The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just released its predictions for the coming season: they anticipate 13-17 named storms, 7-10 hurricanes, and 3-5 major hurricanes. According to the NOAA statement:

"Experts at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center are projecting a 75 percent chance that the Atlantic Hurricane Season will be above normal this year--showing the ongoing active hurricane era remains strong. With the start of the hurricane season upon us, NOAA recommends those in hurricane-prone regions to begin their preparation plans."

Nowhere will this statement about preparedness have greater impact than in New Orleans. Ever since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, organizations in the area have been trying to do just that: get the city ready for whatever the new hurricane season has in store. While Congress and state officials in Louisiana discuss plans to bolster the wetlands to the east and south of the city--natural structures that will eventually act as organic storm force-reducing barriers--the once-maligned U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been busy shoring up levees and installing new preventive systems.

One such system is a series of three remotely-operated hydraulic gates that have been installed at the mouths of the 17th Street Canal, the Orleans Avenue Canal, and the London Avenue Canal. These are the very canals whose levees failed during Hurricane Katrina. The idea is that the gates will halt any storm surge coming into the city from Lake Pontchartrain, and will give the pumps at each canal a chance to work the way they were supposed to during Hurricane Katrina. Back in August 2005, the storm surge flowed straight from the lake into the canals, putting so much pressure on the pump system that it was unable to cope with the inflow. Eventually the earthen levees along the canals collapsed under the pressure. With the gates in place, the pumps will be able to pump out any water in the low-lying areas of the city without simultaneously dealing with the surge from Lake Pontchartrain.

Also in place is a new early-warming system called SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisitions). The SCADA system involves a series of sensors that are placed along each canal, providing measurements of water level. In the event of storm surge from the lake, the SCADA system will alert monitors in a remote location and the decision will be made to close the gates.

While no man-made system can ever guarantee dominance over the whims of Mother Nature, these extra measures will at least provide the Crescent City with the fighting chance it didn't have in 2005. For an animated explanation of canal gates and pumps, see "Outfall Canal Closures & Pump Stations" on the website for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Hurricane Protection System.

A day or two after I arrived in Park City for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I found myself chatting with a documentary director at a party. As he explained, he was taking a detour from a year-long festival tour promoting his second major doc, which had premiered last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, only to be overshadowed by some of the more star-studded projects on the program. "I mean, we got enough press," the director told me. "But Toronto is a festival where it's still possible to play under the radar. Unlike Sundance."

I had that conversation in my head as I tackled about 20 of the 125 features at this year's festival. As even the most casual follower of the film industry knows by now, Sundance has become a famously buzz-driven affair. About 75 percent of the media who attend the festival concentrate on the dozen or so films that screen in the non-competitive "Premieres" sidebar. These are usually Hollywood-financed pictures with an A- or B-list star and/or director; they tend to be the objects of bidding wars if they don't go into the Festival with distribution already secured. This means that the 105 additional films on the schedule have to fight an uphill battle to gain any visibility. In past years, the competitive Jury Awards have served as a corrective to this problem. In 2006, for instance, while Little Miss Sunshine soaked up the lion's share of headlines and distribution funds, a three-part marvel of personal, truly independent filmmaking called Iraq in Fragments quietly bagged three Jury awards. And just last week, the same production secured an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. For a film largely shot and edited by one man on a low six-figure budget, that's about as successful as you can get.

This year, the four Juries divided their accolades evenly between small "issue films" and heavily-hyped acquisition bait. Whilst Grace is Gone, the first big sale of the festival, went home with the Dramatic Audience prize as well as the coveted Waldo Salt Screenwriting Prize, the World Dramatic Jury prize went to Sweet Mud, a story of life on an Israeli kibbutz that both press and Festival goers had all but ignored. Other major jury prizes went to the Afghani elections doc Enemies of Happiness (Grand Jury Prize, World Documentary) and immigration drama Padre Nuestro (Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic).

To say that many of these films were not exactly the hottest tickets of the fest would be an understatement. But Jury Prize winners rarely are. It's not that Sundance 2007 was badly programmed; of the 20 features I saw in their entirety, only two were really awful, and seven films fell somewhere between Very Good and Undeniably Great. What's interesting, I think, is that the very best films I saw at Sundance 2007 were almost completely overlooked by the Festival press corps. And since many of them screened in the somewhat marginal Spectrum sidebar, they were ineligible for profile-boosting awards. Three dramatic features are worth singling out for their formal innovation, their fresh perspective, their directors' willingness to take risks....and for the fact that each project left Sundance without distribution.