Trailer Tuesday: Butter

-

I don't know why exactly but I have a special fondness for comedies that focus on absurd, unconventional and/or pointless competitions... and the people who take them deadly seriously. Think mockumentaries like dog show-centred Best in Show and beauty pageant black comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous; or even warring cheerleader tale Bring It On, which is an especial guilty pleasure of mine. Hell, I even usually enjoy the juvenile ones, like Blades of Glory, Dodgeball and Balls of Fury.

Bearing all this in mind, I'm naturally excited for Butter, which features a group of people competing for the title of Champion Butter Carver at the annual Iowa State Fair. This group includes driven, deranged Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner) who believes victory in the competition will open the door to political power; vengeful stripper Brooke (Olivia Wilde) who has seduced Laura's dissatisfied husband, a legendary butter carver (Ty Burrell); and young orphan Destiny (Yara Shahidi) who is a butter sculpting prodigy. Rounding out the ensemble cast, meanwhile, are Hugh Jackman, Rob Corddry, Ashley Greene and Alicia Silverstone.


Honestly, I'll be watching Butter chiefly for Wilde, who I admit I have a very large girl crush on. Wilde is one of those rare actresses who can be simultaneously sexy, smart and funny - and while the makers of House knew exactly how to harness such a unique ability, mainstream Hollywood evidently still has no idea how to cast her to her full potential. Indie effort Butter looks different though, with Wilde coming across like the movie's big scene-stealer.

Butter has been touring the North American film festival circuit since September 2011. Word from those who've managed to catch the movie before now is that Butter is far from perfect, seeing as it tries to be too many things at once: political satire, black comedy and a Little Miss Sunshine-style quirky underdog tale. However, there are still plenty of laugh-out-loud moments to be had, and the script isn't short on entertaining wit.

Butter will receive a limited cinema release in the US from 5 October this year, but it's also going be available to download from 7 September, according to the film's director, Jim Field Smith. It's unclear what Butter's fate in South Africa will be: It could screen at Cinema Nouveau, it could go straight to DVD or it could never become available in the country at all. We wait and see...


Comments

oliver said…
A comedy about butter carving.

It just calls for its own theme song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq01UYiMyHg
8:10 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the rebooted Lara Croft gay? Evidence for and against...

-
Image
As some of you know, I’ve been fangirling hard over the new Tomb Raider , the first entry in the video game series since 2008, and ostensibly a reboot for the entire franchise . Taking the form of an origin story, Tomb Raider 2013 depicts the events that transformed a beautiful, if bookish, archaeology graduate into a pistol-packing adventurer with a devil-may-care attitude. We meet Lara Croft as a pretty, fairly ordinary 21 year old, brooding over her work notes, listening to her mp3 player and very much confined to the shadow of her male mentors. By the end of the game, however, she’s taken charge – she’s had to! – and, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s both a survivor and hero, right down to rescuing the princess and carrying her away in her arms. Yeah, this is probably the best point to mention that there will be some Tomb Raider 2013 spoilers in this post, so read ahead with caution. Anyway, I loved the game. Technically it’s near faultless, it looks beautiful, the ov
Read more

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Queer Icon (Part 4)

-
Image
Part 4: The mystery of Lara Croft’s sexuality “Now what’s a man gotta do to get that kind of attention from ya?” – Larson Conway (Tomb Raider, 1996) Despite being an icon for many queer pop culture consumers, Lara Croft’s own sexual orientation remains ambiguous. Outside of the Top Cow comics and live-action films – where Lara is blatantly heterosexual, with a fondness for slightly scruffy bad boys (who keep betraying and hurting her) – the character comes across as primarily asexual. Kurtis Trent is the only male figure who even comes close to being a love interest in the game series. Lara's apparent sexual disinterest is despite the adventurer appearing very sexually attractive herself; a figure of desire with bee-stung lips, voluptuous breasts, toned stomach and impossibly long, athlete’s legs. Yet Lara is never dominated by sexual yearnings or romantic affections. She is very much in control of herself at all times. It’s worth noting, however, that over time th
Read more

Ladies I Love: Part 2 - Rhona Mitra

-
Image
Following on from the first post in this series , you may realise that I have a very definite type. Anyway, today we profile model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra . This 36 year old Briton is of English, Irish and Indian descent. You'll have seen her pop up on the big and small screen multiple over the past decade and a half, although Mitra's claim to fame is that she was the second ever model (some say first if you rule out "unofficial"  Nathalie Cook ) to play iconic video game character Lara Croft . From 1997-1998, Mitra could be found in PR material, as well as at trade shows, events and conventions as a flesh-and-blood embodiment of Tomb Raider 's kick-ass archeologist lead. There have been many official Lara Croft models over the years , but as far as I'm concerned Mitra remains the best. In my mind, of all of them, she most closely resembles the video game character in terms of facial features. Plus she comes from money and had a rebellious boarding
Read more