Courtesy of DanceOn

Elle Walker burning the floor with Bryan Tanaka

Take a look at Dance Showdown, the first original show created for the YouTube channel DanceOn. This is reality-style, competition dance crossing easily to an online format -- and doing it better than network television, frankly.

It's pretty hilarious.

Launched in April, Dance Showdown is a cross between So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars, with a little Charlie's Angels thrown in (the Charlie character being the show's host, hip-hop crew star D-trix). Individual episodes have topped more than 500,000 views, with series' totals of more than 6 million.

The show pairs YouTube "stars" with a slate of "superstar" choreographers -- best to ignore the hyperbole because there is a lot of youth and inexperience here. But that is part of the charm. You, dear Internet voters, are the judges, and you will determine the final winner of the $25,000 prize, to be announced on May 31.

More >>

Sunset Junction

Last weekend, the third L.A. Web Series Festival (aka L.A. Web Fest) took over the LAX Radisson Hotel, bringing a wide variety of Internet-based programming to screening rooms. I stopped by the event on Saturday afternoon and got to check out episodes from more than 20 series.

The annual convention certainly shows the diversity within the still-new medium. Shows ranged from slick productions with actors recognizable from television and film to DIY efforts. There were comedies, dramas, talk shows and documentaries. Comedies, however, seemed to dominate the day.

Below are five web series I caught at the festival that are worth your time.

More >>

Nerdist

Nerd Emperor Hardwick announces the lineup

Nerd.

What was once a word used to assert adolescent alpha male dominance over the guy who would eventually become your boss is now a nearly complete empire run by the once-oppressed. Unlike the Habsburg, Incan or Qing, this one has its own channel on YouTube, complete with Weird Al, Neil Patrick Harris and, well, cute shit exploding, among other nerdly things. Oh, and there...will...be...puppets. Henson puppets.

We caught up with Chris Hardwick, high emperor of the multifaceted project Nerdist, and his business consigliere Peter Levin to talk about the channel, plus bowling, nerd-cred, and why getting whacked in the face with a toy lightsaber can ultimately be a good thing for a lot of people.

More >>

"It's a funny thing with me. Things seem to go poorly when I am around them."

A little bit clueless egoist (think Larry David) with a little Lucy Ricardo thrown in, Jason Nash plays more or less himself in his web series Jason Nash Is Married , soon on the Comedy Central website, in which he's a struggling comic married with kids. As fuck-ups go, he's pretty charming, and the show boasts loads of talent: Busy Philipps as his wife, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Nick Swardson, TJ Miller, Paul F. Tompkins and Andy Richter.

On Wednesday he'll screen four episodes and be joined for some standup with Rajskub, Miller and Jerry Minor at The Lab at the Improv.

Our interview with Nash:

More >>

Courtesy of Shelf Life

Actors Tara Platt and Yuri Lowenthal know how to make things happen fast. Last spring, Platt had an idea for a story about action figures living on a shelf in the bedroom of a 10-year-old boy. By summer, they were working on the first season of Shelf Life. Season two of the web series, produced by their firm Monkey Kingdom, debuted on Tuesday. Last weekend, they filmed the entire third season.

This couple, well known for their voice acting work (both were in Naruto, Lowenthal is also the voice of Ben Tennyson in Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien), knows that when you have a good idea, you have to run with it. And Shelf Life is a good idea. This isn't a loving tale about children's toys. It's about cynical figures subjected to the destructive hands of their young owner.

More >>

Tai Fauci

Patrick Breen and Willie Garson star as two ill-fated, out-of-work actors trying their hand at the art world in Whole Day Down

How do you know something is art? When it's in a gallery? Is a toilet seat in a gallery art? How about a web series about a toilet seat? Or a paragraph made entirely of questions?

Whole Day Down, the new, hilariously bizarre web series created by writer-actor Patrick Breen, whom you've seen in everything, and writer-producer-editor Tai Fauci (Palisades Pool Party), does not answer this question, but it does have fun with the fact that half the punch of art these days seems to be its fierce decree that IT IS ART even if everything about it seems to defy that definition.

Whole Day Down follows two doomed (and I mean satanically doomed) out-of-work actors: Willie, played by Willie Garson (White Collar, Sex & the City) and Patrick, played by Breen, who decide to try their hand curating art shows in an effort to make money and make a difference. Breen's pregnant wife, Nadine (Elisa Donovan) bribes her inappropriately over-devoted daddy to give them the gallery space one day a week. And so begins the story of lovable losers, fascist art critics, unrequited love and the impending apocalypse.

More >>

Amy Lachat

Mike Monreal shoots some Gauntlet demons on the Christmas episode of Co-Op Life

It sucks when your Christmas party is invaded by Gauntlet demons. You have to don your warrior gear, get your party guests cross-bows, and try not to shoot the food. Luckily, roommates Jake Hames and Mike Monreal have plenty of practice battling video-game bad guys around their apartment. Gifted director Shane English gives them a new one to face every week in his expertly crafted live-action video-game parody series Co-Op Life, hosted on Machinima.com

Each episode is shot in the style of a different video game, ranging from modern first-person shooter games like Bio-Shock to hack and slash retro arcade games like Gauntlet. As Monreal and Hames banter and play the game-of-the-week in their run-down apartment, the reality around them begins to fuse with the world of their game until the action is no longer on their console, it's all around them.

More >>

Eric Andrè

They've got the talent, the credits and the buzz, and all are poised to make the leap to the comedic Big Leagues in 2012. Here are the individuals, groups and projects that will have Los Angeles talking -- and more important, laughing -- next year. Some are our picks, but some are selections from those in the know.

More >>

Producer-director Justin Tanner

The call is for 11 a.m. at a quaint clapboard house on a quiet, suburban cul de sac in Highland Park just off the Avenue 43 exit of the Pasadena Freeway. I arrive at the set to find the crew in a blur of activity in a tastefully kitsch-festooned living room. The production is AVE 43, the most jaw-dropping, taboo-twisted and outrageously funny soap opera satire I've seen on the internet. The entire 25-actor shoot must wrap by 4 p.m.

By "crew," I mean the show's creator and one-man movie studio Justin Tanner. By "set" I mean AVE 43's permanent sound stage, the home he shares with his husband of 13 years, artist-composer Kristian Hoffman, the founder of NYC punk-rock legends The Mumps. In the course of the day, Tanner will shoot 14 scenes and convincingly create the illusion of as many locations without ever leaving the property.

More >>

Rachel and Carlyle brainstorm the next Couple Time vignette

There are few Internet series that have me itching for the next installment, checking the Vimeo page for new videos several times a week and squealing with delight when one's posted. But that embarrassing behavior is exactly what I do with Couple Time. Comedians Patrick Carlyle and Allyn Rachel, who have been a real life couple for coming on eight years, write and star in the series of 90-second vignettes that explore, in their words, "weird stuff couples do when no one else is around."

No! Not kinky weird stuff! Silly weird stuff. Things we all do when we feel so close to someone that it's almost like they're part of us. Like singing the full Ally McBeal theme song in the middle of breakfast, or having a serious debate about what percentage of pumpkin carving is scooping, or making up fantastical bribes to convince your partner be the one to crawl out of bed and feed the cat .

These moments might fall flat when described in words, but Rachel and Carlyle bring them to life with such honesty, love, and pitch perfect comedic timing, that each vignette leaves you not only in stitches but also with the odd, poignant feeling that you will now appreciate the small joys of life a little bit more.

More >>