FX‘s Rescue Me, the hit show starring Denis Leary that follows a group of New York City firefighters and their lives in our post-9/11 world, was hit hard by the timing of last year’s writer’s strike, which forced it to go on hiatus for all of 2008 – season 5 of the show is expected to debut in April of 2009, a full 19 months after the season 4 finale. Although the fifth season promises 22 episodes (as opposed to the usual 13), worries have been that the show won’t be able to keep its fan base satisfied for such a long period of time.

To give fans their fix, the show created 10 mini episodes, or ‘minisodes’ as they are calling them, which have been airing between FX’s regular programming on Tuesday nights. Knowing, however, that most viewers aren’t going to tune in for a five minute minisode (next week’s episode is sandwiched between two showings of The Hot Chick), FX has turned online, airing the minisodes on Crackle and Hulu, as well as on YouTube, MySpace, AOL, and Sprint through Sony Pictures Television‘s The Minisode Network. The strategy has paid off – the minisodes have garnered over 2.6 million views, and that figure doesn’t include viewership data from Hulu (which keeps its data private).

Releasing minisodes to help a struggling show is not without a hint of irony; Rescue Me was delayed by a strike that hinged largely on the issue of how to deal with online media, and to solve the problems caused by the delay, they turned to… online media. The minisodes are great – in the eighth episode, the guys play “Person, Place and Thing” in the surreal setting of a burning building, and in the fourth episode we get a heart-wrenching look at the last time the guys got to hang out carefree before the tragic 9/11 attacks. There are two more minisodes to debut, after which fans will have to wait eight months for the season 5 debut. The next minisode (tentatively entitled “Sweat”) airs next Tuesday at 10PM PST on FX, and should debut on Crackle and Hulu at about the same time.

Filed under: Comedy, Crackle, Crackle (Sony Pictures Television), Drama, FX, News, Web Series, YouTube by Arjun Sharma
No Comments »

Do kids still dream of running away and joining the circus? All the kids I know just dream of being video game testers. And by kids I mean 25 year-olds. And by 25 year-olds I mean me.

Though most modern entertainment is dispensed in sleek digital packages, there remain a courageous few for whom entertainment means swallowing swords, exhaling fire, and performing vaudevillian feats and burlesque treats that delight and traumatize. For the last 13 years, the New York-based Bindlestiff Family Cirkus has been traveling coast to coast doing just that.

But even circus folk can’t literally live on peanuts (it takes $75,000 a month to keep the show on the road), and in a new online documentary/reality show aptly titled The Bindlestiffs, we get a behind-the-red-curtain look at how a real-life independent circus survives.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Ana Hurka-Robles
No Comments »

Horror is a natural genre for online video. The dialogue is mostly pointless (meaning money doesn’t have to be spent on top-quality actors or writers), you don’t need more than four minutes to show a monster tearing someone’s guts outs, and – since the audience is already primed for blood at any turn – you can make a cliffhanger out of nearly any scene.

These are all points that Comcast’s FEARnet has exploited to great effect with 30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust, the Ben Ketai-directed sequel to Sam Raimi‘s Blood Trails.

For those that haven’t been following the 30 Days of Night universe, basically, vampires are invading America.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Alex Woodson
No Comments »

The first thing that strikes you when watching The Roadents, is that Pee Pee and Buttercup are no ordinary, run of the mill, mousetrap type rodents. In fact, they’re personable guinea pigs with a penchant for rambling, non sequitur, philosophical conversation. Surprisingly though, their musings on nothing in particular are whole-heartedly entertaining.

The loose structure of the show, and the setting of a nondescript road trip allow the creators to take their furry friends virtually anywhere, and to go off on any tangent they please. Case in point, conversations between the The Roadents range from a simple game of truth and dare to a possible alien abduction.

The Roadents’ charm equally stems from the camaraderie between its two leads, Pee Pee and Buttercup, voiced by Kevin McShane, and David Harris, respectively. We recently caught up with McShane, who boils it down quite simply, “Pee Pee thinks Buttercup is too uptight. Buttercup thinks Pee Pee is a moron. One of them is right.”

When asked where those two furry friends got their names, McShane admits, “Pee Pee’s name is actually “PéPé”…He got the nickname Pee Pee because apparently he used to get so nervous when his owner held him that he peed himself. Buttercup obviously got named because of his sunny disposition.”

When quizzed about the unfortunate name sticking in real life, McShane quips, no one will dare call him Pee Pee unless, “they want to get punched in the solar plexus.”

