Ugh! Lists. America loves them.

Me too, I just wish they didn’t all come out in December. We’re not even halfway through the month and I think we’ve had enough already (Note: We’ll probably be posting at least one or two lists soon, don’t you worry).

Someone needs to synthesize and rank all of them into one Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists. That way, I don’t have to have constant battles with my self-control about clicking through Amazon, Salon, AND New York Magazine‘s List of Books. If their list it’s on The Ultimate List of Best Lists then consider it read, and if not, better luck next year.

If such a list of lists did exist I’ll tell you what definitely wouldn’t be on it: The AP’s Top 10 Viral Videos of 2008.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Invention with Brian Forbes, the new web series from comedy team David Beeler and Tom Konkle (Dave & Tom), has been picked up for a distribution deal with KoldCast TV, adding to the growing number of original series released through the Irvine-based broadband TV network. Just like After Judgment and a large crop of the Strike.TV web series, Invention will heading to millions of TiVo DVRs later this month as part of the recently announced deal between KoldCast TV and TiVo’s TivoCast service.

Konkle and Beeler make up the two-man creative team at Pith-E Productions, which is also shopping Is It Safe?, another high brow original series that has been picking up attention as a clever spoof of the CSI-type procedurals. In all, the comedy duo have racked up over 12 Million views so far on their videos according to metrics company TubeMogul.

Invention with Brian Forbes is minimalist British television (on the web of course), complete with a single-color backdrops and fixed public access camera setups. Beeler stars as host Brian Forbes, interviewing his recurring (and only) guest, inventor Sir Reginald Bo-Hey Know (Konkle), on his latest inventions—everything from a new calendar system to a book on cartography and even a new set of “gas pants” (above).

Why would someone want to add flatulence to their own pants?
Sir Reginald: Integrity, sir, integrity.

As co-creator Konkle calls it, “it’s stupid comedy for smart people.” Konkle, who nails a spot-on British accent, is in fact not British at all, joked that, “I’ve actually booked more work as a Brit than as an American.” Invention itself, he added, it really a “two-hander,” a throwback to the old comedy duos that Beeler and Konkle have based their partnership on ever since they first teamed up at the Beyond the Fringe Festival back in 1999. He cites Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, who incidentally was how they first met, along with Bob & Ray as the model for their brand of intelligent, “egghead” humor—”comedy for people without ADD.”

The series will use Koldcast’s website (on the Comedy Series Channel) as its main site, with the first five episodes available now with the release of new four to seven minute episode every two weeks.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Comedy, Featured, News, Production Companies, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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Ashton Kutcher knows how to work the new media circuit.

In September – after some teasing and along with partner Jason Goldberg on behalf of their production house Katalyst Media – the model/actor/head honcho at the monkey factory launched his first foray into online original programming with Blah Girls, an animated series that taps into the perennial popularity of gossip rags and silly little school girls.

Last night, at paidContent‘s end of the year mixer, Kutcher leaked the news during a Q&A with Arianna Huffington that he’ll be rolling out a new online original series in the coming months.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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When I was a kid, I had a gi-normous crush on Kim Cattrall. She was Gracie Law in Big Trouble in Little China, a classic if there ever was one (if they remake this, I swear, I’ll take a hostage). A few years later she was the first woman I ever saw with washboard abs when she appeared in Masquerade. She stripped down in that one and, next thing you know, I had big trouble in MY little China. Oh, throw in Mannequin, as well.

Now, of course, she has been stolen by a generation of cosmo-swilling, insufferable Sex and the City fans as Amanda. In that role she helped to solidify the term “cougar” in our vernacular, the word being so much more digestible than “pathetic old whore.”

Ouch, you say? Well, first, I’m talking about the character, not Cattrall. Second, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Obviously, single women over forty can be sexy and desirable. I’m just saying they are not being portrayed in the popular media as such when the term “cougar” is applied. The title’s begotten caricature. Take, for instance, Sex and the City, any Real Housewives series and, now, the web series Cougars.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joe Eddy
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I always have to commend a web series that tackles high concept drama with a nonexistent budget. High-concept isn’t easy, it’s one of those things where you really feel every penny you don’t have. This is where Dirty Bomb Diaries really shines. Made on a claimed $600 budget for a sixteen episode season, this high concept series certainly does the best it can with practically nothing.

