Thinner but Maybe Meatier

They’re not calling it the Ultra Slim Fast Sundance, but the biggest little film festival in the world is undergoing something of a make-over this year in a spirited attempt to make it more user-friendly and easier to survive without risking mental and physical collapse.

“We’ve tried to do a lot of stuff to upgrade, to work on people’s lives during the festival,” says director Geoff Gilmore of the 10-day Park City, Utah-based event that opens Thursday with “Sliding Doors,” a Gwyneth Paltrow-starring BritPop romantic comedy, and ends Jan. 25. “We didn’t want it to be like Cannes, where you always go because you have to but you hate it. We didn’t want that same feeling.”

The first order of the day is showing fewer films, with the numbers for total features (103), documentary and dramatic films in competition (32) and items showing in American Spectrum (18) all down from last year.

Those films will be shown on some spiffy just-purchased German projectors in several new spaces. The venerable Egyptian on Main Street preserved its facade but remodeled its entire interior, and the massive new Eccles Theater (named after a local philanthropist and available as a performing arts space the rest of the year) will seat an impressive 1,000 on its main floor alone. The festival has also generously lengthened the spaces between its screenings, making the possibility of a time-wasting seated meal less a dream and more a viable possibility.

In a further attempt to lessen crowds, Sundance has moved its headquarters a considerable distance off Main Street and has instituted a new “home theaters” concept, with each section of the festival being primarily located in one place so that, in Gilmore’s apt words, “everyone won’t be running around like crazy all over town.”

As laudable and overdue as all this is, there are signs that it may not be enough, signs that Sundance is so much the festival of the moment that containment is out of the question.

A record 750 features were submitted for but 16 dramatic competition slots, a big jump from last year’s 600 and double the 375 that tried out only three years before. Able to attract the attendance of filmmakers from David Mamet to Melvin Van Peebles (with even Woody Allen and Lou Reed rumored to be considering visits), Sundance is so celebrated that publicists from as far away as London have taken to trolling for coverage.

As far as the films themselves, Sundance is continuing the tradition it began a few years back of putting those filmmakers with recognizable names in the noncompetitive Premiers section.

Among the usual suspects are Mamet’s elegant puzzler “The Spanish Prisoner,” Paul Schrader’s somber version of Russell Banks’ “The Affliction,” a new documentary by provocateur Michael Moore called “The Big One,” Ted Demme’s look at the dark side of “Good Will Hunting” in the Boston-based “Snitch” and the sentimental British World War II drama “The Land Girls” that showcases Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz and Anna Friel, three of that country’s best young actresses.

In the closely watched dramatic competition, where being completely unknown is a badge of honor, two of the more visible films have already been acquired by Miramax. “Hav Plenty,” an African American romantic comedy, attracted notice at Toronto, and “Smoke Signals” boasts a screenplay by novelist Sherman Alexie. Also anticipated is “Next Stop, Wonderland,” a new film by Sundance veteran Brad Anderson, who last did “Darien Gap.”

Though the number of dramatic features increases every year, documentary entries stay constant at about 200 per annum. Competitors this year include Penelope Spheeris’ “The Decline of Western Civilization, Part III,” an investigation of fraternity hazing called “Frat House” and examinations of Frank Lloyd Wright (co-directed by Ken Burns), Woody Allen (by Barbara Kopple), John Waters and Lou Reed.

Often neglected by trend setters, the World Cinema section generally has some of the best films in the festival, and this year boasts the hot Japanese film “Hana-bi” (Fireworks) and the morosely comic Cannes favorite “Junk Mail.” And if anyone still has the energy for Midnight screenings, offerings include “Orgazmo,” the new film by “South Park” co-creator Trey Parker, and “Blood Guts Bullets & Octane,” the kind of $7,300 first feature out of Sacramento no Sundance would be complete without.

Given that all these movies attract a captive audience of some 10,000 visitors, other events continually try to corral some of the overflow. Sundance itself is using the Eccles to host a pair of theatrical performances and music publisher BMG has rented a house to showcase live performances of its artists for possible movie scoring. And B movie veteran and local resident Kim Dawson, with films like “Carnal Fate” and “Passions Revealed” behind her, has rented space in a building called the Caledonian to show off the autobiographical “The Road,” a film she wrote, produced and starred in about, yes, a B-movie actress who wants to “do one thing I can be proud of.”

With all this going on, it should be no surprise that Slamdance, the rival independent event that proudly trumpets a dismissive quote from Sundance founder Robert Redford about “a festival that’s tried to attach itself to us in a parasitical way,” is getting more established. Showing 12 features at its Treasure Mountain Inn headquarters at the top of Main Street, Slamdance’s self-proclaimed motto is “If it moves and it’s good, it’s in.”

Fresh from having last year’s winner, “The Bible & Gun Club,” get nominated for best first feature at the Independent Spirit Awards, this impudent fest will be trying its luck with titles like “Scrapple,” “Six String Samurai” and “Surrender Dorothy.”

For those who lack the energy or the time to experience Sundance firsthand, documentarian Marina Zenovich has done an accurate and amusing job of capturing the madness in “Independent’s Day,” a new 60-minute film that will both appear at Slamdance and screen Thursday night on the Sundance Channel. Given that you can see it and avoid the snow, the crowds and the cellular phones, this is not just the next best thing to being there, it has a shot at actually improving on the experience.