"The Stagg Party": When porn stars and artists connect

Twenty-something indie filmmaker Joe Swanberg is obviously interested in exploring sex, not in the porny way, but in the everyday-life, I-wonder-what-people-really-do way. (You can see trailers for his much-talked-about upcoming feature about a long-distance relationship, starring himself and Greta Gerwig, at the "Nights and Weekends" website.)

Swanberg has a three-season-old Web series on IFC.com called "Young American Bodies" (sorry, can't link because the actors are always pulling off each other's clothes). It's one of those shows, like HBO's unrenewed "Tell Me You Love Me," that focuses with relentless seriousness on how ordinary people manage their sex lives — the kind that ends up being both unsexy and sometimes painful to watch. As Swanberg's earnest, rumpled young actors stammer their way into and out of bed with little evident joy or emotional release, you're reminded of what a strange species we are, that our courtship rituals can make us so unhappy.

But relief is here: Now Swanberg is also behind a much more watchable Web documentary series on IFC.com called "The Stagg Party" (nope, can't link to this one either). The show follows a professional photographer named Ellen Stagg as she goes about her dual career: Fashion and celebrity shoots pay the bills, but her personal artistic passion is erotic art photography (which would pay the bills, she says, but only if you want to do the bidding of porn purveyors, and she doesn't).

With its rampant female nudity and nonjudgmental "adult industry" theme, the voyeuristic Web hordes will love it. But the show's soft-touch intelligence and compelling characters give it depth — maybe even more than its five-minute format can do justice to.

In a recent Huffington Post blog item, Stagg tells the story of how she and Swanberg came to collaborate. As different as their approaches might seem, she writes, "we realized we had a lot in common with our work and the fine lines we are always trying to not cross." Making sexually focused art that is entwined with and fueled by their real lives, they both need to figure out how to keep some separation between the two.

But the contrasts between Swanberg and Stagg seem even more interesting and productive. She has managed a full embrace of her own erotic interests, whereas he is reflexively indirect about his. His characters tend to be consumed by their desire for this woman or that woman or the one over there, but everything has an anxious undertow.

Also, their visual and emotional styles could not be more different. Swanberg prefers drab, my-first-apartment bedrooms and "realistic" emotions like ambivalence and confusion. Stagg is all about trying to capture the mysterious beauty and allure of sexuality. She has an unusual rapport with her models, who are all porn actresses. Their complex connections are the show's main subject: The models are un-self-conscious about their bodies and what they're doing, and Stagg is unapologetic about her fascination with them. She wants to show them as real people, but she still gives her pictures a stylized, moody glamour.

The photographer and her naked subjects chat away lightheartedly as they play around with different poses and approaches. As Stagg explains, she gravitated to these women because unlike her friends, they aren't going to change their minds about the pictures in two weeks when their boyfriends get wind of them. It's a mutually beneficial deal because, as Stagg says, "the adult girls need content" for their blogs and websites.

The first episode features Asa, a Japanese American from New York who has been working in adult films for a year and is savvy about where her assets lie. In the second one, we meet the willowy blonde Charlotte. Stagg, who is extremely blonde herself, tells her, "You're the one girl I was most excited to shoot on this trip," because "I love blondes."

Charlotte tells Stagg that she has just filmed her first sex scene, and it sounds like she had a good time. It's not clear if Stagg has chosen porn neophytes on purpose, but it does create an interestingly wholesome, untroubled mood. These first two women, at least, seem untouched by the darker currents that tend to make women in their line of work build a hard, exaggerated shell around themselves.

Some of the models who will be the subjects of upcoming episodes look a little wilder and more hard-core, so we'll have to see if Stagg's tastes run beyond girls next door.

— Maria Russo

In a fine piece of political funsmanship, J.D. Walsh and the crew at Westwood's Ultimate Improv have taken "One Day More," the culminating song of the musical "Les Miserables," and applied it to an office of Obama campiagn workers. (Reminds me a little of the best of the lipdub craze but with a lot more cultural awareness.)

Perhaps the best touch is casting John McCain in the role of the wicked Javert and flanking him with a Sarah Palin lookalike in the role of Madame Thénardier, the dissolute inkeeper's wife. McCain-Javert sings: "One more day to revolution / We will nip it in the bud! / We'll be ready for these schoolboys / They will wet themselves with blood!"

