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TV Casting News: Freddie Prinze Jr, Jessica Lucas, and More

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:30:03 -0700

The newest round of casting news includes a new role for a former 90210-er and a project that could put Freddie Prinze Jr. back on TV at the same time as wife Sarah Michelle Gellar, so read on!

Freddie Prinze Jr. is hopping to an ABC comedy pilot called No Heroics, which is based on a comic series and revolves around a team of B-list superheroes living in our world. Prinze's role is Bradley (superhero name: Ultimatum), the tormenter of the B-list squad's leader: "An A-list superhero, Bradley is a handsome, cocky and egotistical Alpha male who has all the women and fame and money a guy could want." It could be his first regular TV role since the short-lived Freddie, and it makes him the second TV star of the family this season, since Sarah Michelle Gellar is starring in the HBO comedy pilot The Wonderful Maladys.
Meet Michael Rady's new on-screen fiancee: Jessica Lucas has joined the cast of the new Melrose Place spinoff as Riley Richmond, an inner-city elementary school teacher who's having second thoughts about her upcoming marriage to Rady's Jonah. You may recognize her from Cloverfield or as the undercover cop from the 90210 spinoff.
Smallville's Michael Rosenbaum and Heroes's Nick D'Agosto (who won me over in Rocket Science) will be playing brothers in an untitled NBC comedy pilot that revolves around a family.
Mad Men's Bobbie Barrett, Melinda McGraw, will star opposite Kelsey Grammer in ABC's comedy pilot about a Wall Street tycoon who loses his job and must reconnect with his family.
Hotness alert! Just after casting Alex O'Loughlin, the CBS drama Three Rivers has added The L Word's Katherine Moening to its cast.
Fresh off My Own Worst Enemy, Alfre Woodard will play a heart surgeon and mentor to the main character on Fox's Maggie Hill.

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Rocket Science: Charming, But Not Quite Enough

BuzzSugar — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:03:57 -0700

Rocket Science is the kind of movie that people, including me, will describe as charming or endearing. The problem with the film - the first narrative feature from Oscar-nominated director Jeffrey Blitz, who directed Spellbound - is that it's not quite as charming as it thinks it is.

Rocket Science centers on Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson), a meek high schooler with a serious stutter and a wrecked home life. After embarrassing himself by going mum during a school assembly, he's recruited for the school's debate team by Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick), the state debate runner-up who's still nursing the wounds from being abandoned mid-finals by her former partner, Ben Wekselbaum (Nick D'Agosto). Ginny tells Hal she sees real potential in him, and he falls completely for her ploy, never thinking that Ginny might have more self-interested motivations in mind. In normal high school underdog tales, Hal would lose the stutter, get the girl and win the state debate trophy, but Rocket Science is more complicated than that, so read more

From the opening scenes, the central idea of Rocket Science is that on the night Ben Wekselbaum stopped speaking at the New Jersey state debate championships, his voice started slowly making its way toward Hal. And it's an appealing idea, because Hal is obviously smart and witty and easy to root for; you want him to be able to tell the lunch lady he wants pizza without suffering through two minutes of "um"s and "uh"s first. Basically, you want Hal to get what he wants, which is 1) the ability to speak clearly and 2) Ginny. Thompson and Kendrick deliver nuanced performances far beyond their years here; there's one scene that ends with a cello through a window that's simultaneously hilarious and deeply moving.

Rocket Science isn't content just to tell a story of a stuttering, lovelorn wannabe debater, though, and that's where the movie's weaknesses lie. I assume Blitz, who also wrote the film, was aiming for a universal "finding your voice in a messed-up world" theme, with broken marriages, deviant teenagers and unhelpful school counselors to spare. But the movie is bloated with supporting characters and plot threads that don't ever seem to tie into the whole. The counselor, a staple of every high school film, fades in and out of relevance; Hal's mother's lover is little more than a caricature. I would have been content to lose virtually all of those characters and plot lines in favor of spending more time with Hal and Ginny.

The movie starts coming back together toward the end, however, when Hal seeks out Ben for advice. D'Agosto, so so young and goofy-looking in photos, looks positively like a man next to tiny, insecure Hal; Ben's confidence couples with Hal's insecurity to create some of the funniest and truest scenes in the film. I just wish Rocket Science had stuck to dealing with love, revenge, and high school debate; it's a smaller story, true, but one that the film could tell very well indeed.

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"Heroes" Fans: Claire Gets a New Boyfriend

BuzzSugar — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:16:41 -0700

Remember Claire's sweet Southern diner fiance from the last season of "Heroes"? Well, forget him. There's going to be a new guy in Claire's life: West, played by Nick D'Agosto. Yes, his name is going to be "West."

No news on exactly what kind of power he'll have, but apparently it's "very cool."

D'Agosto has been in a few TV pilots, but curiously, he's also in an indie movie called Rocket Science, the trailer for which I was just watching this morning. In it he plays Ben, a brilliant high school debater and the counterpart to the lead character Hal whose stutter prevents him from succeeding in the world of high school debate.

The trailer is incredibly endearing and funny, so I can see why the movie got great reviews at its Sundance premiere back in January. It looks similar to the awkward teenage indie movie Thumbsucker - only this time it's stuttering that's the problem, not thumb sucking - with elements of Napoleon Dynamite thrown in. The movie comes out in limited release August 10. To watch the trailer, read more

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