Jeffrey Tambor – Way Too Indie http://waytooindie.com Independent film and music reviews Fri, 02 Dec 2016 17:34:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Way Too Indiecast is the official podcast of WayTooIndie.com. Our film critics grip and gush about the latest indie movies and sometimes even mainstream ones. Find all of our reviews, podcasts, news, at www.waytooindie.com Jeffrey Tambor – Way Too Indie yes Jeffrey Tambor – Way Too Indie dustin@waytooindie.com dustin@waytooindie.com (Jeffrey Tambor – Way Too Indie) The Official Podcast of Way Too Indie Jeffrey Tambor – Way Too Indie http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/waytooindie/podcast-album-art.jpg http://waytooindie.com Lake Bell and Kaitlin Olson To Voice FX Animated Pilot ‘Cassius and Clay’ http://waytooindie.com/news/lake-bell-and-kaitlin-olson-to-voice-fx-animated-cassius-and-clay/ http://waytooindie.com/news/lake-bell-and-kaitlin-olson-to-voice-fx-animated-cassius-and-clay/#respond Thu, 28 May 2015 12:45:29 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=36572 Archer creator Adam Reed has more irreverent animation up his sleeve.]]>

Archer is set to get some original animated company on FX. The cable network has ordered a pilot for Cassius & Clay, a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, action buddy comedy that has been described as in the spirit of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Co-created by Adam Reed of Archer, with Megan Ganz (most notably a writer for Community and Modern Family), Olson will voice a hard-drinking, fast-talking bullshitter named Ordwood Cassius, while Bell voices Shopcarter Clay, the fastest gun in the South.

Susan Sarandon will join Bell & Olson as a series regular should the show get picked up for a full season. Sarandon will play Connie Mack, the ruthless owner of the town brothel. Outside of the main three women, JB Smoove, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jeffrey Tambor, Stephen Root, Katy Mixon, and Robert Patrick will provide guest voices. Cassius and Clay is one of the newest developments by Floyd County Productions, following the 13-episode single-season animated comedies Chozen and Unsupervized (both of which aired on FX).

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Apartment Troubles http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/apartment-troubles/ http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/apartment-troubles/#respond Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=31676 Two whimsical New York girls take a vacation to CA when the difficulties with their living situation escalates.]]>

Back when Apartment Troubles premiered at LAFF in June, the quirky comedy about two friends trying to make it in Manhattan on an artist’s salary (translation: no income at all) was called Trouble Dolls. A crumpled piece of paper at the beginning of the movie explains the Guatemalan myth of the trouble doll: A young girl can place one of these toy dolls under her pillow, and the doll will solve all her problems while she sleeps. Hey, a 20-something without financial support in the big city has to try something. But, needless to say, the dolls suck at their job. An eviction notice and one dead pet cat later, Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and Nicole (Jess Weixler) are on a plane to LA to get away from it all. They stay with Nicole’s aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally), a has-been judge on an America’s Got Talent-esque program. Nicole, a conceptual artist more prone to quote Chekhov than Katy Perry, can hardly stand in her aunt’s presence without a glass of red wine in hand. But broke and with nowhere to go, Nicole and Olivia take up residence in Kimberley’s home and before long are auditioning for the show.

Apartment Troubles marks the directorial and screenwriting debuts for both Weixler and Prediger. What I found interesting about the script—clearly intended to be a comedy—is that I didn’t do a whole lot of laughing. In some cases the humor seems to have been lost in translation: scenes with Will Forte, who plays a socially awkward but well-meaning guy who offers the girls a ride in LA, just completely fail to land. But jokes about a 30-year-old guy who still cares way too much about his mother’s approval turn out to be far more harmless than the bizarre plot twist with Aunt Kimberley, who takes a liking to Olivia (for more than just her voice). Their scenes together are more uncomfortable than entertaining, and like Forte’s character, completely tangential to the plot.

Where the movie succeeds is with the two leading ladies, and since this is ultimately a character piece with bits of humor thrown in to lighten its existential weight, their performances really do provide enough to make this is a worthwhile venture. I said I didn’t laugh a lot, but intentional or not, that’s something I kind of liked about this movie. It’s easy to take eccentric artsy types and make them into caricatures, but that’s not what this movie is really about. While a show like Girls helps us to laugh with a generation of girls who got their Bachelor degrees and make naive (sometimes absurd) life choices, I don’t think Apartment Troubles is really trying to critique its lead characters. Instead, I think it’s trying to ask if there is a place in this world for people like them, a question worth asking in an age where art degrees are looked at with the same disdain as drug addiction or sexual promiscuity. Nicole’s family treats her art ventures as a harmful and destructive life choice. One she could ultimately change. “I don’t think they want her around the kids,” Kimberley confesses to Olivia on why Nicole’s family may have taken a vacation without her.

Maybe it’s helpful here that Prediger and Weixler wrote the script, because Weixler’s Nicole, particularly, feels eccentric, yes, but like a living, breathing person. She has a way of delivering her lines with a certain calm and carefulness—a bit counter-stereotype for a role like this. There is, however, a deflatedness in her energy on-screen, like if she wasn’t too poor to eat something other than juice smoothies, she might want to try a small dosage of Zoloft. She’s been beaten down, and now her one remaining lifeline, her bestie Olivia, is making strides toward normalcy: successfully making small talk with strange dudes in cars, landing a TV ad, and insisting the girls apply for a silly reality TV show.

