Sunday, February 27, 2011

And the Oscar goes to....

Are you excited for the Oscars tonight? If you don't remember who is actually nominated, I have a special reminder for you. Lego auteur Alex Eylar has bricked together scenes from each of this year's Academy Awards "Best Picture" nominees:

127 HOURS 


BLACK SWAN 


THE FIGHTER 


INCEPTION 


THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT



THE KING'S SPEECH



THE SOCIAL NETWORK




TOY STORY 3 


TRUE GRIT 


WINTER'S BONE 


I'm keeping my fingers crossed for The King's Speech and Toy Story 3 and wish you all a great Oscar Night!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Awkward Embraces - Geek Dating

As we've already seen in "Dating in the Middle Ages": Dating is hard. For everyone, equally. But being a geek and trying to date can be a very unique experience. The web series Awkward Embraces gives us an insight into geek dating.

Creator/ writer/ producer and star Jessica Mills, shows the ups and downs of single life, with a geeky twist. Mills just happens to love Star Trek and going to Comic-Con. Her co-stars Candis Phlegm and Lyndsey Doolan try to help her with her various dating misadventures while struggling through their own the most hilarious way possible. Directed by Adam Jason Finman, Awkward Embraces shows us “nerdy girls need love too.”

Have a look and enjoy episode 1 of season 1, called "The IT Guy"


Season 2 premiered just last week, on February 18th. So, check out the trailer of the recent season:



If you wanna see more of the web series that' s hailed by The New York Times as “charming, sharply written and neither sappy nor cruel", then please go to: http://www.awkwardembraces.com/index.html
Here you can find all episodes as well as behind the scenes material, such as outtakes and interviews. 

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Chugger - A London Webseries

I have been very busy lately, because I moved to London (England, UK) today. Therefore, I was looking for a web series that takes place in London and found Chugger - A London Webseries.
The Urban Dictionary describes a "chugger" as a paid "charity" street worker (read: student) who has been trained to believe that they are carrying out a worthy task, improving peoples' lives by conning Joe Public out of their money for this week's Good Cause. The web series Chugger is about failure, success, London, music, romance and chugging. It charts the pitfalls and perils of Dan’s life as he struggles to escape his dead-end job and the destructive whims of his friend Karl.

Dan (Craig Longstaff) is a budding musician - he has dreamed of becoming the star of the London Indie scene. However, things haven’t worked out as they should and he now finds himself stuck in a job he loathes with friends he hates. All he wants is to be left alone but everyone, not least his new-age hippy chugging co-workers, seem to expect something from him. Karl (Mavo) is Dan’s best friend and worst enemy at the same time. He is a former successful city slicker who lost his job in the Crunch, Karl is now convinced he must ‘make a difference’. However, ends seem to justify means in his psychopathic philosophy, making Karl a loose cannon, a delusional madman and a fun drinking buddy. Dan and Karl’s docile sidekick is called Tommo (Ed Christmas). He is at the butt of every joke and at the end of every misdirected fist.

In the first episode, Dan arrives for another gruelling day as a Chugger and is put through the usual motivational trauma of his overzealous boss, Nick. Check it out:


If you liked what you've just seen, go to http://www.chugger.tv/  in order to watch more episodes and to get further information about Chugger. I can tell you it's produced as well as co-directed by Marco Sandemann and to get more deets about him, visit: http://www.irregularfilms.com/

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Sweet Dreams

Back in November I introduced a web series called Suite 7 which was sponsored by the Better Sleep Council. One company that is also involved with this organization is Leggett & Platt. And, they are the sponsors of the comedy web series The Virgin Mattress.

As the title suggests the series tells the tale of "Sleep Shoppe", a mattress store that already has seen better days. On their quest for success, the staff encounters a mattress gangsta, a cranky cowboy, a thief with bad sleeping habits, and a few other weird individuals. Despite the banter and the efforts of a rival store owner to buy them out, Mal and Grace come together to understand what their shop "Sleep Shoppe" needs to get the edge...and they learn a little more about each other in the process. Here is the trailer:


The series launched in October, so for more episodes, please check out their YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/virginmattress
And for more information about the characters, extra footage and "behind the scenes"-action, go to: http://www.thevirginmattress.com/index.html

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Dating in the Middle Ages

Valentine's Day just passed and I hope your date has been just wonderful. But maybe it was a disaster date and you need some cheering up now? Then I've got something for you! It's an independent comedy web series called Dating in the Middle Ages and is described as "Sex in the City meets Glee" - hybrid.

In Dating in the Middle Ages, Devin Mills (Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, The O.C., Big Love) - who also created and wrote the series - portrays Samantha Collins, a divorced, middle-aged woman aspiring to become a historical romance novelist. Samantha longs for a successful romantic life and hence attemps to navigate the dating scene in 2010. However, her overactive imagination tends to send her on flights of fancy to the olden times and beyond, with plenty of original song and dance numbers. Within the first episode Samantha goes on her first blind date in 15 years and it is not what she expected:


“I got the idea for the series after leaving a long relationship, starting to date again, and listening to many of my friends’ horror stories about dating at midlife,” commented Mills. “I hope that ‘Dating in the Middle Ages’ brings humor to the old adage, “looking for love in all the wrong places,” and inspires people to keep kissing those toads - you never know when one will turn out to be a prince.” Even though it's about a middle-aged woman, I'm sure all ages can relate to this dating nightmare web series.

Actor John Schneider, best known for his role as Jonathan Kent, father of Clark Kent on Smallville and as Bo Duke in Dukes of Hazard recently joined the cast as Jake Hagarty, a charming new member of Samantha’s writing group who may turn out to be her modern day Cary Grant.

From medieval fantasies to Lady Gaga-esque musical daydreams, the web series explores everything from cougars and cubs, one-uppers, and low talkers to masochistic matchmakers and middleaged man-children. Due to its experimental elements, such as the fantasy sequences utilizing elaborate costumes and puppets, and the original musical numbers, Dating in the Middle Ages is definitely worth to take a look at.

Follow Samantha as she searches for her modern day Cary Grant on http://datinginthemiddleages.com/

Monday, February 14, 2011

♥ Happy Valentine's Day ♥

It is Valentine's Day and I'm in London! Thus, I'd like to present today THE web series that made me fall in love with web series in general, and coincidentally it takes place in London.

It's an interactive comedy show called Chelsey OMG! and launched on social networking site Bebo in 2008. It's an Oldie, but a Goodie! It follows American Chelsey Pucks - played by Kelly Anne Lyons - as she moves from a cosseted background in the US to a job in London's fashion scene. Here is the first episode, that got me hooked from the first moment:


After watching this episode, I watched the whole season. If you wanna do the same, go to: http://www.bebo.com/chelsey-omg
I was very fascinated by the fact that it's so easily produced (no big cast, just a few location shootings, webcam etc), but still it's so funny and compelling.

Chelsey: OMG! has been created for the social network by comedian Nat Coombs and Channel X, the UK independent production company that has previous worked with Ricky Gervais, Vic Reeves, Jonny Vegas, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Peter Kay, Jonathan Ross and Jo Brand.

If you wanna know more about the "all American girl who's all over London", check out her very own website: http://chelseypucks.wordpress.com/

Friday, February 11, 2011

Pueblo - un proyecto bilingüe

The "fish out of water" theme is usually a great vehicle for comedy, because that story paradigm places the main character in a world totally foreign to the world he or she is accustomed. The episodic web series Pueblo documents the comedic exploits of a quirky English teacher from the US, who is adapting to the culture of a Spanish farming village. Pueblo takes place in La Puerta de Segura, a small town surrounded by olive trees.  

The special feature of that web series is that it's produced as a bilingual project in collaboration with local teachers and townspeople of rural Andalucia. So, if you want to improve your Spanish, respectively your English, here is your chance. All episodes contain a mixture of dialogue in English and Spanish, and the show will be subtitled in both languages. Plus, transcripts with footnotes about translations, idioms, and slang will be posted after the episode is released.

The creators Eve Richer and Ben Raznick met as high school students in Boulder, Colorado. They have lived in Nicaragua, Argentina, and Brazil, and currently work as assistant English teachers in La Puerta de Segura, Spain. So, I assume Pueblo is based on their own experiences.  