One can’t help but wonder if the guys have an ultimate destination. McShane responds, “We were never really told…I think it’s a case of the journey being more important than the destination.”

Indeed, there’s something beautiful about two guinea pigs out on the open road, free from the tethers of human society, taking the path less traveled. New episodes come out every Wednesday (keep track on the Tubefilter Web TV Schedule.)

Filed under: Comedy, Crackle, Reviews, Web Series by Lindsay Stidham
No Comments »

Imagine if you took an episode of 24, stripped out all the interpersonal mumbo-jumbo (translation: “drama”) and reduced it to a series of action sequences and pithy, Leslie Neilsen-worthy dialogue.

Then, instead of Kiefer Sutherland, you had a mustached, almost ambiguously gay, villainous main character who was really good at roller-skating and operated a top-secret lab out of the back of a tractor trailer a la Knight Rider.

That’s what you get when you watch The Rascal, a comic-action serial on Crackle.com.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Sarah Ricard
No Comments »

Each week, the staff at Tubefilter News gets together and picks out three shows we want to share with you.

This week’s picks:

Honesty

Take complete, blunt truthfulness, and combine it with awkward situations (like an employee and his boss forced to talk to each other in the bathroom, or a black mailman in a predominantly white neighborhood), and you get the Atom original show Honesty. Created by Brit McAdams & Dave Steck, the show’s witty dialogue engages the viewer in a way not often seen online. Within seconds of watching an episode, it’s easy to pick up on the pattern of conversation and let yourself get immersed in the situation. Take this quick exchange between an auto mechanic and his rich client:

Mechanic: Let me tell you what I did to fix your car in such detail that I leave you feeling completely emasculated.

Client: Hmm… let me respond by working a word into the conversation that I know you don’t understand.

Stephen King’s “N.”

Master storyteller Stephen King presents this engaging animated prequel to his upcoming collection of short stories, “Just After Sunset.” Twenty-five daily graphic video episodes follow the story of a psychiatrist who may have fallen victim to the same fatal obsession as his patient. Warning: once you start watching this you will get hooked, and we take no responsibility if you too fall victim to “N.”

Mr. Deity

I think staff writer Bobby Bender explained Mr. Deity best, “Ever get the feeling that the world as we know it is essentially a very poorly run corporation? That God may be making it up as he goes along? That he is more than a little incompetent at his job as the universe’s acting CEO? If so, you’ve got company – that’s the premise behind Brian Keith Dalton’s hilarious religious satire, Mr. Deity… [The show] is a model of innovation and professionalism in web-based television. The writing and acting are first rate and the minimalist set design and top-notch production value add up to something that is wholly original.”

Filed under: Channels, Comedy, Crackle, Horror, Reviews, Tubefilter Tuesdays, Web Series by Tubefilter News
No Comments »

ABC, which has led the pack with a high-quality full-episode player, and which — like other major networks — has not yet endorsed the notion of superdistribution, is dipping its toe into the waters of the unknown.  ABC just signed up with TubeMogul to distribute clips of its shows to YouTube and the other major video sharing sites. 

Seems like an obvious choice; drum up some interest among the kids on YouTube, drive traffic to your website, but maintain control of your content and associated advertisements.  Afterall, YouTube won’t bring any revenue. 

With four-minute promos dubbed “Starter Kits,” the network hopes to appeal to audiences that have long forgotten network television.  Kinda like MySpace Minisodes, but with the option for more. 

But can this network fare compete with the edgy, authentic, trail-blazing works of the web?  Yeah, probably.  The more the merrier.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
No Comments »

Because Americans (the wealthy one percent!) everywhere (New York and Los Angeles!) seem to be enjoying these oh-so-glorious times of economic disparity, why not build a website around it?

Why not illuminate all the frivolous, ostentatious, and profligate happenings in such blessed American lives so that unblessed Americans (especially our impressionable youth culture!) can get some real perspective on just how good it is to be uninhibitedly rich.  That’s what the nouveau rich do, right? 

Well, that’s what Richard Nouveau (nouveau riche, get it?!) must have been thinking when he created Pocket Change, a webseries that chronicles “the most expensive” anything on the gilded shores of New York and Los Angeles.

