

by Natalie Finn