Dirty Bomb Diaries is the fictional story of a young woman, played by Misty Van Cleve (The Young and the Restless), trapped in a city where a radioactive dirty bomb has exploded nearby. The woman, a typical girl next door type, is forced to survive on her own as she has a limited amount of supplies. The series was created and written by LA-based Sean Hinchey, directed and edited by Eric Tozzi, and features a strong score by Kurt Oldman.

Watching the series play out, it’s clear this is a solid filmmaking team. The camera work is strong and engaging and the story is well told. Episode 1 starts right as you’d expect it. We meet our lead, we are told of her normal life problems (ex-boyfriend, independence, etc.) before ending with that frightening rumble. Episode 2 is where we really start the story and start tackling how the lead is going to cope with such an extreme situation. As the episodes progress we come across many of the expected issues such as finding food and water, dealing with radiation sickness, and trekking down the path of dehumanization.

Most of the series is told webcam style, with the lead female vlogging to her computer, and is juxtaposed with slick narrative shots showing us events that our lead is going through. Naturally with most of the narrative coming via vlogging, it’s natural if not too easy to make the LG15 comparison. One can guess that this was what the basis of their premise was (“It’s Lonelygirl15 but 50 miles away, and an A-bomb just blew up”).

During the first few episodes, I have to say that I wasn’t a fan of all the vlogging. It felt almost too much, and without any person interacting back to the lead it made her character seem overly passive. Naturally if a passive person is put into a situation like this, she would likely remain passive. But if you add another person pushing her to be proactive you would immediately have conflict as well as a faster moving story.

By the latter episodes the story definitely starts to really move. We also see less vlogging and more dramatic scenes with our lead scrounging for supplies and running around. In the latter episodes I was happy to see some strong escalation for our character (chase scenes, breaking and entering, and more). What I was not happy to see in these latter episodes was a lack of a clear goal for the woman. This also led to a lot of unanswered questions as a viewer (usually centering on the question “why”).

In all, Dirty Bomb Diaries is a solid dramatic web series. There’s a saying around town the bad ideas get the funding, and the good ideas get squat. The saying definitely holds true here. Sean Hichey and Eric Tozzi did everything they could with $600 and more, netting what they say is over 2 Million views in aggregate for the series. They tell an engaging story with a high concept premise and though I may not be looking forward to say a 2nd season, I am looking forward to seeing the next project by this CAA-repped team of talented web series creators, which from what I hear could be a feature film based on the series.

Filed under: Articles, Drama, Featured, Reviews, revver, Web Series by Roger Wilcox
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The soft-boiled crime dramedy Get A Clue (Two Detectives. No Clue) features the moody and anger-management-challenged Jack Stone (Peter Berube), along with his pastel-colored, chipper, goody-two-shoes sidekick Lindy Langley (Jill Slattery), who together are out to solve their first case: the disappearance of ‘doggie superstar’ Captain Sparkles.

The puny pooch is beloved and favored by his owner, Mrs. Sparkles, at the expense of her son, Jeremiah, who feels forgotten.

Other characters dot the landscape of this whodunit, odd couple series – the gardener, the dog’s manager – to flummox our mystery-solving path.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Michael Shaw
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Somewhere, not on the public internet, Jakob Lodwick is all :-). The genre of online ephemera that the young man popularized with more-than-a-lip-sync, but less-than-a-music-video of Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta is now making its rounds to HBO.

In an effort to promote the upcoming season of Flight of the Conchords (in addition to an early release on Funny or Die), Mel (who likes to videoblog) is asking fans to make a lip dub of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement‘s latest jam, Hip-Hopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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This week is all about animals. Sure, cats and puppies have been web video stars for years, but seldom were good for anything more than a one-time hit. But real live animals (not just the animated sort) are making waves (and landing sponsors) as stars of their own web series. This week’s picks, compiled by the Tubefilter News staff, are Rabbit Bites, National Geographic Now and Super Chill Monkey.

