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I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Take It to the Bridge edition.

It's Wednesday, August 7th, and on today's program, we're going to talk about the new teen romance, The Spectacular Now, FX's new international cop show, The Bridge, and the Mysteries of Melody.

Joining me today is Slate's...

Steve, what are you again?

Exactly. If you can't tell me we're in, we're both in trouble.

Joining me today is Slate's Steve Meccaf.

Hi, Steve.

Hey, Julia.

Good to have you.

And also Slate's film critic, Dana Stevens.

Hello, Julia.

Hi, Dana.

Steve is joining us remotely from Upstate, so I am hosting today, and we're going to start right in with our discussion of The Spectacular Now. Dana, will you tell our listeners a little bit about the film and what you thought of it? Okay, so The Spectacular Now is the second film of the writer-director James Ponsult. His first movie was called Smashed, and I haven't seen it, but apparently it deals with somewhat similar subject matter.

It's actually about an alcoholic couple, a slightly older couple. The spectacular now is a teen romance, I guess you would call it, a high school romance, kind of in the mode of say anything is maybe a close antecedent, and I really, really liked it. It stars two young actors named Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley as the Young Lovers.

...