Tubefilter News

RJ Williams is on a mission to conquer Hollywood, one fun celebrity interview at a time. From face time with some of the biggest names in Hollywood to championing up and coming talent that will be the next big thing, the Young Hollywood team works around the clock.

In order to create a celeb friendly environment—and actually get those celebs to show up—Young Hollywood has set up their studio in a suite at the Four Seasons Los Angeles in Beverly Hills. Williams is so dedicated to the success of Young Hollywood, he has moved into the hotel to keep his focus zeroed in on the day to day workload it takes to make the Young Hollywood world happen. He does takes a few breaks to head downstairs to modern Italian restaurant Culina. A man’s got to eat.

Yesterday Tubefilter visited the Young Hollywood set, to see this TV studio in a hotel suite for ourselves. We sat down with Williams just after he had interviewed the cast of The Jersey Shore a segment with Snookie, The Situation and the gang that was live streamed to YouTube. The cast then celebrated their good work by ordering chicken fingers and fries from room service.

Today Babelgum announced that all finalists for its inaugural Animatron Online and Mobile Animation Film Festival will be show on its cross-platform web and mobile distribution channels. The festival includes nearly two hundred finalists whose professionally produced animated shorts will be screened and voted on by an newly formed international jury that includes animators and industry specialists including Jeff Scher, Peter Bishop, Charlotte Bavasso, Isaac Littlejohn Eddy and Tommy Pallotta.

Web series producers are coming to know the waiting game is part of the game. We’re not talking the Darrelle Revis style holdouts (yet), but it does mean not always taking the first distribution offer that comes along. Without a mechanism in place to adequately promote—and monetize—a web series, waiting for the best deal can be the smarter move to recoup those non-trivial production costs.

When a deal with another distributor for the series fell through last fall MWG Entertainment was left in a position of releasing this well-hyped series on their own, or putting it up on the digital shelf in hopes of scoring a better option. They chose the latter.

We were a part of their respectable PR push that included exclusive clips, teaser trailers and on-set photos of writer-director Drew Daywalt and his team crafting up some impressively gruesome effects. But then Halloween, the show’s target launch date, came and went and it left us wondering just what exactly happened to Camera Obscura?

Alloy Entertainment, the production company behind Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, and The Vampire Diaries, launched their newest project, Hollywood is Like High School with Money, a web series based off the book of the same name by New York Times bestseller Zoey Dean. The series stars Kelsey Sanders, Ian Harding (Pretty Little Liars) and Brian Hallisay (Privileged), and features an appearance by The Hills reality star Whitney Port and outfits from her new clothing line Whitney Eve.

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Wes Craven here at Tubefilter. The iconic film director is responsible for the better part of the scares during our coming of age and he’s also a big fan of online video. (Remember his takeover of YouTube for Halloween?)

So when BlackBoxTV sat down with Craven for a fan-driven interview, we knew this was worth checking out. Craven is as prolific as ever right now, currently shooting Scream 4, a reboot of his franchise that reinvented horror movies in 90’s. And on October 8th, his latest film My Soul To Take opens wide in 3D—yes, it’s Craven’s first foray into 3D.

BlackBoxTV founder Tony Valenzuela (metonyv) is a pretty talented director in his own right, scoring a Streamy nomination for his Orwellian 2008 series, 2009: A True Story. The series was in fact one of Craven’s picks for Halloween that year. So we’re pretty sure the self-described ‘Craven fanboy’ had fun with this one.

Shaving product manufacturer Edge Shave Gel has teamed up with online comedy video site Funny Or Die to present Edge Anti-Irritation Zone, a series of videos hosted by comedian John Caparulo.

When you’ve conquered the hallowed halls of Kitchen Stadium as Iron Chef’s first ever female master, there’s only one place you can go to next. Like Super Bowl Champions, NBA All-Stars, and American Idol winners, Chef Cat Cora is going to Disney.

This week, Disney Online debuted a pair of original web series with the Mississippi-born mother of four as its sole human star. The rest of the cast is comprised of Muppets.

In The Muppets Kitchen with Car Cora, our esteemed chef is welcomed into the world of the Jim Henson Company’s creations with open arms, punny humor, and classic Sesame Street hijinks. It’s part food-themed variety show, part mom-oriented family-friendly entertainment as Cora, Angelo (a new Muppet chef with “style, panache and a quirky habit of cooking up chaos), and company formulate recipes based on an assortment of themes, like “Game Day,” “Movie Night,” and “Breakfast Isn’t Just Breakfast Anymore.”

Hasty Tasty Cooking Tips with Cat Cora and the Muppets takes a more streamlined approach. It axes the ancillary antics of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, and other classic Muppet characters, in favor of providing domestic cooks with “step-by-step instructions, specific culinary information, helpful tips, nutritional guidance, and advice on how to get kids excited about cooking.”

Both programs are exclusively sponsored by Honda and the National Milk Mustache “got milk?” Campaigain.

The Muppets Kitchen and Hasty Tips aren’t Cora’s first foray into business with The Walt Disney Company. In August of 2009, the chef opened up Kouzzina, a restaurant with Mediterranean-inspired cuisine at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

Auto-Tune The News dropped Episode 13 (above) today featuring superstar rockers Weezer teaming up for a little political harmony. Guess who takes the cake for this week’s best unintentional auto-tune? Yup, it’s the first win for President Barack Obama. [schmoyoho]

Landline TV and Babelgum have found a hit with their Kids Reenact web series that humorously puts kids in place of top reality shows like The Jersey Shore, TMZ, The Real Housewives of New Jersey and The Hills. Their latest target (above)? Keeping up with the Kardashians. [Babelgum

The Boxee Box is now available for pre-ordering today, after many months of eager waiting from Boxee users. I mean we played with one at CES back in January. Anyway, some hardware changes, as equipment maker D-Link announced that the set top box will be powered by Intel’s CE4100 Atom processor instead of NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset. The Boxee Box starts shipping in early November. [NewTeeVee]