Walsh and co. skipped putting an Obama character in the video and went instead with an average-looking white guy as the protagonist Valjean. This throws off the internal logic of the piece somewhat, although, in fairness, there's not a lot of logic to begin with.

(Tip of the Phrygian to the Risky Biz blog.)

Michael Stahl-David and Odette Yustman star in "Cloverfield." (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Shows chronicling the ups and downs of real or fake celebrities have become a genre unto themselves, whether you're talking about "The Larry Sanders Show," "The Comeback," "Entourage," "Being Bobby Brown" or even Ileana Douglas' upcoming web series "Easy to Assemble." 

Yet another entry into this meta-genre is Crackle.com's new "Behind the Star," (which we can't link to due to some off-color language).  The show is a pseudo-documentary on Michael Stahl-David, who played the hero-boyfriend in the movie "Cloverfield."

In the show, Stahl-David plays an ego-inflamed version of himself, still clinging to the success of "Cloverfield" — whose box office numbers he repeats as though teaching a class.  But, he assures viewers, he's still a normal guy. "I could make my bed before I became a movie star, and I can make my bed after," he says, moments before searching for his own name on YouTube.

Turns out Stahl-David, like actor James Franco, can play quirky comedy as well as or better than he can do big tent action-drama. These self-effacing roles can be hard to pull off; if there's even a hint that the star isn't actually on board with the idea that they're a little bit selfish and narcissistic, the whole endeavor can begin to seem unintentionally autobiographical. 

Not so here. Stahl-David creates a subtle doppelganger, one with so little  self-awareness that he can be utterly convinced of his own humility and still seem maniacally self-obsessed. In one scene, he suggests that in order to liven up a photo of himself on the red carpet, the photographer insert another image of him in the background.

"Behind the Star" is one of Crackle.com's new slate of shows, which includes an upcoming sketch-fest by L.A.'s Groundlings, as well as the watchable "Dating Brad Garrett."

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

"Saturday Night Live" has jumped into the webisode mix with "The Line" -- a comedy on Crackle.com about geeks camping outside a movie theater to see the latest installment of "FutureSpace." The show stars "SNL" cast members Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis along with Joe Lo Truglio from "The State" and "Superbad" -- and was directed by "SNL's" Seth Meyers. 

 

Nerd-waiting-in-line comedy can never be done as well as Triumph did it way back in 2002 for the "Attack of the Clones" premiere, but this show finds its own stride by creating an amusing cast of characters and some clever story elements. Much of the tension in "The Line" is supplied by "the five-minute rule" -- according to a geek decree, you lose your place in line if you take a second more than five. This makes it awkward for Hader's character to be broken up with by his girlfriend or for Lo Truglio to spend a Sunday with his young son (they have to run to the basketball court, shoot one hoop, and then run back). Also, there's a great cameo by comedian Paul Scheer as The Spoiler -- the mean nerd who revels in dropping details he's gathered about the movie these fanboys are waiting to see. 

The show, thought up by Hader and "SNL" writer Simon Rich while they were on the writers strike picket line, was produced by Broadway Video Entertainment, the production company of "SNL" kingpin Lorne Michaels. Michaels and "SNL" brought the world "Lazy Sunday" in late 2005, which students of YouTube lore (and probably everyone else) will remember was one of the first major viral hits (and one NBC didn't know how to deal with so well -- thanks, Xeni).

Though it's gone largely unwatched on its native Crackle page, "The Line" is a solid first Web effort for Hader, Michaels and Broadway.  Let's see how long we have to stand around before the next one....

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, "I Met the Walrus," is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. Top marks...

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Worth Watching: 'Les Miserables' at the Obama campaign

In a fine piece of political funsmanship, J.D. Walsh and the crew at Westwood's Ultimate Improv have taken "One Day More," the culminating song of the musical "Les Miserables," and applied it to an office of Obama campiagn workers. (Reminds me a little of the best of the lipdub craze but with a lot more cultural awareness.)

