There are very few monogamous fans around these days -- most ultimately serve many masters, loving anime and sci-fi and sitcoms with differing, but no less significant, amounts of passion. Animator Rich Cando is no exception to this rule, and so in 2003, he took that passion and began combining two of his favorite franchises, skillfully recreating the iconic Simpsons opening for the Star Wars universe. The result is a perfect mesh of pop culture, well-animated and with humor to spare.

A graduate of the UCLA Animation Workshop, Cando has been creating Flash animation for the web since 1999, launching his career with his first Star Wars spoof, Star Dudes. "With every internet short I ask myself the questions 'Would I want to see it?' and 'Is it possible to create?'" he says. "With Simpsons Star Wars, the geeky side of me wondered what Empire would look like if it was 'Simpsonized.' Instead of waiting around for the Simpsons creators to release that type of episode, I decided what could I design that wouldn't be too ambitious that I couldn't complete it."

Using Macromedia Flash for all aspects of production except sound (which was mixed using Audacity), Cando began working on the cartoon in 2003, but due to his work schedule would have to stop and start, only finding time in the evenings after work or the weekends. "I would guess that I logged in over 1,000 hours," he says. But it was a labor of love; despite what the ending card might say, Cando prefers to look at this as an homage to both properties. "Both represent brands that I was consumed with at different parts of my life. My attention has moved on to other things with age, but they both hold sweet spots in my heart."

Cando's big hope for Simpsons Star Wars is that it reaches the eyes of those who inspired it. "I always like to think that my cartoons can pass under the nose of the original properties's creators during their busy schedules. It would be nice to know that both Matt [Groening] and George [Lucas] got a quick look at it and know that their work is appreciated." In the meantime, he's focusing on developing his own properties, including the book series History Dudes and more animation projects. "I strive to keep working creatively. It would be a dream to create a property that has the cultural impact of The Simpsons or Star Wars, but even if I just reach a tiny percentage of their success, then life is a fun ride."

This hilarious viral phenom depicts, as promised, a sporting-event in which Williamsburg-based 20-something slackers compete, sort of, for nothing at all. With a wittily written running sports commentary that's so funny because it's so true, the American Apparel sponsored contest is a pitch-perfect parody of Brooklyn hipster-ism, with its rundown of events such as picking hip T-shirts ("so ironic it's not, so un-ironic it is"), taking MySpace photos, music selections that were once cool and have now sold-out (Bruce Willis, "The Return of Bruno"), and judging other people meanly.

Created by POKYPAC (pronounced poyk-pack), a six-member Bushwick-based comedy troupe -- Jonny Gillette, Ryan Hall, Ryan Hunter, Taige Jensen, Jenn Lyon, and Maggie Ros, some of whom graduated from the North Carolina School of Arts -- "Hipster Olympics" hit the web just a week ago, and already has more than 225,000 views on YouTube alone. (On the group's very own MySpace page, the video has received more than 86,600 views.)

A shameless tribute to Monty Python's famous skit "The Upperclass Twit of the Year," the video follows the success of the gang's previous YouTube sensation "Mario: Game Over" (4,474,664 views), which imagines the video-game icon as a Brooklyn screw-up having domestic troubles.

According to their MySpace page, POKYPAC has "a sole commitment to entertainment, original humor, and feeding the children of the world with food (preferably their own)."

While POYKPAC's members were unavailable for comment, they state on their YouTube channel that "the actors who appear in their videos are also doing the writing, directing, producing, editing, special FX, and everything else," they write. "We eventually want to end up doing all this on a larger scale."

-Anthony Kaufman

One of the reasons The Daily Reel loves John Romeo is because he does our work for us. Along with finding and hosting some of the best original content on the Web via his Romeo Theater Web site, he also gets the filmmakers to explain the secrets of their craft after their film finishes. John Romeo is a lazy journalist's dream.

The latest well-made viral vid to screen on Romeo is Matt Cassatta's clever Polaroid. it's the story of five friends who discover a mysterious Polaroid camera that predicts the future. Sometimes the results are good (a dream weekend in Vegas chock full of strippers in cash), and sometimes they're a little gruesome. All in all, it's a well-made, well-acted clip that's perfectly suited for online viewing.