Rabbit Bites

At first glance, it throws you a little—what exactly is going on here? But watch a few episodes of Rabbit Bites from creator Nicholas Quixote and you’ll see why the series  has been able to pull in the voices of Patton Oswalt, Sidney Blumenthal, Jane Lynch, Garrison Keillor, David Alan Grier and other stars in what The New York Times called, “twisted and sublime.” The bi-weekly web series stars two rabbits, Buns and Chou Chou, as they roast and ridicule some of the topics du jour in pop culture, everything from Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator, American Idol contestants and Britney Spears. Doing their best Barbara Walters, they even sit down with celebs of all sorts (web and otherwise) like Mick Jones (from The Clash) Robert Scoble, ZeFrank and Rocketboom. The little Hollywood bunnies have even landed Purina Rabbit Chow as a sponsor.

National Geographic Now

There was a day when the only place for rich stunning photographs of wildlife and world treasures were the glossy pages of National Geographic magazine. And it would be only fitting that they would eventually get serious about piping out their high-quality video work in a regular web series for us to ogle over. This daily series National Geographic Now, launched quietly last week and is worth losing yourself in for a few minutes. This week’s episode (above) stars Lonesome George the turtle, the last giant turtle of his kind who still hasn’t found a mate to keep his species alive. Man, you think his chances would be pretty decent being the last giant turtle on earth!

Super Chill Monkey*

This gem from creators Unbuttoned Films follows a day in the life of a working orangutan (*not a monkey) actor in Hollywood, from riding the bus to undressing at an audition, and stopping for grub at his favorite taco stand. While technically they only have one installment of the series up, we would definitely like to see more of this hairy little web star. And with over 600k views from that one episode, a few more would probably be well received.

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, Production Companies, Reality, Tubefilter Tuesdays, Web Series, YouTube by Tubefilter News
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Season Two of Assisted Living, a comedy web series chronicling the hilarious misadventures of stand-up comedian Dustin White after his ex throws him out on the streets of Chicago, launches today on the heels of a recent exclusive sponsorship deal with Canada-based video sharing site Unleash Video. The show is created by by writer-director David Miller, whose production company Viral Film Video has garnered over 10 million aggregate views for Season One of Assisted Living and other web series, and incorporates ideas and situations from White’s stand-up comedy act.

“Unleash Video chose Assisted Living as our first exclusive sponsorship, and as the site’s first original series because its mix of sexual appeal with controversial humor, a content niche that we very much love. With so much video content online we needed our site’s first show to be out of the ordinary, even if it meant potentially offending some web viewers,” said Jeremy Campbell, founder of Socially Collaborative Media, Inc., which owns Unleash Video. The show’s edgy material is well balanced by the White’s subtle straight performances.

White had a small role on internet dating web series Pitchman, which was also written and produced by Miller. “While filming season one, I got to know Dustin as an actor and was able to write material that flowed very naturally,” Miller says. “On stage he was much more free and obnoxious than he was in real life, so I decided to develop a show about a guy who was down on his luck which is something a lot of people can identify with, especially in this economy.” White adds, “It’s great to play a character that says whatever pops into his mind without worrying about the consequences.”

Unleash Video will release ten episodes of Assisted Living: Season Two (up from seven in Season One) with intentions to produce third season in the Spring.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Comedy, Featured, News, Production Companies, Web Series by Drew Baldwin
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Are baked goods the latest vehicles for satire against the Fox News set? Instead of using food for stop-motion reenactments of the last 50 years of America-centric warfare, 60Frames uses an edible item for the purposes of comedy in Lonely Corn Muffin, aka The Loneliest Ultra-Conservative Corn Muffin in the World.

Here’s the premise: a 33 year-old, male corn muffin of presumably Arabic descent with no friends aside from Tom goes on a conservative rampage. And while he can converse a-okay with everyone in the real world, he’s still silent to us, the viewers.

