Every year, the festival is used by the indies and smaller studio affiliates to premiere some of their winter and spring line-up hopefully to build up positive early press and word-of-mouth. This year is no different with a good amount of movies, both anticipated and under-the-radar getting Sundance premieres:

In Bruges (Focus – Feb. 8) – The opening night film is also the first film from Focus Features for the year, being the feature film debut from Martin McDonagh, who won the Oscar for his short film "Six Shooter" last year. In this violent crime comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two hit men who travel to the historic Belgian city to relax for a few weeks before their next job, leading to all sorts of comical mishaps.

U2 3D (National Geographic – Jan. 23) - Less than a week before its opening in IMAX theatres, a new use of 3D technology will be unveiled before Sundance audiences in the form of a U2 concert shot before a stadium filled with 100,000 fans in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fans of the band will be amazed by how great this film looks using new 3D technology that allows one to be on stage and in the audience for an amazing concert of new songs and many of the classics.

Be Kind Rewind (New Line – Feb. 22) – Michel Gondry's follow-up to Science of Sleep was moved back a month, but it should find the perfect audience at Sundance with its story of a New Jersey video store clerk and his strange friend (Mos Def and Jack Black) who must recreate all sorts of movies when Black accidentally erases all the video tapes in the store, creating a buzz among the community as they become involved in the low-budget movie remaking process.

Austrian wacko Michael Haneke has created a shot-by-shot remake of his 1997 German thriller Funny Games (Warner Independent - March 14), about a home invasion by a duo who capture and torture a family. It will be interesting to see how it goes over with the Park City at Midnight audience who might not be familiar with Haneke's unique sense of "humor" (if you could call it that). It's an interesting choice for the filmmaker after the critically-acclaimed Caché for sure.

Sleepwalking (Overture Films – March 14) – The second release from Starz's fledgling theatrical distribution arm Overture Films was produced and stars Charlize Theron as a mother who abandons her 12-year-old daughter to the foster care system. It's the directorial debut by visual FX specialist Bill Maher, who has worked on some of the "X-Men" movies.

Overture's other release, The Visitor (Overture Films – April 11), premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The second feature from The Station Agent's Tom McCarthy, it stars Richard Jenkins ("Six Feet Under") as a New Yorker who finds immigrant squatters in his seldom-used Manhattan apartment and finds himself caught up in their lives when the man is threatened with deportation.

Henry Poole is Here (MGM – April 4) – Mark Pellington (Arlington Road, The Mothman Prophecies and co-director of the U2 3D concert film) premieres his latest drama at the festival, starring Luke Wilson as a man who flees his life to a remote house in a new place after a routine check-up shows that he's not well. This one looks like it's in the same vein as Lars and the Real Girl, one of my favorite films from the Toronto Film Festival, so hopefully I won't have to wait until March to see this.

Smart People (Miramax – April 11) – Noam Murro's directorial debut feels like the festival's best bet with a cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church, and it has some of the same dark comic dysfunctional family elements that makes Wes Anderson's movies so much fun. Quaid plays a professor who falls for one of his former students (Parker) at the same time as his black sheep brother (Church) decides to move in.

Savage Grace (IFC Films – May 28) – Tom Kalin, the director of Swoon, returns with a period thriller based on the book by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Anderson, starring Julianne Moore as an overbearing mother whose only son (played by Eddie Redmayne of The Good Shepherd) comes out as a homosexual forcing her to take drastic actions.

Young@Heart (Fox Searchlight - April 18) - Stephen Walker's touching documentary about the popular Massachusetts choral group of men and women in their 70s, 80s and 90s who perform their own versions of classic punk and alternative rock songs should win over Sundance audiences as it has at previous festivals.

Assassination of a High School President (Yari Film Group - August) - Reece Daniel Thompson of last year's Sundance fave Rocket Science stars in this dark comedy from Brett Simon about a nerdy high school newspaper writer who discovers a story that can turn the social structure of his "high school from hell" on its ear. It also stars Mischa Barton and Bruce Willis as the campy high school principal, the thought alone should make this worth seeing.