Perhaps the best touch is casting John McCain in the role of the wicked Javert and flanking him with a Sarah Palin lookalike in the role of Madame Thénardier, the dissolute inkeeper's wife. McCain-Javert sings: "One more day to revolution / We will nip it in the bud! / We'll be ready for these schoolboys / They will wet themselves with blood!"

Walsh and co. skipped putting an Obama character in the video and went instead with an average-looking white guy as the protagonist Valjean. This throws off the internal logic of the piece somewhat, although, in fairness, there's not a lot of logic to begin with.

(Tip of the Phrygian to the Risky Biz blog.)

Michael Stahl-David and Odette Yustman star in "Cloverfield." (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Shows chronicling the ups and downs of real or fake celebrities have become a genre unto themselves, whether you're talking about "The Larry Sanders Show," "The Comeback," "Entourage," "Being Bobby Brown" or even Ileana Douglas' upcoming web series "Easy to Assemble." 

Yet another entry into this meta-genre is Crackle.com's new "Behind the Star," (which we can't link to due to some off-color language).  The show is a pseudo-documentary on Michael Stahl-David, who played the hero-boyfriend in the movie "Cloverfield."

In the show, Stahl-David plays an ego-inflamed version of himself, still clinging to the success of "Cloverfield" — whose box office numbers he repeats as though teaching a class.  But, he assures viewers, he's still a normal guy. "I could make my bed before I became a movie star, and I can make my bed after," he says, moments before searching for his own name on YouTube.

Turns out Stahl-David, like actor James Franco, can play quirky comedy as well as or better than he can do big tent action-drama. These self-effacing roles can be hard to pull off; if there's even a hint that the star isn't actually on board with the idea that they're a little bit selfish and narcissistic, the whole endeavor can begin to seem unintentionally autobiographical. 

Not so here. Stahl-David creates a subtle doppelganger, one with so little  self-awareness that he can be utterly convinced of his own humility and still seem maniacally self-obsessed. In one scene, he suggests that in order to liven up a photo of himself on the red carpet, the photographer insert another image of him in the background.

"Behind the Star" is one of Crackle.com's new slate of shows, which includes an upcoming sketch-fest by L.A.'s Groundlings, as well as the watchable "Dating Brad Garrett."

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

"Saturday Night Live" has jumped into the webisode mix with "The Line" -- a comedy on Crackle.com about geeks camping outside a movie theater to see the latest installment of "FutureSpace." The show stars "SNL" cast members Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis along with Joe Lo Truglio from "The State" and "Superbad" -- and was directed by "SNL's" Seth Meyers. 

 

Nerd-waiting-in-line comedy can never be done as well as Triumph did it way back in 2002 for the "Attack of the Clones" premiere, but this show finds its own stride by creating an amusing cast of characters and some clever story elements. Much of the tension in "The Line" is supplied by "the five-minute rule" -- according to a geek decree, you lose your place in line if you take a second more than five. This makes it awkward for Hader's character to be broken up with by his girlfriend or for Lo Truglio to spend a Sunday with his young son (they have to run to the basketball court, shoot one hoop, and then run back). Also, there's a great cameo by comedian Paul Scheer as The Spoiler -- the mean nerd who revels in dropping details he's gathered about the movie these fanboys are waiting to see. 

The show, thought up by Hader and "SNL" writer Simon Rich while they were on the writers strike picket line, was produced by Broadway Video Entertainment, the production company of "SNL" kingpin Lorne Michaels. Michaels and "SNL" brought the world "Lazy Sunday" in late 2005, which students of YouTube lore (and probably everyone else) will remember was one of the first major viral hits (and one NBC didn't know how to deal with so well -- thanks, Xeni).

Though it's gone largely unwatched on its native Crackle page, "The Line" is a solid first Web effort for Hader, Michaels and Broadway.  Let's see how long we have to stand around before the next one....

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, "I Met the Walrus," is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. Top marks...

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Worth watching: 'Behind the Star' with Michael Stahl-David

Michael Stahl-David and Odette Yustman star in "Cloverfield." (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Shows chronicling the ups and downs of real or fake celebrities have become a genre unto themselves, whether you're talking about "The Larry Sanders Show," "The Comeback," "Entourage," "Being Bobby Brown" or even Ileana Douglas' upcoming web series "Easy to Assemble." 

Yet another entry into this meta-genre is Crackle.com's new "Behind the Star," (which we can't link to due to some off-color language).  The show is a pseudo-documentary on Michael Stahl-David, who played the hero-boyfriend in the movie "Cloverfield."

In the show, Stahl-David plays an ego-inflamed version of himself, still clinging to the success of "Cloverfield" — whose box office numbers he repeats as though teaching a class.  But, he assures viewers, he's still a normal guy. "I could make my bed before I became a movie star, and I can make my bed after," he says, moments before searching for his own name on YouTube.

Turns out Stahl-David, like actor James Franco, can play quirky comedy as well as or better than he can do big tent action-drama. These self-effacing roles can be hard to pull off; if there's even a hint that the star isn't actually on board with the idea that they're a little bit selfish and narcissistic, the whole endeavor can begin to seem unintentionally autobiographical. 

Not so here. Stahl-David creates a subtle doppelganger, one with so little  self-awareness that he can be utterly convinced of his own humility and still seem maniacally self-obsessed. In one scene, he suggests that in order to liven up a photo of himself on the red carpet, the photographer insert another image of him in the background.

"Behind the Star" is one of Crackle.com's new slate of shows, which includes an upcoming sketch-fest by L.A.'s Groundlings, as well as the watchable "Dating Brad Garrett."

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

"Saturday Night Live" has jumped into the webisode mix with "The Line" -- a comedy on Crackle.com about geeks camping outside a movie theater to see the latest installment of "FutureSpace." The show stars "SNL" cast members Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis along with Joe Lo Truglio from "The State" and "Superbad" -- and was directed by "SNL's" Seth Meyers. 

 

Nerd-waiting-in-line comedy can never be done as well as Triumph did it way back in 2002 for the "Attack of the Clones" premiere, but this show finds its own stride by creating an amusing cast of characters and some clever story elements. Much of the tension in "The Line" is supplied by "the five-minute rule" -- according to a geek decree, you lose your place in line if you take a second more than five. This makes it awkward for Hader's character to be broken up with by his girlfriend or for Lo Truglio to spend a Sunday with his young son (they have to run to the basketball court, shoot one hoop, and then run back). Also, there's a great cameo by comedian Paul Scheer as The Spoiler -- the mean nerd who revels in dropping details he's gathered about the movie these fanboys are waiting to see. 

The show, thought up by Hader and "SNL" writer Simon Rich while they were on the writers strike picket line, was produced by Broadway Video Entertainment, the production company of "SNL" kingpin Lorne Michaels. Michaels and "SNL" brought the world "Lazy Sunday" in late 2005, which students of YouTube lore (and probably everyone else) will remember was one of the first major viral hits (and one NBC didn't know how to deal with so well -- thanks, Xeni).

Though it's gone largely unwatched on its native Crackle page, "The Line" is a solid first Web effort for Hader, Michaels and Broadway.  Let's see how long we have to stand around before the next one....

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, "I Met the Walrus," is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. Top marks...

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

The old WB and the online future

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

"Saturday Night Live" has jumped into the webisode mix with "The Line" -- a comedy on Crackle.com about geeks camping outside a movie theater to see the latest installment of "FutureSpace." The show stars "SNL" cast members Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis along with Joe Lo Truglio from "The State" and "Superbad" -- and was directed by "SNL's" Seth Meyers. 

 

Nerd-waiting-in-line comedy can never be done as well as Triumph did it way back in 2002 for the "Attack of the Clones" premiere, but this show finds its own stride by creating an amusing cast of characters and some clever story elements. Much of the tension in "The Line" is supplied by "the five-minute rule" -- according to a geek decree, you lose your place in line if you take a second more than five. This makes it awkward for Hader's character to be broken up with by his girlfriend or for Lo Truglio to spend a Sunday with his young son (they have to run to the basketball court, shoot one hoop, and then run back). Also, there's a great cameo by comedian Paul Scheer as The Spoiler -- the mean nerd who revels in dropping details he's gathered about the movie these fanboys are waiting to see. 

