Sundance Offers Broad Menu of Highlights

PARK CITY, Utah -- Dog fanatics and domesticated zombies. Irish street musicians and writers wrestling with recalcitrant characters. Mournful military families and a teenage woman with some lethal sexual anatomy.

The latest edition of the Sundance Film Festival, which presents its awards Saturday and wraps up Sunday with final screenings of top prize winners, offered a rich range of strange, colorful characters and stories.

Some highlights among the 120 feature films that screened:

MOLLY AND MIKE'S YEAR:

Veteran Sundance writer Mike White, who's found Hollywood success as Jack Black's scribe and producing partner, makes a howlingly funny directing debut with "Year of the Dog," giving the eminently talented Molly Shannon a chance to break out from bit character parts and show her chops as lead player.

Shannon alternates between hilarity and heartbreak as a woman who can't quite connect with people but has all the love and affection she needs from her adorable pup _ until he ups and dies.

What follows is a happy-sad story of obsession and near-lunacy as Shannon's wallflower struggles to fill the void in her life with a variety of companions from the human and animal kingdom _ ultimately learning that bipeds don't necessarily make for the best company.

A BOY AND HIS ZOMBIE:

"Ozzie and Harriet" meets "Dawn of the Dead" in "Fido," director Andrew Currie's clever tale set in a gleaming 1950s world where the flesh-eating dead walk among us _ as domesticated gardeners, paperboys and other menials, thanks to containment collars that curb their taste for live human red meat.

The horror comedy stars Carrie-Anne Moss as a homemaker whose husband (Dylan Baker) is terrified of their new house zombie (Billy Connolly, in a wonderfully restrained role of grunts and wistful glances).

But the couple's young son finds a faithful friend in Fido the zombie, who becomes both pet, surrogate dad and protector _ when he's not off on an occasional carnivorous rampage.

A GIRL AND HER OVERBITE: