TVSquad

I recently mentioned NBC.com was giving viewers a chance to create montages to celebrate Jay Leno's fifteen years on The Tonight Show.

I'll admit I took a few jabs at Leno, and in doing so prompted a couple readers to suggest checking out some of Leno's earlier, pre-Tonight Show work, specifically his appearances on Letterman before the kerfuffle in the early '90s that would see Leno getting The Tonight Show and Letterman, well, not.

In 2005, a series called Gay Robot, based on a track from an Adam Sandler comedy album, was pitched to Comedy Central. The titular character was voiced by comedian Nick Swardson and the series was produced, in part, by Swardson and Sandler.

Comedy Central passed on the pilot, but new scuttlebutt has it that the series may see the light of day after all, but as an animated series rather than a live-action one. There hasn't been any official announcement in regards to this, so we'll just have to wait and see.

This week, TCM.com, the site for Turner Classic Movies, launched a cool little video site called the Media Room that features a bunch of movie trailers and clips from its library of classic films.

On occasion however, you will be able to watch select feature-length films. Currently, you can see Living on Love starring James Dunn and Whitney Bourne. Other films will follow, including Rafter Romance, A Man to Remember and Double Harness.

I think this is a really cool idea, especially for folks who might not be familiar with some of these old movies. This new site gives people a chance to watch trailers and clips and get an idea of what the movie is about so they can decide whether or not they'd like to see it. There are always trailers and clips available for current releases, but not as many for older flicks. I myself have already been checking out the clips for Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire, a movie I'm curious about since one of Browning's other films, Freaks, is probably one of my top ten favorite movies of all time.

[via Hollywood Reporter]

Back in January I mentioned a little animated short that meshed the Simpsons together with O.J. Simpson to create, naturally, The O.J. Simpsons. It's cute, though not especially hilarious.

Well, now FOX lawyers are asking Broadcaster.com, the video site that hosts the clips, to have the clips removed.

But check this out: if you watch the YouTube clip, the music is lifted directly from The Simpsons, but if you watch it on Broadcaster, the music is not from The Simpsons.

FOX wanted the clips removed due to to "copyright infringement," so I assume the music was changed for that reason. Without the music, I would say the clips fall under the category of "parody," which I think makes them legitimate. This is based on my delusion that I actually know anything about copyright law.

[via Digg]

We all know that CBS has its own channel on YouTube, and in what seems to me like a pretty smart move, CBS News is removing user-uploaded content and replacing it with the same (but authorized) clip.

In a perfect world, it would actually be cool if everyone did this, e.g., take down that crappy dub of The Simpsons and replace it with a FOX-authorized full episode. Yeah, I know that's really not possible, but it would be in my "perfect world." Also, cars would be made out of chocolate.

Really though, I hope others follow CBS' example. Protecting your content is fine, but this is Web 2.0, after all, and sites like YouTube aren't going to go away.

[via Lost Remote]

In case you missed it the other three billion times I mentioned it, I'm a big fan of Tim and Eric. I thought their series Tom Goes to the Mayor was one of the funniest shows of the last couple years, and I'm growing more and more fond of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, their disjointed and smarter-than-it-seems sketch show.

If you also like Awesome Show but wish you could pay money to watch it, it's now available on iTunes.

In addition, Tim and Eric are heading out on tour with exactly zero stops in the Midwest, the big dumb jerks. Sorry, I'm just a little bitter. While on tour, they'll be filming a documentary of the whole experience, so keep an eye on AdultSwim.com for clips from the road, as well as a full webcast of their appearance in Atlanta on March 1.

Here's a tiny taste of what to expect.

It'll make your DVR jealous. Every morning, watch a handful of last night's top TV moments and vote for your favorite.

Among today's picks: On 24, Jack Bauer, fresh out of a Chinese prison, determines to save the world (yet again) -- while supplying a fix for us thrill ride, cliffhanger junkies.

Watch the rest.

NOTE: Each day's clips are removed after 24 hours. Come back tomorrow for a brand new batch.