Polaroid is one of four shorts Casatta and his cohorts from the ThesePeople comedy troupe made last year for a "Shocktoberfest" series. "Polaroid was the first one we released and has remained the biggest hit of the series," says Cassatta. "It is a parody of a Goosebumps book and a Twilight Zone episode." The shoot took seven hungover hours to pull off. "We were all kind of low on energy as we traditionally go out on the town the night before a shoot, leaving us almost useless on the day [of the shoot]." They could have fooled us.

Romeo found ThesePeople thanks to their exposure on NBC's It's Your Show, a $100,000 contest. "I would love to have some ReeledIn members submit their movies," says Romeo. "They seem to be a group that is more professional than the kid videotaping a friend on his skateboard with a cell phone, and then editing it with a copyrighted song and posting it on YouTube. I want the quality of the movies to keep increasing, with independent directors using my show as a way to promote themselves and their work."

-Matthew Ross

Jorge R. Ramirez didn't know much about the Middle East when he was asked to document "United for Lebanon," a fact-finding trip to Lebanon in August 2006. Meant to determine the impact of the 2006 Lebanon War, the British-Muslim delegation looked at the extent of devastation and internal displacement caused by heavy Israeli bombardment. And thus Ramirez spent three days exploring the damage done during the air strikes, interviewing refugees, and seeing what happens when a million people lose their homes. He was asked a lot of questions about what it was like to be an American, which was apparently a topic of much interest because, according to Ramirez, "They would say, 'In America, you can make a future. Plan you life. Here, you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow.'"

August Lebanon is only a three minute sampling of the twelve hours of footage accumulated, focused around an interview with Dr. Phyllis Starkey, Minister of Parliament. According to Ramirez, "[condensing it] was impossible -- I had to find the best sentence and just cut the segment around that." While the BBC has expressed interest in seeing a full documentary, there was no offer of financing for post-production, and "I refused to work on it for free," Ramirez said. "My body and mind couldn't handle it. Plus, I wanted to take a step back." So he tabled the project for several months and immersed himself in the region's history.

The soundtrack for the film was determined before a single frame was shot: while waiting at San Francisco International Airport, Ramirez realized that a friend of his, Tim Myers, had written a perfect song for the film. He called Myers before take-off, and Myers agreed to let him use the song, aptly entitled "World War," for free.

While he and his producing partners will continue to pursue investors, Ramirez is determined to eventually finish the project, financing or no. "I want my friends to understand what's happening over there," he says. "You can have a city like Beruit, which is a resort destination, populated and urban, like any other place in the world. And for some reason, it's ok for super-powers to drop thousands of bombs in the middle of the place and destroy God knows how many homes -- because Hezbollah leaders happen to live in the area. It was a completely residential area that was bombed. They were nice enough to drop leaflets advising people to leave the area because the bombs were coming, so the losses were minimal. But the damage was intense."

-Liz Miller

The story behind this special effects extravaganza is epic indeed. A long time ago (2003) on a message board far far away (Fanfilms.com, a site devoted to Star Wars fan films), Ryan Wieber and Michael "Dorkman" Scott decided to participate in the forum's first-ever Lightsaber Choreography Competition. Playing upon their reputation as rivals within the Fanfilms.com community, the two friends spent three weekends choreographing and shooting the fight, using Premiere and After Effects to create an Jedi battle for the ages.

Ryan vs. Dorkman won the competition, but never really found an audience outside of the Fanfilms community -- until the advent of of YouTube several years later. "We had always intended to do a sequel eventually, but the audience for such a thing was small and stable, and so it had been on the backburner for several years," says Scott. "But after the original RvD was featured on dozens of high-profile web culture sites, we realized that the time had come to make a follow-up/sequel if we wanted to reach this larger, more fickle audience."

Ryan vs. Dorkman 2 went into production in August 2006, shooting for eight days at the Los Amigos Tortilla Factory in Atlanta, Georgia and then spending several months in post-production. "When we set out to do the film we put a request on our website for donations, so that we could add that much production value to the film," says Scott. "Ultimately we were able to afford not only the film's production, but also a professional score recorded with a 60-piece orchestra at Capitol Studios, Hollywood. The budget was about 40% donations, 60% out of pocket, and it wouldn't have been the same film without the help of our generous fans." The process behind RvD and RvD 2 is detailed thoroughly on the official website, including a fascinating making-of featurette and an extensive FAQ. (On the question of how they do the lightsaber effects: "We used Adobe After Effects to rotoscope the prop blades and add glows to them. Essentially the same way ILM does it.")

Both Scott and Wieber now work within the industry: Scott as a freelance DP and filmmaker, Wieber as a Emmy-nominated compositor and visual effects artist. It was actually RvD that helped Wieber break into the business -- the short attracted the attention of LucasArts, who eventually hired him to work as an effects artist on Knights of the Old Republic II and the Star Wars: Episode III game.

Despite being big fans of the Star Wars franchise, neither Scott or Wieber had had any martial arts or sword training when they began work on Ryan vs. Dorkman. "[We] just watched a lot of movies."

-Liz Miller

How best to describe Trapped in the Closet? In fact, why describe it all. The media coverage on the latest installments of R. Kelly's ongoing schizolodeon has been remarkably positive and grossly academic. It can't be denied any longer that there is something more to his musical soap opera than a good laugh at his expense, proven by IFC's incredibly respectful online distribution. While still hilarious, these new chapters entangle the Trapped web to a point of such socio-political hullabaloo that R. Kelly is practically throwing those laughs right back in our face.

Without giving anything away, this season sees Kellz' alter-ego Sylvester finding more sex, violence and arguments, not to mention a bit of old time religion. The music and lyrics may not be as tight as the original installments, but when the songs return to their old chord progressions it feels even more deserved and exciting. As the tension builds throughout the new arc to its provocative and game-changing conclusion, we actually even stop thinking of R. Kelly as a musician and start thinking of him as a storyteller.

Whether or not Trapped in the Closet is a big joke, or an incendiary commentary on dishonesty in black culture is still too tough to call. But that is what precisely makes it worthwhile. In a story where no character is honest and one-faced, we shouldn't expect the teller to be. What you should expect though is one of the most unique meetings of perplexity and entertainment in recent years. Why attempt to describe it when it's so fun to be Trapped?

-Spencer Somers

"Afterworld" survives. First launched in February on Budweiser's online disaster BudTV, the animated post-apocalyptic adventure has gone from YouTube fame to corporate immortality -- picked up by Sony, and now webcasting on News Corp.'s MySpace, with all the marketing firepower they supply.

Even though the series has been around the web for several months, MySpace TV's general manager Jeff Berman told the LA Times, "We're confident this is going to be an enormous success." Starting Monday, new episodes will be released daily over the next several weeks. The series is also being broadcast on television on the Sci-Fi network in Australia.

Created by TV producer Stan Rogow ("Lizzie McGuire," "Nowhere Man") and written by Brent Friedman ("Mortal Kombat," "The Twilight Zone"), the web series – split into 130 3-minute episodes – chronicles the exploits of a Seattle man on a business trip in New York who survives a mysterious catastrophic event that makes 99% of the earth's population disappear and destroys all working technology. He eventually tries to find his way home.

While the static 2.5D style animation may prove too slow for the kids, "Afterworld" is well made, with an ominous mood and a compelling conspiracy-laden storyline that speaks well for the potential of longstanding online entertainment in the mold of "lonelygirl15" or "Prom Queen."

"What we're trying to do is create a unique form of entertainment as well as an original business model," said Rogow, who recently launched the digital studio Electric Farm Entertainment, which is responsible for producing "Afterworld."

While the MySpace page currently has little information beyond a registration page and some stats on the series' protagonist, the Times story reported that the website will allow fans to explore the journey of the series on their own. "Fans also can suggest plot lines, solve puzzles and interact with some of the characters, who will have their own blogs on MySpace," reported the paper.

"The idea was to create a new hybrid medium for entertainment using these different forms of technology, so that fans can get their daily snack of entertainment when and where they want," Friedman said.

In addition to a second season of "Afterworld," Electric Farm will also produce two other Web series that combine live action and animation, one about zombies in L.A. called "Woke up Dead" and "The Gemini Division," starring Rosario Dawson as a New York cop investigating the bizarre murder of her husband.

-Anthony Kaufman

Satacracy 88 is, in this writer's opinion, the best dramatic series to ever appear on the Web. I'm not alone: it's won a Webby, an Emmy, and has gotten the full-length profile treatment in the New York Times. (As usual, we wrote about it months before pretty much anyone else.)

