The Office: Subtle Sexuality

Streamy Nominees Show Academy’s Newfound Global Tastes

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.

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‘The Office: Subtle Sexuality’ Music Video Is Here

The Office crew proves they still have their web series juice with their latest online offshoot Subtle Sexuality, which first popped up two weeks ago before premiering October 29. Now the entire three-episode web series is now online including the finale (above), a tribute video “Male Prima Donna” about Kelly Kapoor’s on-again/off-againg boyfriend Ryan. And with musicals so hot right now, it’s not exactly a shocker that they went that route.

Also up now is a fully loaded site around the all-girl pop group formed by Kelley (Mindy Kaling) and Erin (Ellie Kemper). The band satisfies at least two of nutcase Kelly’s obsessions—pop celebrities and Ryan (B.J. Novak). And Andy (Ed Helms) gets to rock some more of his Cornell acapella skills.

And just like any good web series music video—The Guild’s megapop “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” and Sparhüsen’s “Apples & Fish”—you can actually buy the video and track on iTunes. That part may be real but I think the tour dates might be suspect. Though if someone has bootlegs from the Finn McCool’s Open Mic in Scranton last night, please send it over.

Just for you fine Tubefilter readers, we have the limited edition Subtle Sexuality “World Tour” T-Shirt and CD to give away (see photo). Sure, it’s not the best thing we’ve given away but it’s also not the worst.

Here’s how it works: Just like the autographed Wes Craven DVD box set we gave away for the Fear Clinic launch, which went to @HorrorQueen13, we’re going to take all the names of people who tweet a link to this story on Twitter by Sunday night at 11:59 PM and put them in a random drawing hosted by Random.org. Winners will be announced on site next week.

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‘The Office’ Back For More Web Work, Early Look at ‘Subtle Sexuality’

NBC’s hit comedy The Office has been approaching multi-platform status in the past few years. Even from the start the show was getting terrible numbers until it started releasing over iTunes, which some insiders say is the only thing that saved the comedy from the network axe. Now over four years after the US version debuted, itself a spinoff of Ricky Gervais’ British version, the franchise is now set up all over the world, with French, German, French-Canadian and even Chilean versions all on the air.

It’s partly the internet-heavy US audience for the show mixed with NBC’s bullish digital strategy have led to a slurry of Office web series coming out over the past two years, all with at least a few of the lead actors—The Accountants, Kevin’s Loan, The Outburst and Blackmail. The latest web series, three-episode Subtle Sexuality, will premiere October 29 on NBC.com.

This time it looks to be Kelly (Mindy Kaling) and Erin (Ellie Kemper), the new receptionist, who have formed a girl rock group, dubbed “Subtle Sexulatity,” with Andy (Ed Helms) and Ryan (B.J. Novack) as backup singers.

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The 2nd Annual Streamy Awards

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