Towelhead (Warner Independent – August) - The directorial debut of Alan Ball (American Beauty, "Six Feet Under") played at the Toronto Film Festival as "Nothing is Private" but it's title has been changed back to the original novel by Alicia Erian about the sexual awakening of a 13-year-old Arab-American girl who fends off the obsessive advances of her adult neighbor (played by Aaron Eckhart of course) and her horny African-American boyfriend, putting her under the protection of a neighbor, played by Toni Collette.

Nacho Vigalondo's Time Crimes (Magnolia) is one of the more intriguing films in the Park City at Midnight, a Spanish thriller involving a man who takes refuge inside a laboratory after being attacked, stumbling upon a device that sends him hours into the past. (Going by the reception of Shane Caruth's Primer a few years back, this one should go over very well.) Other interesting thrillers include Carlos Brooks' debut Quid Pro Quo starring Nick Stahl and Vera Farmiga who meet during his investigation of a sub-culture of those removing and replacing limbs to make themselves whole. The Broken, another Midnight offering is British filmmaker Sean Ellis' follow-up to Cashback, this one starring Lena Headey as a woman who sees her doppelganger and follows her, leading to all sorts of strange occurrences.

The dramatic competition tends to be one of the highlights of the festival, since this is where people can get a first look at some of the year's newest movies, some from established indie filmmakers seeking distribution, but others from newcomers who will show festival goers where the future of indie filmmaking is going. Sadly, many of last year's movies that premiered in competition at Sundance tanked when they hit theatres, including Joshua, Grace is Gone and King of California so hopefully this year's selection will have better luck. Here are some of the highlights:

Easily one of the most anticipated movies of the fest is Sunshine Cleaning, starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as sisters who take on a specialized business of cleaning up the blood and gore from crime scenes. The film by New Zealand's Christine Jeffs should be one of the hot properties with these two popular actresses involved.

Interest is also high for Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, which stars Ben Kingsley as a psychiatrist who trades his services for weed from a pot-dealing kid, played by Josh Peck, who is trying to deal with the normal troubles of teenhood, like depression and virginity, both which come closer to ending when he meets the psychiatrist's daughter.

Sam Rockwell stars in Clark Gregg's adaptation of Chuck ("Fight Club") Palahniuk's controversial novel Choke, a dark comedy about a guy who works at Colonial recreation park by day and pretending to choke in upscale restaurants in order to bond with the rich patrons who save him by night. Adapted by character actor Clark Gregg, I expect this one to be scooped up very fast as well.

Downloading Nancy - This intense drama from Johan Renck stars Maria Bello as a woman who leaves her husband of 15 years (Rufus Sewell) to be with a man who she has had sexual encounters with online, played by Jason Patric. Video director Johan Renck helms the screenplay by Pamela Cuming and Lee Ross.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Rawson Marshall Thurber, director of Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, adapts Michael Chabon's coming-of-age novel about a teen whose views of Pittsburgh are forever changed when he meets an adventurous couple, played by Peter Sarsgaard and Sienna Miller.

One year after her older sister Dakota seemingly ended her career with Hound Dog, Elle Fanning comes to the fest as the star of Phoebe in Wonderland, a strange young girl whose mother (Felicity Huffman) is trying to balance motherhood and an academic career. Because this is Sundance, it also stars Patricia Clarkson, who seems to be slowing down with only two movies.

Actor Paul Schneider, recently seen as Ryan Gosling's brother in Lars and the Real Girl, makes his directorial debut with the comedy Pretty Bird starring Billy Crudup as a huckster who comes to town with wild plans for a "rocket belt" sucking Paul Giamatti's aerospace engineer into his schemes. It also stars Kristeen Wiig from "Saturday Night Live" and recently seen in John C. Reilly's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck got a lot of attention for their indie debut Half Nelson two years ago, especially when Ryan Gosling was nominated for an Oscar last year, and their second feature Sugar is about a Dominican baseball player trying to make it to the big leagues is likely to be viewed with a lot of interest.

Neil Abramson's An American Son is yet another Iraq War film, starring Nick Cannon as a Marine returning home before shipping off to Iraq, while Lance Hammer's Mississippi-based drama Ballast stars a cast of unknowns as a single mother and her son who must seek refuge from a man they've had problems with after the suicide of her husband.

