If Biggie Smalls were alive today, instead of being encased in hip-hop’s “Live Fast, Die Young” amber alongside Tupac and Easy E, you gotta wonder if he’d endorse Burger King and make bands with posthumous BFF, P. Diddy.

In order to maintain my mental image of the emotionally troubled, rhyming mastermind, I like to think he’d have long opted out of Sean John Combs collaborations. But the videoblog below is something I wouldn’t feel too badly attaching him to:

Yeah, P. Diddy sounds like an idiot. In the 2:36 confessional exercise in keeping-it-real logorrhea, he makes roughly 15 seconds of sense. In his defense, Diddy’s never had remarkable flow, being far more of a producer and entrepreneur than rapper.  Responses range from “Thought Puff Daddy was educated? Wrong!” to “bug up diddy for ecognising a great and being humble enough to make comments like this.” Regardless of taste and coherence or lack thereof, the video’s about perspective.

###YouTube might be ruining hip-hop’s beef, but, like all new media, it has the potential to reveal different characteristics and curiosities of its most famous participants (like seeing how Diddy – despite running a successful record label, clothing line, etc. – has difficulty spittin’ a coherent sentence).

All we need now is someone worthwhile to watch.

Good eyes, Gabe for finding this gem.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Not to be outdone by the green-hued pornography of its arch-nemesis sister-site, IFC recently launched a series with similar color tones. The network has brought Wilfred the Pot Smoking Dog out of its home on Australia’s SBS, chopped it up into bite size segments, and unleashed it daily at 4:20PM every weekday on the web.

Conceived by Jason Gann (who plays Wilfred, the dog), Adam Zwar (who plays Adam, the new boyfriend of Wilfred’s owner) with, I’m guessing, lots of self-medication, the series started out as a short film that made it big at 2002’s Tropfest in Sydney, Australia, and puts a sigh-of-relief twist on the stoner comedy, i.e. you don’t need to be stoned to enjoy it.

Where genre films like Harold and Kumar rely on a cavalcade of ridiculous hijinks to entertain, Wilfred works one absurd pretense – man in a furry outfit plays dog – to new levels of sophisticated comedy. Anthropomorphic humor runs rampant, but it doesn’t revolve around marking territory or mangling mailmen. It focuses on manipulation and insecurity from a canine’s point of view, all done in the name of protecting owner Sarah from another failed relationship.

It’s good, regardless of your state of mind. It’s also the first web series to debut in IFC’s summer lineup of online originals collectively dubbed The Internet! Is Always On!. 

###Starting next Monday, the Chicago-based, self-indulgent, semi-nude hipster love-in, Young American Bodies begins its 3rd Season (you can get caught up on Seasons 1 & 2 here).

On 6/16, Brooklyn’s POYKPAC – the comedy troupe that got internet famo for their real life Mario Bros. and Hipster Olympics – will star airing Good Morning Internet!, which will hopefully be the best morning show spoof since Good Morning World got taken off the web and put on Canadian television.

7/7 puts The Mary Van Note Show: Gavin Really Wants Me online and will document the woefully embarrassed yet hyper-sexual comedian’s quest to date San Franciso’s 40-year-old Mayor McDreamy, Gavin Newsom.

And to top off IFC’s summer showcase, beginning 8/11 Get Hit will be a how-to guide to achieve internet fame – from “script writing and raising money, to acting, editing, and ultimately seeding the content” – replete with insidery commentary and alleged Martin Sargent-like knowledge of the space.

This is IFC’s most aggressive foray into original web series (with ads painted on edifices all around NYC, as seen in the picture I shot above) since Getting Away with Murder showed the double-life of a mensch-living-with-mom / professional-hit-man in May 2007.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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If I learned anything interning at Marvel, it’s that the superhero genre has repeated itself so routinely that it seems to have run out of options, becoming ripe for satire. 

Like Jimmy Corrigan, many parodies seek to deny the sensationalism of the superheros as the age of average readers climbs.  The Defenders of Stan, however, seeks to exploit the fantastic elements of comic books to their fullest, creating a robust superhero parody that uses both cheeky meta commentary (i.e. “Red Herring cereal may cause a hacky plot-hole filled, body switching episode”) and sweet action sequences.

