James Ponsoldt scored one of the biggest hits of this year's Sundance Film Festival with his Jury Prize nominated drama, Smashed, which featured Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul as an alcoholic married couple. Although he's been around for awhile(his directorial debut hit Sundance in 2006), Smashed marked him as a filmmaker with a rare voice and a talent to watch in the future. His next film, the teen comedy The Spectacular Now, already has The Descendants standout Shailene Woodley as one of the female leads. Now he's adding two more fast rising stars to the cast.
Brie Larson and Miles Teller are the latest to join the Shawn Levy-produced film, solidifying that the cast for this is going to be top notch all around. Teller will play Sutter Keely, a high school senior and hard partying alcoholic, who passes out on the front lawn belonging to Aimee(Woodley), a social outcast. After meeting her, he decides to embark on a social experiment by dating Aimee and making over her life. Instead, it's her who ends up having the greater impact on him. Larson will play a girl named Cassidy, who I'm assuming is a pretty and popular girl around school. Yeah, it sounds a lot like She's All That, but fortunately Freddie Prinze Jr. is nowhere in sight.
Larson is a personal favorite of mine so it's been great the last few months really watching her emerge as a quality supporting player in some major flicks like 21 Jump Street and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Teller has rocketed to stardom faster than any young actor I've seen ages, making his screen debut opposite Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole. As good as he was there holding his own against an Oscar winner, it was his hilarious turn in the Footloose remake that won me over. Poking fun at his pseudo-celebrity by playing himself in Project X was a weird move, but it proves the guy doesn't take this stuff too seriously. [Deadline]
