By Harlan Jacobson

Park City, Utah

Now did we say sex? Sex was certainly a vehicle for politics in seven or eight films on my scorecard but didn't much seem to figure in the awards.

Outright sex for sex's sake were the straight sex pics.

Like Don Jon's Addiction (see previous Sundance item), which divided audiences here but which can attract a commercial audience of 20-somethings and sneaky teens with its cheeky wit and its project to civilize the young American male.

As seen in the image above, every day seems like Independence Day in Benh Zeitlin's "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which opens this Friday. Until, that is, nature takes a disastrous course. And since the film is one of the most lauded independent movies of the year, it seems appropriate to celebrate the 4th with these interviews by our contributor Jake Mulligan with Zeitlin and cast members Dwight Henry and Quvenzhané Wallis.

It's at about this point, midway through the festival, that one begins to regress to the level of adolescent behavior.

But first, some movies.

Yesterday I walked out of a film that was a phone sex comedy and into a film that was, by sheer serendipity, a phone sex tragedy.

I went to see "For A Good Time Call.

"Boston Phoenix" stalwart correspondent Harlan Jacobson is busy watching movies and breathing thin air at the Sundance Film Festival. Here's the first of his dispatches from the event that will be the arbiter of the year's independent movies:

It's raining in Park City, which only has snow and Sundance to recommend coming here, the way Palm Springs only has the sun and no dance, or Tombstone only has a graveyard.