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.

Johnny B. Homeless, the festival-darling comedy web series (trailer above) from creator-star Al Thompson may be heading to Atom.com as according to sources close to the deal. After screening to a full house at ITVFest in LA last summer, the series headed to New York where won NYTVF’s People’s Choice Award. [Sources]

Crackle and The American Cinematheque are hosting a screening of the full season of The Bannen Way this Friday in Hollywood, followed by a Q&A with Robert Forster, Michael Ironside, Michael Lerner, Jesse Warren and Mark Gantt to follow. Looks like Goldstar is selling 50% off tickets for $5.50 (normally $11), so save a few bucks while you can. [Goldstar]

Felicia Day is hosting a signing event to kick off the launch of her hit web series The Guild’s new comic from Dark Horse Comics which hits shelves March 24. The cocktail party and comic book signing will be March 26th at 6pm at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles. [Whedonopolis]

Take180 likes having fun with spoof videos (in between web series releases like I <3 Vampires today). The latest video (below) mixes two things that have proven gold mines of web satirists lately—MTV’s The Jersey Shore and Apple’s new iPad. [Mashable]

Break Media, which owns male-centric video site Break.com and a host of other content hubs like HolyTaco, MadeMan and Chickipedia, has acquired gaming site FileFront today. The move bolsters its foothold with gamers through FileFront’s heavy network of more than 75 game-specific sites. [VentureBeat]

The Guild is heading to Netflix starting February 1st, with Seasons 1 and 2 of the über-popular comedy series edited together, and available for continuous movie-style viewing. So if you have a PS3 instead of an XBox, you can finally watch it on in HD goodness without loading up the browser. As for Season 3 (above), the DVD will be available for $14.95 on February 15 on Amazon, and presumably on Netflix not too long after. It’s also available on iTunes, with the first three episodes of Season 1 free of charge—as if you weren’t hooked already. [Netflix, WatchTheGuild.com]

Happy Birthday VendrTV – the darling web series of street foodies around the country is turning one year old next month and is throwing a birthday party on Feb 12 in New York City. Banging out 50 episodes across 12 states, and signing on with web studio Next New Networks, their first year has given plenty to celebrate. Naturally, there will be street carts at the party: “a delicious feast from some of New York’s hottest street carts, including Calexico Carne Asada, Schnitzel & Things, and Wafels & Dinges. Plus, wash that all down with free beer from The Brooklyn Brewery.” [VendrTV]

Comedian Andy Dick was arrested again, this time for alleged sexual abuse following a stand-up gig last night at the Funny Bone in Huntington, West Virginia. What’s funny about this is that he actually did a web series—House Arrest with Andy Dick—for Atom.com (remember that? see below) that actually poked fun at the fact that he actually was under house arrest. So does this mean Atom will be greenlighting Season 2? Or is is just not that funny anymore. [Punchline Magazine]

Landline TV honed in on unexplicably popular MTV reality TV series Jersey Shore for its latest spoof, opting for a cast of little kids to take on the roles of Pauly D, The Situation, JWOWW and the gang in Little Jersey Shore. They weren’t the only ones, as celeb Michael Cera had a little Jersey Shore makeover of his own. [Comedy.com]

The Guild comic, written by the show’s creator-star Felicia Day and illustrated by artist Jim Rugg, has had its first few images (right) leaked out on the internet today, thanks to Comic Book Resources. Issue #1 The Guild comic from Dark Horse Comics hits stores on March 24, 2010. [Comic Book Resources]

Former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich is going to have his own late night web series. Blago’s The Late Net Show will run about 40 minutes “We’re in talks with Donald Trump, Alec Baldwin and Floyd Mayweather to be guests on the show,” according to Charlie Oliver, founder of artoftalk.tv, where the show will live. [Chicago Sun Times]

David Faustino pulled out a shotgun in an attempt (video below) to woo fans to submit his comedy series Star-ving for a Streamy Award before the deadline. Faustino’s pal and Star-ving co-star Corin Nemec has also tapped his fan army for the Awards bid. [YouTube]

CraveOnline launched MotoMan, its latest original web series today, that “covers new cars, classic cars and all things car lifestyle. In a nutshell, MotoMan drives cars you can’t.” The debut episode (above) waxes auto-philosophical for a few minutes on whether a luxury cars are more about what’s under the hood or the logo on top of it. [CraveOnline]

Hans Zimmer didn’t compose the theme song for The Guild, but what if he did? Brian “Tweex” Arnold mused on this question, coming up with a remixed intro theme song on his site [Tweex]music, combining the beefed up Season 3 theme with Zimmer’s Pirates of the Caribbean. He even re-edited a clip from Season 3 with the new intro theme. [TweexMusic]