Production for Pueblo began in October 2010 and it will come out in May! Instead of watching an episode, have a look at this behind-the-scenes interview with the stars of Pueblo and exclusive footage of Ben Raznick and Erika Martínez at the International Film Festival of San Sebastián:


 

And make sure, you also check out their blog for photos, videos, and news about the upcoming web series Pueblo: http://www.pueblotheseries.com/

Thursday, February 10, 2011

61st Berlin International Film Festival

It's that time of the year! The annual Berlin International Film Festival is opening today! I know, I know it doesn't have anything to do with web series or new ways of storytelling, you might say now.
But I live in Berlin and the Film Festival is a very big deal for me and my friends. Alongside Cannes and Toronto the Berlinale is one of the most prestigious international events. More than 19,000 film professionals from 128 countries, including about 4,000 journalists, are accredited for the Berlin International Film Festival every year. This year, there are 3 outstanding happenings, I'd like to mention:

1) The festival is officially opened with the international premiere of True Grit by Joel and Ethan Coen. The movie is a revival of the almost written off genre Western. It's a remake of a John Wayne classic and starring Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld. Berlin loves the Coen brothers, but I still think it's courageous to open a festival with a Western and we'll see if they really reinvented the genre. 


2) My personal highlight will be the premiere of Arcade Fire's short film. Directed by Spike Jonze and inspired by their album The Suburbs, Scenes from the Suburbs not only features the indie rockers' music, the short was also co-written by the band's Win and Will Butler.


3) A six-member jury under actress Isabella Rossellini will award the festival's top honor, the Golden Bear, on 20th of February. One seat was left symbolically empty, though, for the jury's official seventh member - Iranian director Jafar Panahi who is jailed in his homeland. Rossellini said inviting Panahi was an "attempt to take a very strong position for freedom of speech and freedom of artists."

For more details on the program and the Berlinale in general, please visit: 
http://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.html

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Rectification: Funemployed

As I learned yesterday, there are 2 web series named Funemployed and I mixed them up by talking about both of them. So, I would like to adjust my blog post and introduce both web series properly.

Funemployed CHICAGO is a comedy web series about a group of recent college grads who have jobs here and there, but mostly are unemployed and commit one hilarious faux pas after the other in the Windy City. It's produced by Action Couch Productions in association with Lost Horizen Productions and directed by Michael Lippert and Kate Carson-Groner. This web series won "Best New Web series" at Indie Incubator Film Festival and the "Audience Choice Award" at Chicago International Reel Shorts Film Festival.
It's already in its second season, so check out the 1st episode of Season 2:

For further episodes and information, go to their YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/FunemployedChicago

The other web series is called Funemployed THE SERIES and is about two guys called Jason and Kyle who are unemployed and discover on their journey what their friendship and chasing dreams really mean. It's produced by Wong Fu Productions and KevJumba. They also have their own YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/Funemployed
The funny guys Jason and Kyle even make music. Check out their pop song parody "Dance to this song":


I hope I cleared things up and would like to add that both Funemployed web series are well worth to have a look at!

Monday, February 7, 2011

Bestsellers and work-life Balance

Bestsellers is a new multi-generational dramedy series which is created and written by Susan Miller and directed by Tina Cesa Ward - the creative team behind the award-winning drama series Anyone But Me.

Meet Zoe (the tech entrepreneur), Jules (the HR consultant), Nina (the mommy blogger), Taylor (the travel consultant) and Abby (the accountant) who try to balance life, career and their monthly book club meetings:


The dramedy web series addresses issues, like long work hours, gender competition, family obligations and aging in the workplace. Since most of us can relate to that, it's not surprising that Bestsellers drew 2,000 online viewers in the first 3 days. You wanna see more of it? Here you go:


The female actresses, who portray the book club members in Bestsellers are Alice Barden, Mandy Bruno (Guiding Light), Cathy Curtin (Nickelodeon’s The Naked Brothers Band), Natalie Kuhn and Dena Tyler. It's produced by CJP Digital Media and sponsored by SFN Group: 
“We were looking for ways to engage with women who we know are embracing social media,” said Lisa McCarthy, director of corporate marketing at SFN Group. The idea for the show, she said, is to share the stories that happen to women exclusively in their daily work lives. “These are the stories we usually laugh about over drinks.”

