An upcoming film starring Jennifer Garner has lost its “Republican primary connection,” The New York Times points out.

The central character in the comedy “Butter” – played by Garner – is a conservative woman fighting to win a butter sculpting competition in Iowa who’s said to be loosely based on Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Since Bachmann has dropped her presidential bid, the comparison won’t be as buzzy when the movie comes out in March.

Though Garner has called her character’s similarity to Bachmann “serendipitous,” executive producer Harvey Weinstein emphasized the connection a few months ago by sarcastically inviting the then-presidential candidate to the movie’s Iowa premiere.

Source: http://www.politico.com/

Last night, a crowd of industry insiders and excited film enthusiasts gathered at the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for a live table-read of John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club. This time, instead of Molly Ringwald and the gang, Up in the Air director Jason Reitman gathered an equally eclectic group of actors to reimagine the diverse sterotypes portrayed in the film. A lovely and very pregnant Jennifer Garner was beauty queen Claire (Molly Ringwald), James Van Der Beek was Andy the jock (Emilio Estevez), Mindy Kaling was basket case Allison (Ally Sheedy), Patton Oswalt was Brian the geek (Anthony Michael Hall), and, probably best of all, Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul was the criminal Bender (Judd Nelson). Rounding up the cast as those ever-meddling adults (cue eye-roll) were J.K. Simmons as Carl the janitor, and Michael Chiklis as Mr. Vernon. Reitman himself called out the directions on stage, while images from the film flashed on stage to signal a change of scene.

EW caught up with Reitman after the show, and he said that choosing the 80?s classic for this new experiment was a no-brainer. ”The Breakfast Club was just a perfect fit,” he said. ”I needed a film that was in a contained location with not too many characters, that was funny, that was populous, that had a great script that the audience would have a relationship with…it just hit the nail.”

If the audience’s frequent laughter is any indicator, then Reitman is absolutely right. Consider that nail hit. Many of the laughs came from Hughes’ already fantastic dialogue, which translates very well to stage, but the audience definitely reacted to the forgotten 80?s lingo that runs rampant in the film. It was very surreal seeing the dude from Dawson’s Creek threaten to ‘total’ a guy, and then a few minutes later Jesse Pinkman used “eat my shorts” as an actual, non-ironic insult. Remember when Bart Simpson was a controversial cartoon character? Crazy.

The entire cast did a great job. Most of them stayed true to the original characters, but Kaling’s natural valley girl voice put a slightly different spin on the vodka-loving Allison. If you didn’t read any press coverage before the event, you never would have known that the actors didn’t rehearse. “They just showed up 30 minutes before and started reading,” Reitman said. “Aaron Paul in particular really took the lead and decided he was going to full-on act it out, and everyone went with it.”

I have added 2 new movie stills from Jen’s upcoming movie Butter.

GALLERY LINK:
- Movies Butter > Promotional Photos

The Austin Film Festival announced today that Butter, an Iowa-set comedy about butter carving that stars Jennifer Garner and Ty Burrell, will serves as Opening Night Film on Oct. 20.
Other notables: The previously announced regional premiere of Jeff Who Lives at Home will screen as the fest’s Centerpiece Film, with co-writer/director Jay Duplass will be in attendance. Nancy Savoca’s Union Square, about estranged sisters, closes the festival on Oct. 27 with star Mira Sorvino in attendance.

For more info, check out www.austinfilmfestival.com.

Source: http://www.austinchronicle.com/

The Weinstein Company has launched a viral site for director Jim Field Smith’s comedy Butter which features the clip below of Jennifer Garner as Laura Pickler campaigning for governor.

The film is set in the Midwest U.S., where an adopted girl (Yara Shahidi) discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman (Garner) in their town’s annual contest. Hugh Jackman, Alicia Silverstone, Ty Burrell, Ashley Greene and Olivia Wilde also star.

OFFICIAL SITE

Source: http://www.comingsoon.net/

We have reached an interesting and, frankly, depressing place in modern political dialogue, where even trying to tackle the subject guarantees that part of your audience will walk away angry. My first political memory involves the Watergate trials, so it’s little wonder I’ve grown up in an increasingly cynical political atmosphere. I do wonder sometimes if it’s even possible to fix things at this point, or if we are simply at the point where there will never be something like a middle ground again.