For the unabashedly pretentious and self-proclaimed “master of wealth,” nothing is off limits. Even name-dropping Norman Mailer serves as a commodity in Mr. Nouveau’s commodities-fueled site that also serves as home for the genius/sad dating services Natural Selection Speed Date and Sugar Mamas Boy Toys.  So if you’re a rich, embittered cougar looking to score some sexy ass half your age, or silicone-loving stud with Napoleonic complex, Mr. Nouveau can hook it up for reals.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Sonja Mauro
No Comments »

Nite Fite, a new animated talk-show created by Dan Meth (Meth Minute 39) and Mark Vitelli (W222 Radio) and sponsored by Starburst, isn’t the funniest show on the web, but it has its moments. The guests have great animations, the different voices they feature are fun to listen to, and the banter between Penalty (a liberal) and Lloyd (a republican) is a sharp parody of political debate shows like the ill-fated Crossfire. If you closed your eyes and listened to the series, it could function as a radio show, but the animation is what truly engages the viewer. One of the best lines so far came in the most recent episode, when Penalty states matter-of-factly, “The healthcare system in the Mesozaic era was in shambles!”

The sponsorship with Starburst is interesting as well; Nite Fite is one of the first shows that fully embraces their sponsorship, mentioning (and making fun of) it in every episode. In addition to showing Nite Fite through their own website, Starburst also has a 35-second video entitled History of Sharing, a group of vlogger vids, and the series Moments in Sharing, which is a less funny version of the great Atom show Honesty. Would I go out of my way to follow Nite Fite week after week? Probably not. Would I recommend watching it at some point? Definitely.

Filed under: Comedy, Reviews, Web Series by Arjun Sharma
No Comments »

Aside from adapting paneled comics to the smaller small screen, my favorite new found genre that’s finding a life in new media is the uber short-form. 

On a platform where our attention spans are constantly questioned, our concept of attention constantly changing, and an episode of a classic American sitcom becomes a far superior piece of entertainment when it’s cut down to less than 1/4 its originally running time, the proliferation of web series with installments clocking in under 120-seconds marks an evolutionary step in the advance of entertainment that would make McLuhan smile.

It’s the product of a mutual understanding between content creators and viewers.  They want us to watch.  We want to watch something good.  And unless they’re going to spend some serious cash (or are otherwise capable of making their show awesome) the probability of worthwhile entertainment declines as episode times tick on.

So, to keep production costs at a minimum and potential viewers tuned in, some savvy creators keep their series uber short.  It works for us because, if we like, we can consume multiple episodes in a single sitting.  And if we don’t like, we can leave comments demanding the creators only give us two minutes of our lives back instead of five or six. 

Things You Can’t Do… is a member of the genre that had potential. 

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
No Comments »

At first glance, 60Frames‘ latest series Get Ripped might not look like much – the episodes are made up of long takes, shot from the point of view of a woman joining a gym and getting a personal trainer. But four episodes into its run, Get Ripped has become easily one of my favorite shows online. The series is less of a narrative, and more of an expose of the main character, a personal trainer named Derek who has, to say the least, some issues he’s still working out. This quote from the second episode pretty much sums him up: “It’s good to be fit, it’s good to be healthy, but I miss food… TRUTH is, nothing makes me happier than eating. WHOA! Did I just say that? Ok, fine, FINE! I had a Twinkie today, and you know what? It was so F***ING AMAZING that I was crying the entire time.”

The series was created by Gloria Calderon Kellett, a writer and co-producer on CBS’s hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and produced by 60Frames (Carpet Bros., Cockpit). Get Ripped is the perfect example of a show that has the potential to excel online, but could never work on any other medium (except perhaps as an SNL sketch). Each episode is 3 to 4 minutes long, enough time to get involved in the story, but not too long that you get tired halfway through. The way in which the show is shot, through the eyes of Derek’s latest customer, works for the online audience in the same way that lonelygirl15 did; considering the fact that most of us watch web TV up close to our computer screens, an intimate, face-to-face shot helps the audience stay engaged in a way that traditional TV could never replicate.

Filed under: 60Frames, Comedy, Production Companies, Reviews, Web Series by Arjun Sharma
No Comments »

The Israeli settlement movement is recognized internationally as unlawful, inhumane, and a barrier to lasting peace in the region.  As Lindsay cutely points out, most US Media won’t touch the issue with a 10-foot pole — in fact, Moblogic was the first to bring my attention to this critical development in an issue with global implications.

Maybe online video ought to pick up the slack.  Here’s some ideas: Veracifier could send some of their Ground Hounds to the West Bank, or if Brian Conley ever gets funding Alive in Palestine might offer some much needed perspective to the conversation. 

Most US Media outlets don’t want to report on the illegal, immoral expansion of the Israel settlement movement that’s apparently gotten implicit consent from the US government.  Why not?  Seems like an attention-catching headline to me.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
No Comments »