{"id":46447,"date":"2013-01-23T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T20:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=46447"},"modified":"2018-02-20T21:53:37","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T05:53:37","slug":"sundance-2013-spectacular-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/sundance-2013-spectacular-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Journal: &#8216;The Spectacular Now&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The movie I had been most excited to see at Sundance this year turns out to be one of the best films that the festival has to offer.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>After this year&#8217;s titles were announced for Sundance, I made it a point to seek out Tim Tharp&#8217;s book &#8220;The Spectacular Now.&#8221; I read it a few months ago and was interested to see how it would get adapted into a movie. While I liked the characters and the arcs they went through, I couldn&#8217;t get past the fact that Tharp&#8217;s dialogue sounded like an old guy writing for teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>Bringing in the screenwriters from &#8216;(500) Days of Summer&#8217;, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, was a great idea. They took Tharp&#8217;s original story, threw out the stilted dialogue, and created a much more genuine sounding teen-speak.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who haven&#8217;t read the novel, its story is about a young drunkard named Sutter Keely (Miles Teller). Sutter is usually the life of the party. He doesn&#8217;t quite fit into a clique. He&#8217;s the kind of kid that people want to be around. He has an infectious thirst for life (and alcohol).<\/p>\n<p>Sutter lives in the now. He isn&#8217;t worried about the future. The moment is all that matters. Then he gets dumped by his girlfriend (Brie Larson). He&#8217;s still a happy-go-lucky guy, but he needs a girl in his life. After a particularly hellish alcohol-fueled night, Sutter finds himself lying on a lawn not knowing how he got there. He meets Amiee (Shailene Woodley).<\/p>\n<p>Amiee&#8217;s a goofy sort of girl. She doesn&#8217;t wear makeup, she&#8217;s not popular, and she loves reading anime graphic novels. Aimee&#8217;s not the type of girl that Sutter would typically go after, but he feels like he can help her. What follows is a sweet, often touching coming-of-age story that feels heartfelt and natural.<\/p>\n<p>Director James Pondsolt (&#8216;Smashed&#8217;) pulls some great performances out of his leads. Woodley and Teller have intimate chemistry. The subtle way in which the movie approaches Sutter&#8217;s alcoholism and how it affects him is admirable.<\/p>\n<p>Tharp laid a fantastic groundwork with his characters and their transformations, and Neustadter and Weber have polished the herky-jerky dialogue. This is one of those rare instances where the movie adaption is better than its source.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rating:<\/strong> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/star.png\" alt=\"&#9733;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/star-rating-for-reviews\/images\/blankstar.png\" alt=\"&#9734;\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The movie I had been most excited to see at Sundance this year turns out to be one of the best films that the festival has to offer.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_excerpt -->","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":46449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4508],"tags":[6101,6099,1234,6098,5916,1959],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46447"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46447"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46480,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46447\/revisions\/46480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}