Tubefilter News

Academy voters had their hands full this year in pairing down some 2,000 web shows submitted from fans in over 100 different countries. Voters weren’t shy in acknowledging the international fare with nominated series coming from Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, France, Canada and The United States. The official nominees for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards were announced this morning in a live streamed internet broadcast led by CBSNews.com’s Shira Lazar and theStream.tv’s Jim Festante.

Click here for the full list of Streamy Award nominees.

Whole Lotta Drama

While comedy series seemed to run the table last year thanks to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild, this time voters lauded a handful of dramas with multiple nominations. The Bannen Way led with seven nominations including Best Drama, Best Writing, Best Directing and Best Actor for co-creator and lead Mark Gantt. Gritty indie drama Compulsions also is in the Best Drama hunt, picking up four nominations. British crime drama Girl Number 9 earned five nominations and murder mystery Valemont picked up six. Australian drama OzGirl and Angel of Death are also up for Best Drama.

Comedy Powerhouses Return

Experience was rewarded in Best Comedy nominations. The Guild, which bowed its third season in 2009, proved it still has the mojo amongst the Academy which bestowed seven nominations this time around. The addition of a rival guild, led by a very well cast Wil Wheaton even landed a Best Guest star nod for the show. Its “cousin” series, The Legend of Neil has some solid support of its own, which may or may not have something to do with Sandeep Parikh having a hand in both shows. Easy to Assemble rolled out its sophomore season and Wainy Days its third. Even web comedian-turned-movie-star Zach Galifianikis has two years of Between Two Ferns under his belt.

What’s New?

Comedy can be an acquired taste. And looking at the Best Comedy category, none of the nominated series were new on the block in 2009. So with the addition of Best New Web Series into the mix—or as some like to call it, the category-that-can’t-be-won-by-The-Guild—upstart comedies like Odd Jobs and Old Friends were able to pick up nominations. Personally, I like this category. And for the most part the Academy used it to take notice of what popped onto the scene last year. But following the drama trend this year, three dramas made it into this final five—The Bannen Way, Girl Number 9 and Craig Brewer’s debut season of indie music docu-series $5 Cover.

Co-Stars Square Off

Meanwhile on the acting front, the Season 2 rivalry between Easy to Assemble co-stars Justine Bateman and Illeana Douglas spilled over into the Best Female Actor in a Comedy category, with both actresses notching enough votes to face off against each other. Still, they face off against last year’s winner in this category, The Guild’s Felicia Day, who returns for the second straight year along with Web Therapy star Lisa Kudrow. Joanna Cassidy, from the indie comedy Sex Ed, rounds out the nominees with her performance as acerbic college sex professor.

For the male comedians, Zach Galifianakis picked up his first Streamy nomination after a solid year delivering his trademark awkward low-fi interviews with celebrities in Between Two Ferns. The Guild’s Sandeep Parikh scored his second Streamy nomination for this category, which ended up going to Neil Patrick Harris last year. Amir Blumenfeld also picked up a second Best Actor nomination for his half of popular comedy Jake and Amir. CTRL’s cubicle hero Tony Hale and Wainy Days eponymous creator-star David Wain make up the rest of this heated race.

Actors in the Best Female Drama hunt were all first-timers with all five coming from web series that debuted in 2009. Rachael Hip-Flores’ touching performance in indie drama Anyone But Me won over Academy voters as did Tatyana Ali’s freshman season of Buppies. Sophie Tilson dazzled as Sadie in OzGirl much like Zoe Bell in Angel of Death and Crystal Chappell in web soap Venice.

Picking up a not so shabby four nominations was Auto-Tune the News, which is up for Best News or Politics Web Series, Best Editing, Best Experimental and Best Original Music in a Web Series for The Gregory Brothers—Evan, Andrew, Sarah and Michael Gregory. Canadian steampunk drama Riese and Anyone But Me joined in the four-nominations club.

A Comicbook Orange debuted Season 5 today (season 5!), with none other than Rick Remender getting honors for the first episode back. My how time flies, it was just yesterday that Season 3 pranced across our monitors. This season Orange creators Casey McKinnon (pictured right) and Rudy Jahchan have an excellent line up of guests for this new season, including Zack Whedon, Felicia Day, Brea Grant (Heroes), Bryan Lee O’Malley. [A Comicbook Orange]

Qik, the live online video platform popular amongst iPhone 3GS users, launched a private beta of its new live streaming desktop app, which amongst other things allows for some basci editing of live video streams. So you can finally trim those awkward intros, and get to the good stuff when sharing the video clips. [Qik]

