Yesterday we brought you the competitive lineup set for next month’s Sundance Film Festival, and today it’s time to run down some of the notable films playing out of competition. The festival opens on January 15, 2009 with the claymation feature Mary and Max, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette and narrated by Barry Humphries. It’s “the tale of two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.”

Premieres that caught my eye include:

500 Days of Summer. “When an unlucky greeting card copywriter is dumped by his girlfriend, the hopeless romantic shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days 'together' in hopes of figuring out where things went wrong.” OK, maybe that doesn’t sound so promising, but Zooey Deschanel is in it and that’s worth something in my book. (That’s my book Zooey Deschanel, You Will Be Mine, coming to a bookstore near you once she lifts the restraining order.)

Brooklyn’s Finest. “After enduring vastly different career paths, three unconnected Brooklyn cops wind up at the same deadly location.” Training Day director Antoine Fuqua gets back to the nitty-gritty.

Manure. The Polish brothers present a “comic tale centered on manure salesmen in the early 1960s.” Billy Bob Thornton stars. What, you’re not intrigued?

And the Gun to My Head Award goes to Spread, starring Ashton Kutcher as a handsome young man who survives in Los Angeles by seducing wealthy older women. Why, Sundance? Why?

Documentaries of interest include James Toback’s Tyson (about the boxer, not the frozen food) and It Might Get Loud, “a history of the electric guitar from the point of view of three legendary rock musicians.” Who are they? Find out that and much more here.