Defenders has enjoyed a long run on New York’s Channel 101; it’s had a fifteen-episode, 13-month stint so far on a site which votes off five shows every month.  This longevity, and the relatively non-homogeneous nature of internet shorts, has allowed the creators some room to play.  Often, they get pretty far out. 

The show parodies everything from Superman and Adam West’s Batman to this year’s presidential election and psychotherapy.  But the series works mostly on the dynamic between Stan – played by Austin Bragg – and Captain Ultra – played Hunter Christy – who along with Meredith Bragg make up The Big Honkin’ crew behind the show. 

The series is part buddy pic and part genre study.  Stan – a “pre-powered” human – and his little brother Ted/Captain Ultra – the most powerful hero on earth – live in a post-human world where superheroes are as ubiquitous as Hasidim in Williamsburg and Stan is one of just a few “normals” left. 

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Owen Roberts
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Brave New Films, the company behind the documentaries Outfoxed and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price has taken it upon itself to educate Americans about “the real McCain,” with a website devoted to the task.  Ostensibly they’re doing it because “corporate media won’t cover the story.”  Granted, the film company has expertly edited many contradictory remarks, but have they really shed light on the potential policies of this historically centrist maverick?  This video has been floating all over the interweb…





I tend to be wary of such gross simplification, and I find it disheartening, but it does raise interesting questions about what Arianna Huffington calls “The new McCain.” In order to clinch his party’s nomination, the once centrist Arizona Senator has publicly changed his positions on everything from tax cuts to campaign finance reform, but how might he govern?



An important question, raised and spread with an unprecedented agility.  Hopefully,  a conversation-starter on McCain’s potential governance and not just fodder for thoughtless partisanship. 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Through doe-eyed subterfuge and using the intimacy of the newfangled videoblogging medium to their advantage, med-school dropout Miles Beckett and former lawyer Greg Goodfried helped to create a dramatic internet show that made huge waves on the web, Lonelygirl15. 

In its wake, the series spawned the soon-to-conclude British spinoff Kate Modern, and the formation of new media production company EQAL, with a $5 million initial investment.

In a recently announced partnership, CBS will have first dibs on EQAL’s new shows, and EQAL will help CBS expand aspects of its TV lineup on the web. But can Lonelygirl-like series work off the web?

Like I wrote before, there’s something special about  the way Lonelygirl fans consume the show. It’s intimate. The characters reveal themselves to the world through personal webcams. We watch on personal computers. We rate, comment, tag, forward to friends, bookmark, and download, creating a sense of ownership and contributing to a type of entertainment experience that’s more emotionally engaging and endearing than anything before it.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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High expectations, fierce competition and an uphill climb to video stardom got you down?  Pick yourself up. 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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It all began one evening when Erik Luchauer and Kevin Antoine were waxing nostalgic about those fanciful CYA books, and it grew into an idea for a site with the ambitious goal of bringing new energy and creativity to the world of film, giving filmmakers, writers, actors, and their audiences a platform for collaboration.

Erik and Kevin’s Rootclip contests drive this hopeful synergy. The pair uploads a video that introduces a setting, characters, and plot (aka the “rootclip,” yeah, now you get it).  For the next 10 days anyone can submit a 60-second clip that advances the story to a second “chapter.” 

After submissions are closed, the clips are made viewable and vote-able on the site. The one with the most votes gets spliced in as the official chapter 2, wins its creators $500, and the cycle continues for chapters 3 through 5. Chapter 6 is open only to submissions from the chapter 2-5 winners (though anyone can vote), with a grand prize trip to Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival on the line!  Cool concept.

###There’s more about the process in this Rootclip blog post, which may sound complex but it’s straightforward in practice.  It does CYA framework one better, allowing for the Rootclip audience to not only democratically choose the next chapter, but to produce those choices themselves in advance. And because the entrants stay conscious of the film’s overall story and aesthetic consistency, the end result can be surprisingly cohesive given that the actors, settings, props, etc. all change every sixty seconds.

Here’s the final, six-chapter version produced during Rootclip’s beta contest, which was won by two 22-year-old video production technology students from Knoxville, TN.

Intense, no? Blackbook’s invocation of Stan Brakhage in its review seems appropriate, though the Tarantino traces aren’t hard to spot either.

