Tubefilter News

We hope everyone has had an exciting and restful holiday. Now it’s 2009—a brand new year to show the world what we can do with web television. 2008 will be a tough act to follow. There were so many great shows last year, and the nominations for The Streamys are pouring in. If you aren’t already pumped, take a look at Marc Hustvedt’s call to arms and get going! This week we have some inspiring picks for you. MoCap, LLC, is going to Spike TV, and We Need Girlfriends is being developed into a pilot for network television. What are you waiting for? Get out there and make the next sitebuster!

MoCap, LLC
The little-viewed but hilarious series about a budget motion capture studio that “does the mo cap that no one else will do” just announced a deal with Spike TV. With their most popular video on YouTube receiving a meager 17,755 views, and others ranging from a hundred to a few thousand, it goes to show that quality, and not necessarily quantity, is what counts.

We Need Girlfriends
When recent college graduates Tom (Partick Cohen), Henry (Seth Kirschner), and Rod (Evan Bass) all get dumped simultaneously by their girlfriends, they must venture out into the complex world of the New York City dating scene. Hofstra University graduates Angel Acevedo, Brian Amyot and Steven Tsapelas, who produce the show as Ragtag Productions, are developing the show into a pilot for Sony and CBS.

Anyone But Me
Tina Cesa Ward and L Word and Thirtysometing writer Susan Miller

Season’s greetings! We hope you are staying warm! It’s always fun to see those talented web television creators get into the spirit. With so many classic holiday stories, there never is a shortage for parody. This week we’ve compiled holiday episodes of some of our favorite shows—but be sure to include your holiday favorites below in the comments!The Guild – Season 2 “Christmas Special”

If you enjoyed last season’s Christmas Special from The Guild, “A Christmas Raid Carol” (above), a then you’ll love this season’s MMOG-style reinvention of the classic holiday poem “Night Before Christmas,” describing the guild’s demise at the hands of mega-boss St. Nick, who proclaims in victory, “merry Christmas, you n00bs, log off, and go to bed!” Watch it here at MSN Video.

Host interviews guest, everyone laughs. Simple in theory, but it’s really a brilliant complexity that has few masters. Zach Galifianakis is one of those masters. This week we are featuring the work of this comedic sensei who has given the web a pure gem of awkward humor with Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. If you’ve been paying attention (goofing off) lately, you might also remember his online vodka series done for Absolut and his splendid fun times with Tim and Eric.

Zach knows how to break through the mindless PR jib-jab of most celebrity interviews by pushing annihilating the comfort level of his guests. Whether that means molesting Michael Cera (above) or harassing Jimmy Kimmel, he’s on it. With three episodes now out on Funny or Die—the latest has Zach interviewing Mad Men star Jon Hamm—you still have time to catch this before its old news.

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.

It’s safe to say that this week’s web series picks are the only place that gives you a tasty mix of John McCain-loving sexy neo-cons with a side of spooky Massachusetts high school girls and topped-off with a creepy middle-aged New Jersey man. How do we even begin to pull a theme out of that? We can’t. But we watched them, laughed, were creeped out a little, and laughed a little more. So here they are – Oldbury Hill, The McCaingels and The Speed Creeper.

Oldbury Hill

The premise of this thriller from OurTVSpace and creator Doug Kirkpatrick is like 90210 in reverse—a high school senior moves from Beverly Hills to a small sleepy town in Massachusetts (fictional Oldbury Hill) and tries to fit in to her new life and new school all while trying to figure out a “centuries old dark secret that threatens to change the world.” There’s a pretty active fan site where cast, crew and fans are refreshingly chatty about what’s going on in the series. Episode 4 was just released yesterday.

Happy Thanksgiving Week everyone! Fall is in full effect (even here in L.A., it has dropped below 70), so now is a good time to snuggle in and watch some web tv, or find a quick escape from family during the holiday. We’ve picked some classics for you to get you through the holiday week.

["(Layers)"]
The intensely self-referential web series that’s a mock documentary of the making of a reality show about a Hollywood agent that represents agents, ["(Layers)"] takes “meta” to the extreme. Starring Cavemen’s Nick Kroll and Back on Topps’ Jason and Randy Sklar and featuring Roommating’s Erin Gibson and the gang from FX’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, this series has a lot going on beneath, above, and in-between the surface.

Sci-Fi is alive and well on the web, and clever creators are making use of the latest visual effects toys to deliver some of the most gripping stories in weekly episodic morsels. This week we feature three of the better sci-fi web series of the last few months: IQ-145, After Judgment and Kirill. All three of these shows create an immersive world extending beyond the show itself into alternate online dimensions where the true fans can really geek out. If you haven’t caught up, there’s still time to get in on these before the stories fully unfold and the secret’s out.

IQ-145

Thomas Dekker (TERMINATOR: Sarah Connor Chronicles) stars as Nate Palmer, a young football star enlisted by a top secret organization, IQ-145, to help track down a stolen nano-micro-co-processor chip. There’s even a sharp looking graphic novel and a pretty active fan community to fill in some of the holes.

With the world’s attention turned away from the political blood-sport of election season, we at Tubefilter News don’t want to leave you hanging—this week’s picks are all about conflict. From playful sparring, to full on combat, these shows aren’t afraid to expose the truth — we all love a good fight: Big Book of Lies, Goodie Bag TV, and Break A Leg.

Big Book of Lies
Andrew Leeds’ and Dave Lampson’s delightful ‘Woody Allen’-esque series, Big Book of Lies, is set to the backdrop of Lampson’s home away from home, Buenos Aires. No topic is sacred or safe, from the duo’s charmingly irreverent and occasionally witty prose turned dialogue. This episode, one of our favorites, matches Andrew (played by Andrew) against his love-interest-cum-sparring-partner Laila (Rebecca Whitehurst).