Adult Swim now has an official channel on YouTube, and I'm not really sure why. The channel only features clips and not full episodes, and while it looks like there are not as many user-uploaded episodes on the site as before, you can still find them if you look hard enough. Also, there's always the Adult Swim Fix that has both full episodes and clips.

So okay, it's more of a promotional thing. That's fine, but if I'm online looking for something to satisfy my craving for Adult Swim content, this is probably the last place I'll go to. Criminy, I sound like such a whiny little bitch: "Oh, why must Adult Swim provide me with free easy-to-view clips of shows I love?" Seriously, I should just shut the hell up. Who do I think I am, anyway? I'm going to go to my room and think about what I've done.

Call me an old crankypuss, but I've never really been impressed with unmoderated discussions on the Web. Once you leave the doors wide open, you're almost immediately overrun by folks who gleefully pound out vicious bromides while hiding behind the anonymity allowed by the Web. One has only to read the comments on any YouTube clip to see how quickly this can bring down intelligent discussion.

Alas, that's how this crazy medium works, so you have to take the good with the bad. That is, unless you're CBS. The network, which boasts some of the most-watched clips on YouTube, is trying to police its comments by moving them to a different page, rather than directly below the videos themselves. The network is also trying to stay on top of profane, off-topic and unconstructive criticism. The network has been doing this since late October, and all I can say is, "Welcome to the user's Web, CBS."

[via Lost Remote]

That's "Annie" as in the annual animation awards given out by ASIFA-Hollywood, which I mentioned here not too long ago. If you don't also frequent our sister site Ad Jab, you should click here and see all the animated commercials that were nominated this year. Matt Ferguson is also posting some Annie clips on his blog, The Living Animation Festival (via Cartoon Brew). Right now he has a handful of short films and some clips from the theatrical releases that were nominated this year. Since I posted the commercials over on Ad Jab I figured I'd also throw down some clips of the animated TV series that received nominations this year. After the jump see clips from:

• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, "Bus the Two of Us" (Craig McCracken nominated for best director)
• Danny Phantom, "King Tuck" (nominated for character design)
• Shorty McShort's Shorts, "Boyz on Da Run Part 1" (nominated for best music)

News Corp., Viacom, NBC Universal and CBS have been chatty-chatting with one another since the beginning of the year about one very important thing: THEY MUST KILL MISTER BOND. Wait, sorry, that's incorrect. I have trouble thinking of Rupert Murdoch and not seeing him seated at the head of a long table stroking a small exotic animal like some James Bond villain.

Are you bored? Do you have nothing much to do today? Does the thought of leaving your home and being around other human beings just leave you unfulfilled? Don't worry, that's why I'm here. Instead of stepping outside where you might risk being hit by a car or strangled by a squirrel, why not sit in front of the warm glow of your computer screen and watch some clips from old TV shows like You Bet Your Life, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show? There's also some old Popeye and Looney Tunes shorts, plus movie serials and trailers.

A friend of mine sent me this link to Public Domain Comedy, knowing I'm a sucker for all things cartoony. You can also find a lot of similar clips and full-length videos by poking around the Archive.org site. It's like YouTube, but without the guilt of viewing copyrighted material.

Apparently in the '80s and '90s the now defunct Spy magazine had a couple television specials, one called The Hit List and another called How to Be Famous. The How to Be Famous special was hosted by Jerry Seinfeld, and you can watch a few YouTube clips of both specials by clicking here. Spy went under shortly before I graduated college, and while I often heard about it, I never bothered to check it out. Based on what I've heard about the mag, though, I don't think these specials quite match its humor. Some of the clips are kind of funny, such as the one in which hidden cameras record how normal people react to a celeb like Ricardo Montalban, but others aren't all that amusing, such as the Brady Bunch theme redone as an ode the Woody Allen / Mia Farrow debacle. Those more interested in the print version should know an anthology of the magazine will be out on October 25.

[via Waxy]