A24 has acquired North American rights to James Ponsoldt's "The Spectacular Now," one of the most buzzed-about titles at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

The film, which drew raves for Miles Teller's and Shailene Woodley's performances as a pair of high schoolers who fall into an unlikely relationship, drew a large number of prospective buyers to its Friday night premiere at the Library Center Theatre.

Written by "(500) Days of Summer" writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber and financed by Andrew Lauren, "The Spectacular Now" is Ponsoldt's first film since last year's "Smashed," which also drew raves for its performances but was not...

Sex is always a big topic at Sundance, but this year it come from the women’s perspective. That’s because for the first time Sundance has an equal number of women as men directors in competition -- eight -- with more than a dozen other women directors in other sections of the festival.

So, yes, Sundance 2013 brings men with midlife crises (Drake Doremus’ “Breathe In”) and closeted literary giants (“Kill Your Darlings”). But suddenly there are women with midlife crises too, and life-altering problems told from a female perspective.

>> In “Concussion” by Stacie Passon (below), a woman adopts a secret life as a...

Is Sundance searching for "Searching for Sugar Man?"

It may be unfair to describe the festival's 2013 programming philosophy as an attempt to find another music-related documentary with the breakout potential of that Oscar-nominated doc, which debuted in Park City one year ago. But this year's lineup contains a number of rock-oriented docs, and the precedent set by "Sugar Man" certainly hangs over screenings.

Morgan Neville's "Twenty Feet From Stardom," one of the opening-night films (as "Sugar Man" was), is by all reports an invigorating tribute to some of rock 'n' roll's greatest background singers. "Pussy Riot – a Punk Prayer" chronicles the Russian punk band whose members were sentenced to seven years in prison for a satirical performance.

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As President Obama and Congress begin to debate gun control in Washington, one movie at Sundance -- "Blue Caprice" -- has already weighed in on the tragedy of mass shootings: killers aren’t born, they’re made.

Alexandre Moors' film tells the story of the Beltway snipers, two unknown criminals who killed innocent civilians at random in the Washington D.C. area in 2002. Rather than focus on the senseless killings, scribe R.F.I. Porto and Moors convey how the two assassins came to commit those crimes, how an embittered John Allen Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) took 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo (Tequan Richmond) under his wing and turned him into a ruthless assassin.

Though Beltway killings happened 10 years ago, the...