Tubefilter’s Jamison Tilsner talked Web TV and Streamy Awards on the Kodak K-Zone stage at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week. Joining him on the panel, moderated by Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett, were Blip.tv’s Dina Kaplan, My Damn Channel CEO Rob Barnett, and Boxee’s VP of Marketing, Andrew Kippen. Video from the two-part session is up on YouTube and posted below. [YouTube]

British actress/host Emily Booth bowed a new hosted web series that sits down with horror icons called Behind The Screams. The series has seen some play on horror blogs, though no formal distribution deal is in place for the show which has three episodes pushed out so far. [ShockTilYouDrop]

BBC Reporter Dan Simmons, host of the BBC’s technology show Click actually managed to break a mobile phone touted as “unbreakable” by its makers (Sonim) who were showing off its rugged features during a demo this past weekend at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. See the mud-on-face below. [BBC]

The Bannen Way continues to drum up anticipation with their latest promo video (above) out today. This time it’s all about co-creator Mark Gantt who stars as protag Neal Bannen, aka “The Man.” We are still wondering just what kind of “research” went into this role… [Crackle]

The Guild: Season Three DVD is now available for pre-orders on Amazon, and is 10% off through January 4th. It didn’t quite make it in time for Holiday wish lists, but it still will be loaded with Goodies for Guildies, like a making-of featurette of the “Do You Want to Date My Avatar” music video and Guild Applicant Rejects, How to Build Vork’s Sword and interviews with the Axis of Anarchy. [Amazon]

Top Chef reality chefs The Voltaggio Brothers may be out of Bravo’s TV limelight, but they are now taking the family kitchen antics online with the launch of their new web series in January. EQAL is producing the series and their Umbrella-based web site that recently launched. Is the EQAL team a bunch of foodies? This marks the second cooking-themed series from them after having launched Paula Deen’s Get Cookin’ earlier this year. [Eater]

The Halloween 2010 lineup is already taking shape it looks like with news that Jonathan Moody will be launching his new Scream Queen Campfire web series next October. No video available yet, but a Facebook group is live along with their plug: “5 beautiful scream queens will tell 2 stories each giving us 10 terrifying and entertaining stories in the series during a campfire.” [Dread Central]

Take 180 put out a new sneak peek at season 2 of I Heart Vampires (I <3 Vampires) (below) where head writer Julie Restivo Murphy walks through what to expect this season—like “a bigger badder vampire” on the scene and news that episodes will now come out weekly instead of bi-weekly. Season 2 will premiere in January. [YouTube]

The Guild season 3 may be wrapped, but that didn’t stop the hit show from celebrating one of its favorite holidays, Christmas. For those that remember, last year’s ‘The Guild Christmas Carol Raid’ made our favorite holiday videos list.

This year they have taken it up a notch (or six) with an interactive YouTube video adventure of sorts, showing off their latest faux merchandising. The full set of six parody commercials, “The Guild Sells Out” hit the interwebs today. The videos were written and directed by special effects artists Greg Aronowitz, who crafted the oversized avatar weapons and props for The Guild’s viral megahit Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? music video. The Guild’s Felicia Day and Kim Evey produced the videos.

While I wish the toys themselves were actually for sale—like the Codex Answer Orb — the commercials do promote something fans can buy, the Season 1 & 2 DVDs on Amazon and those trendy Guild t-shirts on Jinx.

Everybody has at least one web series junkie on their holiday shopping list. And they are a special lot. They like to watch video—and make video—anywhere, any time and on any device. So we put together Tubefilter’s Web TV Junkie’s Holiday Gift Guide. No sponsored entries here, just a list of what we want most this holiday season (though in full disclosure, Kodak is a Streamy Awards sponsor). And since the Boxee Box doesn’t hit shelves till January, it didn’t make the list for this Holiday season. With tomorrow the first day of Hanukkah, it’s time to start shopping!

Roku HD-XR Player

Now that Roku rolled out its Channel Store, the floodgates of web series goodness have opened up on this set-top box —Blip.tv, Revision3 and more look even better on the HD flat screens. With no TiVo-style subscription fees to worry about, once you have a Roku box you can tap thousands of original web TV shows right into your big screens, in HD, for free. And even though they make a $79 standard def box, if you’re going to get one of these go for the king daddy of the group. The HD-XR comes with Wireless-N dual-band, designed for next generation high-speed networks, which is twice as fast as regular Wi-Fi. The company’s even offering a 30-day money back guarantee on the off chance you can’t handle this much streaming goodness.

$129.99