To be honest, if someone positioned this film to me as “two east coast girls take a leap of faith and go on a reality TV show,” I would have never hit play. The premise seems prime for obvious and overdone satire, but I think the reason it works here is because we never stray too far from a story of two friends. It’s not about auditioning for TV, it’s about two young ladies, finding their footing in the world. Their response to rejection shows the film’s subtle tension: these girls both desperately need each other and just as desperately need to separate from one another. Outside of the confines of whatever quirky art school they just graduated from, each has to learn to what extent she’ll adapt and which rules of society they’ll choose to play by.

The script doesn’t let Nicole go on depressive woe-is-me tangents, but as far as I’m concerned, this film is all about her, and taking an eccentric personality and treating her with the subtlety Weixler does is an appreciated surprise when dealing with this genre. By the movie’s end it’s not any external circumstance that lets us know she’ll be OK, but the way she quotes Chekov to a starving cat while sitting in a pile of trash outside her apartment (OK, I confess, this sounds hilarious—but it’s a genuinely tender moment). The fact that she can still see beauty in the struggle lets us know Nicole isn’t broken. And maybe it’s not she that needs to change, she just needs to change the minds of others.

It’s not a perfect script by any stretch, and it probably helps if you already have a little empathy for the plight of the artistically inclined, but the film has a lot of heart—and both Prediger and Weixler are transfixing on screen. It’s impossible not to root for them. Even I was able to forget that a conceptual piece about a dead cat could never do well on a cutthroat talent competition. That’s America’s loss.

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2015 Golden Globe Winners (Live Updated) http://waytooindie.com/news/awards/2015-golden-globe-winners-live-updated/ http://waytooindie.com/news/awards/2015-golden-globe-winners-live-updated/#respond Sun, 11 Jan 2015 21:23:54 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=29402 Today’s the day! Our first big awards show of the season. If you aren’t able to watch or are keeping score, we’ll be live updating the winners as they are announced starting at 8 EST/5 PST. Refresh your browser to see winners throughout the evening. Complete List of 2015 Golden Globe Winners (Winners highlighted in […]]]>

Today’s the day! Our first big awards show of the season. If you aren’t able to watch or are keeping score, we’ll be live updating the winners as they are announced starting at 8 EST/5 PST. Refresh your browser to see winners throughout the evening.

Complete List of 2015 Golden Globe Winners

(Winners highlighted in bold font)

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Boyhood
Selma
The Imitation Game
Foxcatcher
The Theory of Everything

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
St. Vincent
Into the Woods
Pride

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
David Oyelowo, Selma

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Jennifer Aniston, Cake
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Michael Keaton, Birdman
Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Christoph Waltz, Big Eyes
Bill Murray, St. Vincent
Joaquin Phoenix, Inherent Vice

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Amy Adams, Big Eyes
Emily Blunt, Into the Woods
Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars
Helen Mirren, The Hundred-Foot Journey
Quvenzhané Wallis, Annie

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Robert Duvall, The Judge
Edward Norton, Birdman

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods
Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year

Best Director – Motion Picture
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Ava DuVernay, Selma
David Fincher, Gone Girl
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Original Song – Motion Picture
Lana Del Ray – “Big Eyes” for Big Eyes
John Legend, Common – “Glory” for Selma
Patty Smith, Lenny Kaye – “Mercy Is” for Noah
Sia – “Opportunity” for Annie
Lorde – “Yellow Flicker Beat” for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Best Original Score – Motion Picture
Alexandre Desplat, The Imitation Game
Jóhann Jóhannsson, The Theory of Everything
Trent Reznor, Gone Girl
Antonio Sanchez, Birdman
Hans Zimmer, Interstellar

Best Animated Film
The Book of Life
The Boxtrolls
Big Hero 6
How to Train Your Dragon 2
The Lego Movie

Best Foreign Language Film
Ida
Leviathan
Force Majeure
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Tangerines

Television Categories

Best Television Series – Drama
“Downton Abbey”
“The Good Wife”
“House of Cards”
“Game of Thrones”
“The Affair”

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy
“Girls”
“Orange Is the New Black”
“Transparent”
“Silicon Valley”
“Jane the Virgin”

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
“Olive Kitteridge”
“True Detective”
“Fargo”
“The Missing”
The Normal Heart

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama
Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards”
Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan”
James Spader, “The Blacklist”
Dominic West, “The Affair”
Clive Owen, “The Knick”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama
Robin Wright, “House of Cards”
Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”
Viola Davis, “How to Get Away with Murder”
Claire Danes, “Homeland”
Ruth Wilson, “The Affair”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Don Cheadle, “House of Lies”
Ricky Gervais, “Derek”
Jeffrey Tambor, “Transparent”
William H. Macy, “Shameless”
Louis C.K., “Louie”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Lena Dunham, “Girls”
Edie Falco, “Nurse Jackie”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Veep”
Taylor Schilling, “Orange Is the New Black”
Gina Rodriguez, “Jane the Virgin”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
Martin Freeman, “Fargo”
Billy Bob Thornton, “Fargo”
Matthew McConaughey, “True Detective”
Woody Harrelson, “True Detective”
Mark Ruffalo, “The Normal Heart”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
Jessica Lange, “American Horror Story”
Maggie Gyllenhaal, “The Honourable Woman”
Frances McDormand, “Olive Kitteridge”
Frances O’Connor, “The Missing”
Allison Tolman, “Fargo”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jon Voight, “Ray Donovan”
Alan Cumming, “The Good Wife”
Bill Murray, “Olive Kitteridge”
Colin Hanks, “Fargo”
Matt Bomer, “The Normal Heart”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Allison Janney, “Mom”
Uzo Aduba, “Orange Is the New Black”
Kathy Bates, “American Horror Story”
Michelle Monaghan, “True Detective”
Joanne Froggatt, “Downton Abbey”

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