Trying to sum the plot up to this point is futile -- just watch the series and you won't regret it. We will say that surreal tone and note-perfect execution would probably make Lynch and Cronenberg (not to mention Thelma and Louise) proud. And better yet, the audience helps determine the plot, thanks to regular online polls.

In this episode, our two heroines Angela (Baxter) and Susan (Pappas) have stumbled upon a desperate, tattooed, young lass in a wifebeater (D'Amore). Last week, the show's viewers decided that they should pick up the girl, and they do. The reason: Angela's fascination with her mysterious tattoo. Wanna see what happens next? Tune in next week.

-Matthew Ross

A hybrid of late-nite comedy, soap opera, and even a little actual news reporting, Goodnight Burbank is one of the web's most established original series. In this episode, original cast member Susan Jones returns to visit little sister Kelly, tech correspondent Dane Rivers tries out some material on the makeup girl, and Gordon may be dead of a heart attack. Just another day at our favorite local news broadcast.

Creator and star Hayden Black began Goodnight Burbank in January 2006 when a friend offered him access to a green screen: "I dusted off the idea because it was the easiest, quickest, cheapest thing to do." Although every episode uses real headlines as set-up for jokes and fodder for discussion, Black is careful to make sure that the majority of the topics discussed are "evergreen": "From the get go, the idea was to question the press/media and its motives - and there's no easier way of doing that then to break through the smoke and mirrors of a glossy newscast and see what's REALLY being talked about."

GNB benefits from Black's connections within the comedy world -- initially casting actors he met through an improv class at Upright Citizens Brigade, he went on to assemble a large ensemble of actors with impressive credits. His latest coup is Rich Fulcher of the British comedy series The Mighty Boosh, who plays tech correspondent Dane Rivers; Fulcher actually approached Black about making an appearance and Black jumped at the chance. "I couldn't be happier. He's back in the UK shooting the third season of Boosh, but he's coming back to the US for a while in September and we'll make sure to shoot a bunch more segments with him."

Rivers's segments give Goodnight Burbank a chance to plug other web series, a practice which Black says is purely altruistic. "Last year at the podcast expo, I realized there were two ways of building an audience: one, screaming "Look at me!" to the mainstream media and two, taking the audience that exists online and letting them know about other shows. So I told some people I was going to put my money where my mouth was and start doing a segment that (in GNB's inimitable fashion) promoted them. I never did it to have other people promote me in return. I did it to promote online media -- in the spirit of brotherhood. Or sisterhood, depending on if I'm wearing a dress that day."

-Liz Miller

Saying everything you wanted to know about the deep-sea bioluminescent Lantern Fish (but never thought to ask), this ichthy-rific animated piece has taken art websites by storm, heralded by many fans of the form and posted on YouTube by three separate admirers. The simple, but beautifully drawn video chronicles several types of the fish, observing them morph from one into another in scientific sequence, and climaxing in a psychedelic coda.

"The project came about as an experiment, really," explains Adam Gault, 30, who has worked as a professional motion-graphic artist for television for the last seven years. He met his collaborator, illustrator Stefanie Augustine, while they were both studying at the Rhode Island School of Design. They crafted a similarly poetic graphic-driven piece called "Holiday" (definitely worth checking out) a few years ago.

"Last summer I was in between big projects and looking for something quick and easy to animate," he explains of his fishy friends. "I came across an old print of some lantern fish in an antiques shop, and thought it would be fun to try and animate them. It was fun," he adds, "but unfortunately it wasn't quick."

While Gault complains that it took him almost a year in between paying gigs to complete "Lantern Fish," he also suggests this process may have ultimately benefited the film. "Because I didn't get bored or rush to finish for a deadline, and because it was a personal project, I was able to work way longer on some of the sequences then I might have been able to if it was for a commercial client," he says.

Gault animated the project, while Augustine designed the environments, plants, and fish bones. But Gault credits the piece's dreamy atmosphere to musicians Chris Villepigue and Shelly Bajorek. "I love how it sounds dark and mysterious but still a little whimsical," he says, "and to me it really feels like we're deep under water."

-Anthony Kaufman