Brie Larson in Unicorn Store & The Spectacular Now, Miles Teller on scripts and duck hunting

Brie Larson, who won an Oscar this year for her leading performance in Room, is set to make her helming debut with the quirky independent comedy Unicorn Store. Larson also will star in the movie and produce it with David Bernad and Ruben Fleischer via their banner The District. Based on an original screenplay by Samantha McIntyre, the story tells of a woman named Kit who, after moving back in with her parents, receives a mysterious invitation to a store that will test her idea of what it really means to grow up. The deals are freshly inked and the filmmaking team is now prepping for an October production start. 

Brie Larson is the newest member of the Marvel Studios family, having become attached to star in the company's first female-centric film project, the high-profile Captain Marvel movie. 

She next stars in Legendary’s big-budget creature feature Kong: Skull Island, which impressed the Comic-Con crowd with its footage, and reteams with her Short Term 12 director Destin Daniel Cretton for Lionsgate’s coming-of-age drama The Glass Castle. The actress also leads the cast of Free Fire, Ben Wheatley’s crime thriller being released by A24.  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

"Have you turned her into a lush yet?" That's the pertinent question Cassidy (Brie Larson) asks her ex-boyfriend, Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) in James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now. Cassidy's concern belies the fact that she's referring to Sutter's new girlfriend, Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley). Is she trying to protect the naïve Aimee from the perhaps alcoholic Sutter's charming sort of peer pressure? Is Cassidy warning Sutter not to lose his new love the way he lost her? Or is she mindful of her own unresolved post-breakup feelings over Sutter's inability to simply subsist without an oversized plastic cup full of spiked soft drink in hand to sweeten the day? 

Sutter needs the innocent Aimee to look up to him, to help him through school, to provide the company he can't get from his workaholic mom, absent father (Kyle Chandler) or the guarded sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who's moved to an upscale suburbia and decided to never look back. And Aimee needs Sutter's cocky empowerment to rub off on her in order to stand up to her overly dependent mother. That's what makes The Spectacular Now so unconventional. Sutter and Aimee's relationship is equal parts romantic and codependent.

Aimee's sober self-assuredness in contrast to Sutter's practiced cool makes The Spectacular Now feel just a bit unbalanced. You want to know why Aimee is attracted to the self-hating Sutter when she seems to have it so together in most respects. As their relationship progresses, it soon becomes apparent that Cassidy was right to have voiced her concern for Aimee, whatever her true motivation might be. Before long, Aimee is drinking as hard and as often as Sutter. 

Sutter's prom night gift to Aimee isn't a corsage or some other token of affection. It's a flask. Things aren't headed anywhere good for the couple. It takes a fateful meeting between Sutter and a person he looked up to for him to realize that something is wrong. There, he hears his own limited philosophy of making the most out of the present reflected back to him. For the first time, the non-committal now doesn't seem as spectacular as it's cracked up to be. Source: www.cinemaviewfinder.com

Eric Walkuski sat down to talk to Miles Teller about his latest film, WAR DOGS, and asked the actor a few questions in regards to a film he was promoting at this time last year; FANTASTIC FOUR. For those that need a recap, FANTASTIC FOUR, the Fox-produced adaptation of the Marvel property directed by Josh Trank, ended up being savaged by critics and fans, publicly derided by the director, and was ultimately a flop in every sense of the word, making just $56 million domestically. 

However, the one thing that stood out in the film was the cast, which included Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell, all actors who could certainly rise to the occassion when given the right material: “I loved the cast, I loved the characters. I think it's such an interesting dynamic. I love how much they really need to rely on each other. This Avengers thing, they've kind of created their own Fantastic Four in a way, Marvel's first family. So yeah, absolutely, I would do another one”. Teller points out that he always begins with the script and his performance in mind, with the rest falling in the hands of the director. 

“Whiplash was Damian [Chazelle]'s first feature, who would have known? I did that because of the script. I think certain things you can get sort of disenfranchised with a little bit. I can honestly say I've never just done something for money; I'd be really embarrassed for something like that to come out, that I had no attachment to the character, no attachment to the script. It takes a while before you're only working with the best directors, nobody's career is flawless.” Source: www.joblo.com

War Dogs, the newest movie from Hangover director Todd Phillips, stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller in the true story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two stoner buddies from Miami turned international arms dealers. “You can see it as a dollar sign, and that’s what these guys did,” Teller told Vulture at the premiere. “Even though these guys are dealing with $300 million contracts, and 100,000 rounds of AK47 ammo, to them it could have been Funyuns; it could have been Doritos, just exploiting a loophole.”

Set in what the film calls “Dick Cheney’s America,” Teller plays Packouz, the workhorse in the partnership, with Jonah Hill as Diveroli, a bro partial to gold jewelry, black tracksuits, and Scarface references. But the two actors have a different relationship with guns. “I’ve pretty much always felt the same way about guns. I’m not a big fan of them,” Hill said. “I think the movie is really good at pointing out how ridiculously easy it was for these two guys to become gunrunners the way our government is currently structured in that world.” In terms of gun control, Hill said he’d like to see more oversight and “more heavy screening, and making it harder overall for people to get guns.”

Teller is a little more comfortable with guns. “I’ve always had a respect for guns,” he said. “Once I got into a pretty rural town of Florida, it was not uncommon for your buddy’s dad to have a gun rack.” He said that he would be going duck hunting soon. “I’m going hunting this fall in North Dakota, so I’ll have my hunter’s safety [license] and everything. If you are going to use a weapon, just make sure that you’ve passed all the tests.” Be careful, Miles: This isn’t Nintendo! Source: www.vulture.com