Creators Erica Rivinoja (who has a fairly extensive writing credit list, including a short-stint at South Park) and Elizabeth Tippet raise the stakes of your basic Saturday Night Live-esque inanimate-object-as-main-character by having Lonely Corn Muffin carry out over-the-top reactionism in the matters of abortion, terrorism, immigration and Promise Keepers/spousal abuse.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Michael Shaw
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Last night marked the beginning of NBC’s late night shuffle: Jimmy in, Conan earlier, Jay out (or not?).

It was announced back in May that Jimmy Fallon would be taking over for Conan O’Brien as the host of The Late Show come Conan’s move up a timeslot in March of 2009. Until then, NBC has set up the late night comedy equivalent of Change.gov, LateNightWithJimmyFallon.com, where Jimmy will host nightly video blogs.

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I thought that maybe NBC was using the term “video blog” loosely, that they really meant something like “webisodes,” but the one-and-a-half-minute vid of Jimmy casually addressing his new audience could not have been more aptly named.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Reed Kavner
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This is part 5 of a multi-part review of the initial lineup of Strike.TV’s original web series.

Speedie Date: Cute, Sweet, Ugh…

Enter crabby reviewer. Speed dating is incredibly interesting subject matter for the web series format because it can be done in real time and has real stakes involved. It’s a romantic comedy in five or six short minutes, what’s not to love? It’s precisely the reason that there are more than one or even two of these series out there. It’s also the reason why the bar is high for a show like Speedie Date on Strike.TV. And it’s also the reason I was bored to tears by Speedie Date’s first episode.

The writing is cute and sweet, the acting is cute and sweet and the filmmaking is adequate (read: cute and sweet), but unfortunately that bores me. And though there’s a cute and sweet twist at the end, I still wouldn’t come back to this show. Thematically this episode is about ‘taking chances’. Take a chance on finding love while speed dating, and conversely, if all you do is speed date, then take a chance on a real date. So, why, pray tell, doesn’t the writer and/or director take a chance in their filmmaking?

Nebish Mike is a serial speed dater is confronted by reluctant forty-something Heather. Veteran Mike launches into his stats while Heather is, “underwhelmed.” She starts questioning the entire concept of speed dating and it’s incumbent on Mike to change her mind. And he does, while learning something on his own. It’s textbook writing, complimented by textbook directing, and my professors at film school would have creamed their pants had I created this. It’s why I never liked them (that’s not true).

But the internet is a new frontier. Please please please stop with the short filmmaking and start entertaining us or getting under our skin. Use the form, push the form, change the form. The creators, director-producer Kristiina Hackel and writer Lorin Wertheimer are clearly smart and talented people with impressive resumes, I can only hope that they figure out how to take their concept, writing and filmmaking to a level beyond cute, sweet and adequate or this show is going to die before it gets past the next two episodes promised us.

Sketch Toons: Kool-Aid Porn

First viewing, wasn’t laughing; second viewing, chuckling. Okay, I’m going to watch this one more time, live, with you reading this and I’ll let you know what happens, here we go…and an LOL, nice. Forty-one seconds of pure unadulterated Kool-Aid porn. That’s episode one of Sketch Toons, from Emmy-nominated writer Charles Horn, who’s credits include The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Robot Chicken.

What’s there to say? The animation is a little too slick for its own good, I think, and maybe the pacing is a little slow, but honestly I feel like a retard critiquing something this short and relatively effective. It epitomizes the zeitgeist-to-death term, ‘it is what it is’. This is an irreverent, slightly offensive incredibly short cartoon with some humor, it is what it is.

My only thought is that with credits as long as the sketch itself, I hope in the future we can get maybe three toons in one episode just to balance it out. Not to mention it might be a little more satisfying of a viewing experience, because although I think the short is funny(ish), the only reason I’ll come back is due to the Robot Chicken pedigree (I can’t believe Robot chicken has a ‘pedigree’) and not because this sketch left me wanting more.

So I guess the review is: has promise, but the jury is out until I see more, and not just one more, but a few more…in one episode.

[Ed. Note: We know you guys don’t always agree with our reviewers’ opinions, so please post a comment to let us know what you think of the series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.]

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, Featured, Reviews, Strike.TV, Web Series by Jonathan Hludzinski
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