A couple of the films premiering at the fest outside competition don't have distribution like the festival's "Salt Lake City Gala" The Great Buck Howard from Sean McGinly (Two Days), which stars John Malkovich as the title character, a has-been mentalist who takes on a law school dropout (Colin Hanks) as his personal assistant, the latter thinking that it might be his path to a career in the entertainment business.

We've already had a chance to see Austin (XX/XY) Chick's second feature August, which stars the film's co-producer Josh Hartnett as a young and arrogant CEO of a dot-com company that's facing serious financial crisis even as his relationship with his brother, the brilliant mastermind behind the company's technology, is faltering. We'll have a review shortly.

It probably wasn't too hard for Amy Redford to get her debut feature The Guitar to premiere at Sundance, her father being the founder, but her whimsical fairy tale of a young woman, played by Saffron Burrows, who suddenly learns she's dying from a cancerous tumor who goes off on a self-indulgent spree. (Basically, it's The Bucket List for the 20-something set.)

Brad Anderson, director of Session 9 and The Machinist brings to the festival his latest thriller Transsiberian, about two couples on a European train who become friends until one of them disappears and various Russian cops and mobsters get involved.

Brian Cox stars in the revenge thriller Red, based on Jack Ketchum's novel about an elderly man whose dog is killed by a trio of unruly teens who sets out to get revenge, and the prolific actor also stars in Rupert Wyatt's prison flick The Escapist as a prisoner serving a life sentence who plots an escape with a motley crew in order to visit his deathly-ill daughter. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to talk to Cox for one or both of these films.

Actor Stanley Tucci directs his fourth film, an English language remake of the late Theo Van Gogh's 1996 film Blind Date about a married couple (Patricia Clarkson plays Tucci's wife) who try to reconnect after the death of their daughter by playing a role game where they go out on a blind date. It follows Steve Buscemi's Interview, which premiered at Sundance last year.

Craig Lucas, director of The Dying Gaul, returns with the eccentric comedy Birds of America, starring Matthew Perry from "Friends" as a middle-age guy trying to raise his two younger brothers after the death of their parents.

Academy-award winning director Barry Levinson (Diner, Tootsie) brings his latest movie What Just Happened? to Sundance looking for distribution. It's an adaptation of Art Linson's accounting of his day-to-day as a studio producer, portrayed in this case by none other than Robert De Niro. Steven Schachter, the award-winning director of TV movies like "Door to Door," reteams with that film's star William H. Macy to direct Macy's adaptation of Peter Lefcourt's novel The Deal, in which ironically enough, Macy also plays a Hollywood movie producer who cons a studio into giving him $100 million to make his nephew's arthouse script.

Oddly omitted from the festival guide, Andrew (The Craft, The In-Laws) Fleming's Hamlet 2 stars Steve Coogan as a high school drama teacher who gets over his failed acting career by staging a musical sequel to Shakespeare's famous play.

Unfortunately, I generally don't have time to cover a lot of documentaries when doing festivals because there are so many dramatic films that need attention but there are a couple I'm interested in. After making a side-trip into television, Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock returns with his second feature documentary Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? which sends the filmmaker on his own personal manhunt for the Muslim terrorist. From the producer of Nanking, Kicking It is a documentary by Susan Koch about how the sport of soccer has been used to combat homelessness, and film critic Elvis Mitchell and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders collaborate on The Black List, which includes 20 mini-portraits of prominent and influential African-Americans. Other interesting docs in competition include docs in competition such as Alex Gibney's Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and docs about rocker Patti Smith (Patti Smith: Dream of Life) and filmmaker Roman Polanski (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired). Wordplay director Patrick Creadon returns to the festival with I.O.U.S.A., a movie about the growing national debt and how it affects American citizens.

If I have time, I'll write a bit more about the foreign films at the festival, but like the documentaries, they tend to be erratic and it's hard to tell what's seeing merely from the festival guide.

The Sundance Film Festival runs from January 16 through January 27, 2008 and you can read our full coverage right here on the Sundance Blog.