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Pop Culture Night – April 2013

April 21st, 2013

Last week April 17th, was another Pop Culture Night.

April 2013 Pop Culture Night

In attendance: Melissa, Darryl, Lee, John, Gary, Ian, and Kristin.

This month I focused on web series. Since they are typically shorter, we ended up watching 15 different ones!

Comedians in cars getting coffee
Neil’s Puppet dreams
Burning love
Cuckoo
Average Joe
Electric City
Insayshable
Thurston
Cold Storage
Twinkle Time
The Vault
Werewolves of Reseda
Universal Dead
Lovin Lakin
Soma

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http://pv.webbyawards.com/nominees/online-film-video/general-film-categories/comedy-long-form-or-series

Comedians in cars getting coffee
http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com

We started off the night watching Jerry Seinfeld’s web series, and the ‘plot’ is pretty self descriptive. The episode I thought we were going to watch was Jerry and Ricky Gervais. For whatever reason a different episode played with Michael Richards.

Very funny! They reminisced over their Seinfeld years, and Michael was his usual kooky self. Thumbs up!

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Neil’s Puppet dreams
youtube link
I had high hopes for this one. Neil Partick Harris was amazing in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long blog. This episode however felt a little played out. I think the puppets being not-for-children idea is a little predictable, and I wasn’t too excited about watching another episode. I’ll probably give it another try sometime.. and the episodes are super short, so there’s not much that can be done in a short amount of time I suppose.

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Burning love – JULIE’S EPISODES
http://screen.yahoo.com/burning-love/
Although we didn’t watch season 1, the episodes we watched were fun! A few of us who were fans of the tv show ‘Party Down’ kept laughing as all of the various actors from that show were revealed out of the limo. The show itself is a parody of those ‘The Bachelor’ types of shows, and the show was HILARIOUS! This was one of the shows that everyone wanted to watch again, and we did. After just about everyone left, myself, John and Lee watched a few more episodes. Very addicting. = )

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Cuckoo
http://vimeo.com/54623645
This was one of those award winning series I found online. I had trouble finding the actual episode format of the show, and instead we watched about 10 min from the ‘collection’ on vimeo. – I wasn’t such a fan of this one. I guess it could be classified as another teenage angst or something, and I wasn’t the demographic. Actually, I don’t think anyone really liked this one. I remember being bothered by the camera movements on this one. And the main girl was so angry for no reason.

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http://www.lawebfest.com//2013-LAWEBFEST-AWARD-WINNERS.html

Average Joe
http://www.funnyordie.com/averagejoe
Darryl and Lee worked on this series, and I hadn’t yet seen it, so we fired it up. We watched season 1, episode 2. It was fun to hear behind the scenes stuff. As John mentioned, “It’s like having a real audio commentary”.

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Electric City
http://electriccity.yahoo.com/
This is a cartoon, by Tom Hanks, and is about a futuristic society. Not everyone was hooked with the first episode, but I’ll watch another episode sometime. I’m a Hanks fan.

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Insayshable
http://insayshableonline.com
Very similar to the Mindy Project, the New Girl– overly wacky woman and her daily life. Wasn’t a fan. It was too in-your-face.

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Thurston – The Western Web Series
http://www.thurston-series.com
Kudos to these guys for creating a period style web series. That being said, I didn’t get into the plot, so eh.

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Cold Storage – Walking Dead spinoff
link
Although I haven’t seen AMC’s The Walking Dead, John said it is shot in the same style. I guess if you are into that show you’d be into this.

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Twinkle Time
We watched their newest music video – Ian was in this one. = ) Always fun.

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The Vault
http://www.thevaultshow.com
This one has a REALLY great hook that doesn’t reveal hardly anything which leaves you wanting more. Students find themselves in part of a show where they have to solve puzzles in an all white room. Brilliant idea for a webseries because it would be only one room to shoot in. So brilliant.

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Werewolves of Reseda
link
We watched the preview for this one and EVERYONE was ready to watch… and it was no where. Their website said it was available to watch on myspace.. myspace?!? Not so unbelievably enough when I went to the myspace page, the ENTIRE SITE WAS unavailable, likely due to updates or something. Then the series said it was available on Netflix. We loaded up the PS3, readied to watch it on Netflix.. and then it said the ‘series was unavailable’. For whatever reason we weren’t meant to watch it that night, so we moved on. Although their trailer really did look fun.

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Universal Dead
http://universaldead.wordpress.com
Another zombie series, and John, our local zombie show expert, kept pointing out the inaccuracies and plot holes. So, yeah… this one didn’t stick.

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Lovin Lakin
http://www.christine-lakin.com/#!/lovin-lakin/
This series stars Christine Lakin, who played ‘Al’ on ‘Step by Step’, as a self-parody acting teacher. Everyone was laughing at this one. Definitely another thumbs up. I guess parody shows were a hit!

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Soma
http://www.webserieschannel.com/soma/
We finished up the night with a foreign series. It had an amazing production value. The show was a little too dark/gruesome for me though.

The night was once again a blast. Next month my Australian girlfriend Jacqui will be visiting, so we’ll probably watch a mix of US and Australian shows. ; )

Pop Culture Night