by Marc Hustvedt on August 10th, 2009
The New York Television Festival (NYTVF) announced today its official selections for the pilots competition at the fifth annual festival scheduled for September. Making the selections cut were a host of original web series including MERRIme.com, GOLD, Leaving Bliss, Man-Man, Blue Movies, Johnny B. Homeless, Hell Froze Over, Odd Jobs and Streak to Win. Trailers for all of the 37 pilots in competition are now up on the NYTVF YouTube channel.
Similar to the just-wrapped ITVFest in Los Angeles, NYTVF is taking a step further in bridging the gap between traditional independent television and the emerging web television medium. The festival is bringing back what it calls Digital Day, which is an entire day of programming based around the online space. The festival runs from September 21-26 in Midtown Manhattan.
by Jonathan Hludzinski on July 2nd, 2009
The world does not need another dating webseries. At least not after Hell Froze Over, which is pretty much the last word on the subject. Protag Jody, played to perfection by Tracy Clifton, has decided to date every man she’s ever rejected and we get to watch. That’s the show and as an idea,…eh, as they say, it’s all in the execution. And, well, here it’s executed pretty well.
I’ll start off by saying that some eps are uneven. Production quality isn’t stellar by any means. Some perfs could use a little brushing up. In short, it ain’t perfect. But it’s very watchable, likeable and sometimes dead funny. And, frankly, Tracy Clifton, is f’ing good. Her timing, delivery and her basic portrayal of the oddly oddball Jody who seems to have no awareness of her oddity, is simply genius. Clifton has real star quality, and I don’t say that lightly.
The other standout for the series is the writer J Wilder Konschak. He has an uncanny ability to jump the shark in every episode with Jody’s reject dates. From a white-suit wearing psychopath that Jody seems to find irresistible in episode one to a persistent bleeder in the season 1 finale, there is not one dull apple in the whole rotten bunch.