MSN premiered Ultradome this week on its Parallel Universe sci-fi site from creator, and Heroes star, Milo Ventimiglia. Fitting with its geek culture face-offs, episode one (below) delivers a high-tech battle between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. [Parallel Universe]

Apple unveiled the iPad today, its much anticipated new tablet computer today, which isn’t really news at all unless you were stuck shooting on location in Pyongyang (which has killer tax credits right now). Notably missing from the new device was a camera or any support for Adobe Flash video. So in terms of web video content, it’s not that revolutionary, with Apple still preferring users head to iTunes and YouTube for video viewing. There’s plenty of coverage around the web today, check with All Top for a round up. Also check out Mad TV’s gut-bustingly prescient iPad skit from 2007 (below). [YouTube]

Web series and web video bits worth clicking today:

Paramount Digital Entertainment’s debut web series drama Circle of Ei8ht released the season finale today (above) on MySpace. The studio hasn’t been shy about promoting the series using TV ad spots and even massive billboards to drive viewers online. [MySpace, DreadCentral]

Compulsions has broken the 100k views mark in just its second week of its exclusive run on web video site Dailymotion (which is promoting the series heavily, and yes, even on Tubefilter). Episode 6 “Ripen” debuted today with the final two of the season bowing this week. [Dailymotion]

YouTube announced today at Le Web Conference in Paris that it’s lauching an international sports channel with more than 2000 licensed sports videos called “Sports Hub.” To promote it and other licensed TV content, YouTube launched its first traditional press and outdoor ad campaign in the UK with the slogan: “YouTube’s got TV”. [Telegraph]

Felicia Day, creator-star of hit World of Warcraft inspired web series The Guild will be presenting at Spike TV’s Video Game Awards this Saturday night at 8PM ET on Spike. [Spike TV]

The Future of Dating? CBS web series The Tomorrow Show with Mo Rocca sent its correspondent Shira Lazar to explore one of her favorite topics—dating. [CBSnews.com]

A Comicbook Orange dropped its own season finale (below) today, wrapping up their fourth season from creator-host Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan. The finale spotlights Brian Wood, creator of some of the best women characters in comics. There’s also a well placed Star Wars reference at the end. Our clearly biased favorite episode of the season is Jane Espenson talking Streamy. [A Comicbook Orange]

A web series spoofing a comic based on a web series… that has to be a first. A Comicbook Orange, the popular series for all things comics, released its latest episode today reviewing the new Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog comic form Dark Horse which hit stores today. Host Casey McKinnon crafted a special musical number (why not) to kick off the episode before giving a mixed “3 orange” review of the Dr. H origin story.

The full color 40-page comic, written by Joss Whedon’s brother Zack, is what comic junkies call a one-shot (in japan it’s yomikiri 読み切り), not too unlike the live action series itself which has been teasing fans with talk of a sequel for over a year.

In this One-Shot Wonder, Zack Whedon and artist Joelle Jones (Token) establish how a young, impressionable, but brilliant Dr. Horrible was drawn into a world of crime. Readers are reacquainted with the charming, brawny, crime-fighting superhero extraordinaire Captain Hammer when Dr. Horrible crosses paths with his greatest enemy in an all-out showdown of immeasurable proportions. Special guest appearances include Dr. Horrible’s love interest, Penny; his sidekick, Moist; and a meter man.

It was a secret I was trying to keep, but I get all my comic book tutelage from A Comicbook Orange, and if you watch every episode you end up able to casually drop comic-cred names like Ben Templesmith, Chuck BB and Marc Guggenheim at parties.

Now on their fourth season, the prodigious creators Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan, have rolled out five episodes of the latest batch, many coming from their summer trip down to comics mecca Comic-Con. The latest episode (above) peaked our interest even more when Battlestar Galacitca writer Jane Espenson, who also writes on Joss Whedon’s Buffy Season 8 comic series from Dark Horse Comics, talks about her two Streamy Awards for the Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy web series. “They are on my bookshelves in a place of honor—I adore my Streamys,” says Espenson in the interview. “They are my dear, dear prizes.”

Comic geeks, the wait is over—A Comicbook Orange is back. After a stint on NextNewNetworks’ Pulp Secret channel, the popular weekly comic book web series from creators Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan launches its third season today. McKinnon returns as host of the four minute episodes, which are chock full of lightning quick news from the comic world (you might have to watch each one twice to catch it all) and interviews with the top creative names in the industry.

The Canadian natives McKinnon and Jahchan make up 8Bit Brownies, the production company behind the pair’s well-received sci-fi sketch comedy web series Galacticast. In fact A Comicbook Orange itself is a spinoff of sorts from Galacticast, where it first appeared as segment back in May of 2006. It wasn’t until June of 2007 that the series debuted on its own, picking up a loyal following of comic book enthusiasts.