The current contest has already gotten a bit campy with the goofy voiceovers of the just selected chapter 2 video, but the quality is sure to improve as the site picks up steam (just be thankful that the obligatory rickroll submission didn’t win). It’s already clear that this is an innovative and exciting use of web technology to build community to create new forms of video art. We’ll be watching (and voting!) closely.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Colin McDonald
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Charlie. Carlton the doorman. Robin Masters. Wilson Wilson.

All revered unseen characters in the pantheon of popular entertainment, hidden by telephones, intercoms, and pieces of white picket fence. Go ahead and put Kevin Pollak up there, too.

The comedian’s comedian – with an uncanny knack for impersonations (William Shatner, Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin, Peter Falk) who won my affection as a Usual Suspect – stars in Crackle’s The Writers Room solely by way of speaker phone.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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For Your Imagination, the new media studio with interest-based programming like The Green House and DadLabs, shows another valuable competency with the release of TV Guide‘s A Day with the Hiltons.  It’s a six-part online-only series documenting a mother/daughter pair who’ve won an trip to LA to hang with Kathy, Paris, and Nicky, thanks to a giveaway from momma Hilton’s fragrance (which smells like shame masked by a strong scent of self-satisfied privilege). 





Well-established brands like TV Guide are certain to seek branded video content at an increased pace,### and FYI’s ability to match the style and character of the brands they serve will certainly prove valuable; FYI also produces IFC’s LunchBox. The costs of building in-house production, especially for projects as short as The Hiltons, are certainly prohibitive to internet brands that need professional video fast; I see FYI taking a leading position in a quickly emerging production services market. 



As for the first installment of this shill of a reality series, really?  Kathy Hilton is a “phenomenal mother and role model and business woman.”?!?! I thought the Hilton’s were generally regarded as a bunch of obnoxious, narcissistic, drunken socialites, but look, they’re respected by some nice Clevelanders!   I didn’t realize people like these actually existed.  Maybe it’s all a hoax.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Channel 101 New York‘s short, Mister Glasses, is built on the idea that modernist architecture, and the pronunciation of that phrase, is inherently funny.  It is, at least the first few times you hear it, and the structural integrity of the joke doesn’t degrade too much as the show goes on.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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The technorati fell in love with iJustine when she strapped a camera to her head and showed them her life. The internet became enamored when AT&T sent her a 300 page iphone bill. And Carson Daly got smitten at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and again as a guest on Tom Green.

In fact Justine Ezarik (that’s her real name) had such an impact on the waifish headliner of NBC’s Last Call, that he totally requested to her to host The Really Big Internet Show. According to Variety, it’s “a daily five-minute webcast that will feature the day’s most talked-about original online videos.” produced by Daly and Madison Road and scheduled to start this July.

I give it ‘til late August…Halloween tops. Site unseen and despite wrangling an entourage of prominent YouTubers (Happyslip, KevJumba, Brookers) to back-up cute as buttons iJustine, there’s no reason to watch. Though old and new media keep trying, this concept has never been a hit.

Wrapping something as easily accessible as YouTube clips in a pretty package doesn’t entice viewers enough to watch. In order to keep viewers tuned in, you must either have A) some serious added value or B) show people what they wanna see but haven’t discovered yet. Unless iJustine can drop witty criticisms with ZeFrank-like regularity, or get tapped into what’s about to go viral, The Really Big Internet Show ain’t makin’ it big at all.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Media pundits love to talk about how today’s youth gets its news from The Daily Show.  Whether that’s true or not (I’m thinking not), what about those who are informed on current affairs but lacking in the pop culture department?  Sure, there’s The Soup, Best Week Ever, and What the Buck, but what if you want your juicy celebnews distilled down to the simplest possible form – stop-motion crayon animation?

Well, Erika Adickman has you more than covered.  While answering phones outside the writers’ room of ABC’s Notes from the Underbelly, she picked up a couple Crayolas and began doodling her pop culture musings.  Those drawings found the focus of a digital camera and with some guidance from her mentor, Friends writer Adam Chase, have now become the ironically reluctant but informative web series, Pop Waffle.

The series is much more than a recap of celebrity gossip in a composition book.  It’s a showcase of great music, each episode featuring songs from not-quite-mainstream pop artists like Kate Nash and Ben Kweller.  Erika says that she spends substantial time searching for songs that sing to her; friends and fans also suggest music that they think “sounds really Pop Waffle.”

It’s smart commentary on our dumb, sensationalized celebrity culture, piqued by her use of elementary school media.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Reed Kavner
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