The show, thought up by Hader and "SNL" writer Simon Rich while they were on the writers strike picket line, was produced by Broadway Video Entertainment, the production company of "SNL" kingpin Lorne Michaels. Michaels and "SNL" brought the world "Lazy Sunday" in late 2005, which students of YouTube lore (and probably everyone else) will remember was one of the first major viral hits (and one NBC didn't know how to deal with so well -- thanks, Xeni).

Though it's gone largely unwatched on its native Crackle page, "The Line" is a solid first Web effort for Hader, Michaels and Broadway.  Let's see how long we have to stand around before the next one....

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, "I Met the Walrus," is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. Top marks...

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Worth Watching: 'SNL' crew makes 'The Line'

"Saturday Night Live" has jumped into the webisode mix with "The Line" -- a comedy on Crackle.com about geeks camping outside a movie theater to see the latest installment of "FutureSpace." The show stars "SNL" cast members Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis along with Joe Lo Truglio from "The State" and "Superbad" -- and was directed by "SNL's" Seth Meyers. 

 

Nerd-waiting-in-line comedy can never be done as well as Triumph did it way back in 2002 for the "Attack of the Clones" premiere, but this show finds its own stride by creating an amusing cast of characters and some clever story elements. Much of the tension in "The Line" is supplied by "the five-minute rule" -- according to a geek decree, you lose your place in line if you take a second more than five. This makes it awkward for Hader's character to be broken up with by his girlfriend or for Lo Truglio to spend a Sunday with his young son (they have to run to the basketball court, shoot one hoop, and then run back). Also, there's a great cameo by comedian Paul Scheer as The Spoiler -- the mean nerd who revels in dropping details he's gathered about the movie these fanboys are waiting to see. 

The show, thought up by Hader and "SNL" writer Simon Rich while they were on the writers strike picket line, was produced by Broadway Video Entertainment, the production company of "SNL" kingpin Lorne Michaels. Michaels and "SNL" brought the world "Lazy Sunday" in late 2005, which students of YouTube lore (and probably everyone else) will remember was one of the first major viral hits (and one NBC didn't know how to deal with so well -- thanks, Xeni).

Though it's gone largely unwatched on its native Crackle page, "The Line" is a solid first Web effort for Hader, Michaels and Broadway.  Let's see how long we have to stand around before the next one....

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, "I Met the Walrus," is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. Top marks...

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Worth Watching: "I Met the Walrus"

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, "I Met the Walrus," is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. Top marks...

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

12Seconds: ready, go!

In the spirit of adapting every digital medium (text, image, video) to every possible length format, and putting it on every device at every possible time, we now we have the latest entry: 12Seconds.

It's a "video status platform" where, instead of sending out micro-blogs a la Twitter, you now update your friends micro video blogs. 

Here are my two dueling takes:

Skeptical:

--  There are already an uncountable number of video sites that allow users to upload not just-12 second videos, but videos of all lengths.  Why is narrowing the video universe to 12 seconds a feature?

12Seconds' answer:

Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing.

-- This service doesn't appear to have implemented Twitter's best feature***, which is the leader/follower structure, where everything you write gets beamed to all your friends and fans.  12Seconds doesn't have followers.  So how is everyone going to know you just posted a video update? Unless...Twitter? 

-- Text is better for updates because you can scan lots of entries in a short time. Videos--even 12 seconds ones--are not scannable.

Encouraging:

-- But, of course, video can do a lot that text can't.  Instead of telling your friends you just bought Spiderman #1 on eBay for $2,500 -- you can actually hold the comic up and show them.  Nerd power!

-- The creators are right that in the info-overloaded world, shorter is better.  By architecturally enforcing shortness, they may actually be able to create a new micro-medium, like Twitter did.   It's not true that "anything longer is boring," of course, but if the video you're watching is only 12  seconds, the downside is pretty minimal, even when it is boring.

-- May not actually need to re-invent the Twitter follow-wheel.  This service functions well as a Twitter enhancer. 

-- The web celebs are going to love it.

***UPDATE: David Speiser, one of the co-founders, writes in:  We do have a leader/follower structure exactly like Twitter's. You must be a registered user and logged in to use that feature.

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible' is a site-crashing success

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Worth watching: Pes' 'Western Spaghetti' animation

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Worth Watching: Master of the Internet

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic.