Tubefilter News

Today on LonsTV’s I’m looking at the Crackle.com original comedy series Backwash from writer/creator/star Joshua Malina and Danny Leiner (director of the modern comedy classic Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle).

The 3 lead characters in Backwash are on the run from the law in a stolen ice cream truck, with only their meager wits and $100,000 in stolen money to sustain them. But the show isn’t so much about the driving forward momentum of plot than the bizarre, sophomoric, frequently non sequitur hijinks of man-child Jonesy (Michael Panes), fast-talking schemer Val (Malina) and their accomplice, ice cream truck driver Nick (Michael Ian Black of The State and Stella).

Less sitcom than extended comedy sketch, each episode of Backwash opens with a well-known TV star narrating the boys’ strange cross-country journey, in the style of Masterpiece Theater. (The ongoing joke is that it’s based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Barry Lyndon.) Guests include Jon Hamm, Sarah Silverman, Hank Azaria, John Stamos, Fred Willard, Allison Janney and a bunch of former The State castmates.

The first and third Die Hard movies are legendary action films. Not just because of Bruce Willis’ John McClane, and not just because they’re brutal flicks where gunfights and hand-to-hand combat always ends in our hero walking away with more of his blood spilled than his opponent’s. It’s because these two films have an amazing sense of storytelling.

They’re not deep movies, and they don’t want to be. What they will do is allow you, the audience, to ride shotgun with the action. You’re in the car wreck, not standing on the sidewalk with a FlipCam.

There’s one scene in particular that really drives this home, and it’s a clinic on economically showing the inner thoughts of our lead, and creating suspense. Today, I’ll break it down.

Very early in Die Hard with a Vengeance, McClane’s friend Detective Ricky Walsh notes he always plays his badge number for lottery numbers – 6991. This isn’t an important part of the conversation. You might even think it was an improvised piece of dialogue for the sake of building that camraderie before the plot kicks into full gear.

Prior to the scene I’m about to show you, we see Ricky killed in the Federal Reserve, and Otto, who doesn’t speak English, taking his badge off his body, wanting to play detective. Now, McClane has a feeling something’s wrong when a bomb is placed in a school in an attempt to force police to have to go to every school in the city and clear them. “What is it that Wall Street doesn’t have? Schools. And what is it they’ve got a shitload of?”

Unfortunately the only clip I could find was recorded on a camera, but we’ll just move past that. This scene is in no way SFW – plenty of language and violence.

The economy of this scene is staggering. As McClane walks in, he has no idea who these people are. He thinks they simply work for the Federal Reserve. But, in fact, they’re Simon Gruber’s people, and because they’re Gruber’s, they know exactly who McClane is and are taking him down to the basement where they can finally finish him off.

In the elevator, McClane’s happy for a moment of quiet. He doesn’t suspect a thing – until he sees the badge. We know that Otto took the badge off of Ricky, and when the camera focuses on the number, there’s an epiphany as we remember it calling back to the very beginning of the film.

“Oh, snap, he knows.”

This year NATPE is getting serious about the future of content. After decades as the leading trade organization in television world, the 46 year-old institution is embracing the digital content revolution head on.

This year’s NATPE Market, relocated from its previous home in Las Vegas to the even balmier Miami Beach, is giving some sizable airtime to the digital folks, with a whole track of sessions with speakers like iJustine, Rob Barnett, SMOSH, Rhett & Link, Amber J. Lawson, Bernie Su and Al Thompson.

The Market runs from January 24 through the 26th, but capping off the Market’s busy Wednesday are the Digital Luminary Awards. This year NATPE reached out to us here at Tubefilter to team up in pulling together the awards. There are five award categories honoring both the shows themselves and the brands and companies that back them. And did we mention that Bannen Way creator-star Mark Gantt is hosting?

“NATPE is proud to recognize this year’s 2011 Digital Luminary Awards honorees as pioneers and ambassadors of digital content,” said NATPE CEO Rick Feldman. “The insight and leadership provided by each of the recipients in their respective areas of interest is invaluable to the NATPE conference and marketplace.”

Comedy Central’s Atom.com released an original web series The Handlers, a comedy about a group of spin doctors doing whatever it takes to get their client elected.

Three time Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcolm in the Middle) stars as State Senator candidate Jack Power, a hapless politician who’s constantly finding himself in hot water. Not to fear: his crack team of ambitious campaign operatives will stop at nothing to keep him in the running, like encouraging intentional on-air verbal slip-ups involving genitalia to improve ratings, and proposing daily engagement with prostitutes to appeal to the common man. The Handlers group consists of actors Matt Braunger, Andrea Cansler, Josh Dean, and Gary Anthony Williams.

Interestingly, the series is based on Henaut President, an French web series featured on Dailymotion.com from Michel Muller, Antoine Benguigui, David Elkaim, and Vincent Poymiro. The Handlers shares the same theme song as the original French series.

The Handlers is written by James Bruce and Hayley Terris, and is produced by Cranston, Bruce and Avalon Television. New episodes Tuesdays.

Our inbox is full of morsels of online video goodness submitted by our tipsters, and this latest find was why we love them so. It’s from a Toronto-based startup called Rock Peaks that wants to be the ultimate online discovery guide for live music clips. Luckily for us, they have an in-house web series to help scour their library of some 5,000 clips, hosted by the site’s EIC, Barnaby Marshall.

In the show’s 2010 Year in Review episode (below) Marshall takes us month-by-month through the high points and gaffes in live music performances of the year.

Taking “write what you know” to heart, Ben Gettinger and Raymond J. Lee, two Broadway actors from New York, have created a new mockumentary web series Thank You… Next that follows a creative team as they try to cast a new Broadway musical.

Thank You… Next chronicles the brutal auditioning process in putting together a Broadway show, but this time from the perspective of the producers and casting directors. “We wanted to create a web series that would be a mix of Every Little Step and Summer Heights High,” said Lee. “It is so great that creativity is now at the hands of the people again, and that you don’t need a huge network budget to get your show created and seen by the public.”

Gettinger and Lee were able to draw upon their real-life experiences to construct a compelling story, and put together a great cast, no doubt tapping into their network of colleagues and friends. The series stars Broadway actors Isaac Calpito, Lori Hammel, Bryan Scott Johnson, and Daniel Reichard, and features real dancers and performers trying to make it in the Big Apple.

Currently three episodes of Thank You… Next have been released, with more on the way.

Kevin Rose has found a new name for his latest web series project that was kept mostly under wraps with not much more than the fforward name that he dropped on us back in June of last year. The Digg founder and host of the longrunning Revision3 tentpole series Diggnation, has launched his first solo project in web series—now called Foundation which begins today on YouTube (see first episode below).

It’s a polished, half-hour tech magazine format where Rose sits down with other top digerati, like Square and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in the opening episode, for a one-on-one interview.

In an interesting twist, Rose is trying out a model we have sparsely seen used in web series—the freemium model. New episodes will be available first, a week ahead of everyone else, to subscribers of his Foundation newsletter for $3.99 a month.

Former DC Comics and Marvel comic book artist Chris Walker gives us a inside perspective on fanboy culture with Anti-Matter, an original web series comedy “about a NY comic store, its staff, and the regulars that drive them crazy.”

The series, starring Jill Butterfield, Christina Calph, Shannon Coffey, Kaite Johnson, Julie Katz, Aaron Kheifets, Pedro Lee, Kirstan Perry, Davram Stiefler, Justin Tyler, and Walter Vincent, is written and directed by Walker, who produces Anti-Matter on nights and weekends out of real-world New York comic book store Jim Hanley’s Universe.

“The basis for the humor in Anti-Matter is that as a comic fan, you’re hanging out with your buds and probably being an ass at someone’s place of business,” Walker told Wired.com. “I know because I was that guy. I’d come by Hanley’s and talk smack on new comics every Wednesday with everyone in the store right up until closing, at which point they would kindly ask me to leave.”

After a decade long career as a comic book colorist for titles like Wolverine, Batman and Spider-Man, Walker launched Anti-Matter in September 2010. Walker was inspired by The Guild creator Felicia Day’s acceptance speech at the 2009 Streamy Awards.

“She said web series are about people not waiting for permission to make their art,” Walker told Wired.com. “And that you should go out and just do it.”

New episodes of Anti-Matter come out Wednesdays.