We ran a piece here about the statement that Harvey Weinstein sent along to be ready before the public premiere of “Butter” at the Toronto Film Festival last week, and while it drew some big laughs in the room and got some play in the press, I felt like it was yet another set of battle lines being drawn. And while there are many things I like about the film, which is definitely worth seeing, there’s a chance that its merits will be ignored in the conversation over the easy targets that the movie singles out, especially in the climate as we’re gearing up towards the 2012 election season. (more…)

The big surprise of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, for me, is undoubtedly Jim Field Smith’s Butter, a hilarious political satire using a butter sculpting competition in Iowa to poke fun at 2008′s political race between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. There is room to find parallels to all facets of politics over recent years in Jason Micallef’s debut screenplay pitting a young black orphan up against a cold-hearted and determined housewife and you shouldn’t need to watch CNN on a daily basis to realize whom the two are meant to represent.

Jennifer Garner’s voice over prepares us for what is to come in the film’s opening moments saying this is a story of “greed, black mail, sex and butter.” However, this film presents the strangest way of devising a political satire I can think of as we’re introduced to the little-known world of butter carving through Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) and his ambitious wife Laura (Garner). (more…)

Star Jennifer Garner charges through Butter, her first film as a producer, with the clipped, obsessive certainty of a (really well dressed) bull in a china shop. “Watch your balls, Dad,” her stepdaughter says, but he’s far from the only potential victim on the list.

The Weinstein Co. decided to slip their new comedy into Telluride ahead of its premiere at Toronto, and Garner, co-star Ty Burrell, producer Michael De Luca and director Jim Field Smith attended the first public screening Saturday night at the packed Galaxy Theatre. Smith introduced the film with a witty recounting of his efforts to get the film finished in time and the various flights it took to get here earlier today (with the film reels in his carry-on bag).

Garner noted that Butter was the first film produced by her production company Vandalia Films, which she runs with partner Juliana Janes, after 10 years in action. Since Saturday was the first-ever showing of the film to “real people” she joked, “we could all just die.”

The film is an often edgy comedy masquerading as a political satire about the skullduggery and shenanigans surrounding a butter-carving contest in Iowa, which Garner’s character Laura Pickler proudly brags is “where all the great battles begin.” (It would have been interesting to watch George Clooney’s The Ides of March in a double bill.) The film has plenty of laughs and a slew of great supporting turns, particularly Rob Corrdry as a warm-hearted foster parent and Olivia Wilde as a stripper turned vindictive butter booster. Hugh Jackman shows up in what amounts to a cameo in just a few scenes, including a spoken prayer to God that had the audience howling.

Throughout, there are references to “the liberal media” and America being “No. 1,” as Garner purses her lips and bullies her way through foe and family alike with the hybrid zeal of To Die For’s Suzanne Stone crossed with Michelle Bachmann. (In a funny bit of timing, Sarah Palin was busy bleating to her sheep in Iowa earlier today.) There is so much riding on her winning that it’s frightening. You can tell the filmmakers had Election in mind when they put this together. The satire sometimes loses traction, and the competing voice-overs begin to seem random and pointless, but the narrative is clear enough and the laughs well-earned.

Along the way, we get to see and hear about some fabulous butter sculptures, including a reproduction of The Last Supper, Schindler’s List, Laura Bush, Iwo Jima and Passion of the Christ with Neil Diamond as Jesus. Plus, Smith stuck a funny collection of outtakes at the end that underline that how ridiculous it all is — family, competition, butter, politics, life.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/

“Cowboys & Aliens” star Olivia Wilde is set to replace Jennifer Garner in Occupant Films’ darkly comedic thriller “Better Living Through Chemistry.”
Indie pic was originally slated to star Garner before she recently became pregnant with her third child.

In July, Sam Rockwell signed on to play a meek, small-town pharmacist stuck in a loveless marriage who rediscovers himself by starting an affair with a trophy wife, who will now be played by his “Cowboys” co-star Wilde.

After she introduces him to the pleasures of prescription drugs, things spin out of control when they begin plotting to kill her husband.

Michelle Monaghan is set to co-star as Rockwell’s wife, while Judi Dench is expected to serve as the film’s narrator.

Geoff Moore and David Posamentier, whose script appeared on the most recent Black List, will make their directorial debut.

Occupant’s Joe Neurauter, Felipe Marino and Keith Calder are producing “Chemistry,” for which ICM is handling North American rights. Ealing Metro is handling international sales for the pic, which is slated to start production this fall in Maryland.

Wilde also recently starred in David Dobkin’s “The Change Up.” She’ll soon be seen alongside Garner in The Weinstein Company’s “Butter,” which will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Wilde has an additional quartet of films on the horizon, including Andrew Niccol’s “In Time” and Alex Kurtzman’s “Welcome to People.” Thesp recently exec produced the short documentary “Sun City Picture House,” which follows a Haitian community struggling to rebuild after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Pic won the Maui Film Festival’s audience award.

Wilde is repped by WME and Untitled Entertainment.

Source: http://www.variety.com/