Bestsellers premiered across multiple online, mobile and video on demand platforms including YouTube and iTunes. Every Monday a new episode airs and viewers are able to sign up for alerts for new episodes.
Just visit: www.thebestsellers.tv.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Super Bowl Sunday

The biggest sporting event of the year is finally here! Tonight, the Super Bowl 2011 will take place in Arlington, Texas. Get ready for some American football (AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers - NFC champion Green Bay Packers), Christina Aguilera singing the national anthem, the half-time show with the Black Eyed Peas, an episode of Glee titled "The Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle" as lead-out program, and last but not least new movie ads and commercials.

All slots were completely sold out by October, even though the price of a 30 second advertisement was set at US$ 3 million. But hey, the whole nation will watch and talk about it afterwards, right? And thanks to individual initiatives from Hulu and YouTube - which each have their own forums for voting on the best ads of the day - the experience of watching Super Bowl ads and picking your favorites has become a formalized and structured one.

Hulu AdZone IV (http://www.hulu.com/adzone/) offers voting on this year’s ads, a leaderboard of as well as a look back at classic ads from the past few years. YouTube's Ad Blitz channel (http://www.youtube.com/adblitz) goes live the morning of the game, with ads appearing online after they air on TV, and available for voting after the game ends. Last year, they had 2.9 million votes cast and 42 million views.

This Volkswagen "Star Wars" commercial leaked already in advance of game day and dominated the YouTube charts last Thursday and Friday:

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Funemployed

"College is over. Real life begins. Sort of."

A lot of college grads can't find a job right away and some of them don't even mind. The Urban Dictionary describes the term "funemployed" as the state of being without a job, yet having lots of time to enjoy fun activities during otherwise normal working hours.

The web series Funemployed follows a group of recent college grads enduring sporadic employment and awkward mishaps in Chicago - the Windy City. On their journey through unemployment, Jason and Kyle discover what their friendship and chasing dreams really mean.

Funemployed is a comedy web series by Wong Fu Productions (http://www.wongfuproductions.com/) and KevJumba. They produced it with no budget and no crew.

Check out the 1st Episode of Season 1: 


For more episodes and Season 2, go to: http://funemployedchicago.com/

Thursday, February 3, 2011

NEWS: BBC and My Damn Channel & AOL and Mark Burnett

New web shows are coming up soon:

BBC Worldwide Productions, web-based My Damn Channel, and the comedy troupe "The Lost Nomads" are teaming up to co-produce and distribute Gigi: Almost American, a new series created by and starring Josh Gad (Love & Other Drugs). The 10-episode series will feature the adventures of Gigi, a loveable foreigner who is new to the U.S. with dreams of becoming an “average American.” Blending physical comedy, irreverent humor and absurd situations, Gigi will let nothing – not his lack of street smarts, fashion sense, or mastery of English – stand in the way of his American dream.

AOL, however, has once again buddied up with Mark Burnett Productions to produce a literary web show. It'll be a comedy series of shorts based on the CliffNotes series of literary guides from publishers John Wiley & Sons. Everyone from Mark Twain to William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens will get a look-in.

They both sound interesting, don't you think?

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

William Shatner and Amanda Tapping team up for web series

Sci-Fi fans from all over the world must be stoked about this news!
Star Trek veteran William  Shatner and Amanda Tapping from Stargate SG-1 will co-star in an animated series called The Zenoids which will launch on Shatner's social website http://www.myouterspace.com/
The actors met last summer at the comic book geekfest "Comic-Con" in San Diego. According to THR Amanda joked at the time they should do a show together and now it's actually happening!

Production starts in late February and The Zenoid revolves around a family space-faring Amphibinoid musicians who travel the galaxy performing their acts. Shatner and Tapping will play a husband-and-wife team that is trying to keep their superstar dreams alive.
Sci-Fi fans are asked to submit scripts through an online submission process and the winning script will be produced as an animated short webisode of The Zenoids.

Now, if you can't wait to see William Shatner and Amanda Tapping together, check out this video: