Kutcher plays Jobs, Seyfried does Lovelace
LOS ANGELES — Ashton Kutcher as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Amanda Seyfried as porn star Linda Lovelace are among the highlights at January’s Sundance Film Festival.
Kutcher headlines director Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs, one of 18 star-studded premieres announced Monday for Robert Redford’s independent-cinema showcase. Chronicling 30 years in the life of the Apple mastermind who died last year, Jobs is the closing-night film at Sundance, which runs Jan. 17-27 in Park City, Utah.
Seyfried has the title role in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace, a portrait of the adult-film actress who became an antiporn crusader years after starring in the hardcore hit Deep Throat.
The roles are dramatic departures for Kutcher, best-known for comic movies and the TV sitcoms That ’70s Show and Two and a Half Men, and Seyfried, best-known for romances such as Dear John and Mamma Mia!
But dramatic departures often are what it’s all about at Sundance, which presents films out of the mainstream that let top-name talent take a break from the Hollywood mould.
“A LOT OF THESE ACTORS ARE LOOKING TO SPREAD OUT OF THEIR COMFORT ZONES.” JOHN COOPER
“A lot of these actors are looking to spread out of their comfort zones,” said Sundance director John Cooper. “It’s about doing something different for them.”
The lineup of dramas, along with 11 documentaries also announced in the premiere section Monday, play outside the roster of 64 films unveiled last week for Sundance’s U.S. and worldcinema competitions. Along with entries in the festival’s midnight section and other programs also announced last week, Sundance will offer 115 feature-length films.
The dramatic premieres present a number of reunions among filmmakers and stars, including Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, with co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprising the star-crossed romantic roles they played in 1995’s Before Sunrise and 2004’s Before Sunset; Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, a six-hour mystery whose cast includes Holly Hunter, who won an Academy Award for the director’s 1993 drama The Piano; Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s misfit teen tale The Way, Way Back, featuring Steve Carell and Toni Collette, who co-starred in the 2006 Sundance premiere Little Miss Sunshine; and Michael Winterbottom’s The Look of Love, with his frequent star Steve Coogan as British porn baron Paul Raymond.
Other premiere highlights include Don Jon’s Addiction, with Joseph GordonLevitt making his directing debut and starring alongside Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore in the story of a modern Don Juan; George Tillman Jr.’s The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, a tale of two boys in the Brooklyn housing projects whose cast includes American Idol alumni Jennifer Hudson and Jordin Sparks.