The brainchild of two Temple University students, Harvey Schnitzel, Time Traveler started as a simple comedy short and is now growing into a full blown webseries. In the words of Alexandra Peck, one of the creators:

“In the short, Harvey is a day-dreaming greeting card creator in the year 1997 who is strongly opposed to the development of the e-card, citing a love for vintage and the idea of a better time. The story in the webseries follows this lead, essentially suggesting that Harvey can never find the best possible era to live because there is no, true ‘perfect era’. In each episode, an allergic attack sparks a jump from the present to the past (or future) which features the same people who exist in the present, but, with a time related-twist. Somehow, Harvey can never find the perfect era.”

Shot digitally, the first series will span six 10 minute episodes and will feature heavy improv by the actors. Check out the hilarious project video and be sure to support the Philly Kickstarter scene.

The Project: Harvey Schnitzel, Time Traveler – Live Action Webseries

Creators: Alexandra Peck, Jason A Pearlman, Luke J Marron, Daniel Dorff

The Sweet Spot: $35 bucks gets your name in the website credits, free hugs and a DVD of the whole series, but high rollers can drop $1000 to add foot rubs, grape feeding, and private performances to the list. What, no ecard?

Funding Deadline: August 16th, 2011

More Info: Check out more Harvey on YouTube and Facebook

And of course, don’t forget to hit up the Kickstarter page to support them.

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Every Monday Geekadelphia features a Kickstarter created by local Philadelphians. Check em out and support our local geek scene. If you have a project that you’d like featured on site, contact geekadelphia@gmail.com

Behind the Scenes in Dr. Who, Series 6, Part 1

BBC recently released Dr. Who Series 6 Part 1 on Blu-ray and DVD, and they let THIS Whovian review it for Geekadelphia! Let me tell you, this is a must have item for any Dr. Who addict. You already know that the cinematic quality of Dr. Who has risen dramatically in the past few years, and watching this Blu-ray will put you in the center of HD greatness.

I took it upon myself to watch the first two episodes right off the bat, and the outdoor scenes shot in America look STUNNING. You can really appreciate the fine detail in color, and the grotesqueness that is The Silence.

Speaking of The Silence, another great feature on the Blu-ray are the Monster Files. If you love the creatures in Dr. Who, and you’re a special effects enthusiast– then you’re going to love this. The Monster Files explores the different aspects that make up The Silence and The Gangers. It tells you everything from the initial idea of these creatures, to the back-story of how they came to be and why they are so terrifying.

Pew pew pew!

Dr. Who Series 6 Part 1 hit stores on July 19th, and we have three DVDs to give away! That’s right. Three!

So… comment below with your favorite Dr. Who quote. I’ll select three of you at random next week and mail you a copy. Good luck!

It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with British sci-fi. So, when Geekadelphia had the opportunity to speak with Arlene Tur from the upcoming season Torchwood; I jumped on it. If you don’t know about Torchwood then, 1.) we’re not friends, and 2.) it’s all on Netflix so get to watchin’.

The new season entitled Miracle Day opens with a simple concept; What if everyone in the world stopped dying? As Captain Jack would willingly tell you, “Take it from someone who knows. Not being able to die… SUCKS.”

Arlene Tur has some exciting things to say about the new season without giving away the juicy details, but it was enough for me to jump up and down with giddy anticipation.

Torchwood is a BBC series, so not many Americans are aware of it. Could you describe the show for our American audiences, and why should they watch it?

Torchwood is a secret service in England that basically is in charge of keeping the people unaware and safe from extraterrestrial activities. They have the top technology, and supernatural things are going on all around them. What’s different about this, is that the show itself isn’t just sci-fi, because a lot of things in the hospital. It’s a hospital show, a secret government agency show, and a sci-fi show. There is also comedy in there. I feel like this is a show that everyone can enjoy.

This season marks the return of John Barrowman (Jack Harkness) and Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper) but now features Bill Pullman, Mekhi Phifer and yourself. Do you feel these American actors will bring something different to Torchwood?

What I think is exciting is– for the first time on a TV show we’re actually COLLABORATING. Instead of the Americans taking the English material and turning it into a more “American” show, Starz is saying to the BBC; look, you really know what you’re doing. Let’s collaborate!

So it’s both of us working together versus what they usually do, and just take what’s there and just basically do it word for word. I feel like this is so smart, and it’s going to bring a lot to the table. It’s going to bring both styles that are obviously successful and they’re going to be united. I’m really excited.

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Every few months, I find myself happily posting about The Guild dropping another season on DVD. Back in June, Season 3 hit stores and online retail outlets, and now Season 4 is finally available.

But like I’ve said in other posts about the series retail discs… why bother purchasing a show that’s available for free online? Really, it all boils down to the bonus materials. And like the previous retail releases of The Guild, this one has plenty.

This DVD comes with the Game On music video, the making of said video, the hilarious Cheesybeard’s commercial, and a wonderful audio commentary with the cast and crew. There’s even a PDF file of the script and, as always, a great behind-the-scenes gag reel.

Wil Wheaton is back in Season 4, and more hilarious than ever.

So surprise, surprise… I highly recommend picking up a copy of Season 4 of the Guild. Great special features and an excellent transfer to DVD, make this worth picking up.

Now… want to score a copy? Just leave a comment about your favorite character from The Guild. I’ll pick one of you at random next week. Good luck!

The Guild: Season 4 on DVD [Amazon]

I know, you’re sick and tired of all of this grimy discolored snow scattered around Philadelphia. You can’t stand the fact that you have to wait for SEPTA in near Artic temperatures, and you’re sick of slipping on black ice. I hear you. Like you I find myself daydreaming of sandy beaches and the unmistakable cry of a hungry seagull swooping in for my Wawa hoagie.

It’s only February, and I’m developing cabin fever. I feel the need to hear people shout, “Forget about it!” “How you doooin?” or just a simple “Sup Bro?” And then there is the unmistakable need to –shudder—fist pump.

Where can I find people arguing obnoxiously loud? Where can I spot a gigantic quaff, a blowout, or even a simple Ed Hardy t-shirt? Oh! Of course! I know where! South Philly!

South Philly Bar & Grill is “going GTL” with a weekly Jersey Shore viewing party. That’s right, they’re bringing the Jersey Shore to South Philly! Thursday nights from 9pm-midnight, South Philly Bar & Grill will offer up Jersey Shore food and beverage specials including $5 cocktails like the GTL-tini, Ron Ron Juice, the Jersey Juicehead, the Sticky Situation and the Beat the Beat Bomb. In addition to their full menu, the Wingman Wing Basket, Snooki Snack [3 pairs of buffalo chicken balls] and The Seaside Sliders will be available for $4 each.

What could possibly make it any better? Wait, did you say a look-alike contest? You bet your sweet ass I did! During commercial breaks, South Philly Bar & Grill will host a Snooki and Pauly D Look-alike Contest. Winners will each receive a South Philly Bar & Grill gift certificate and the runners up will each receive Budweiser merchandise.

Fans can also look forward to meeting Jeff Miranda, Snooki and Angelina’s former boyfriend and Season 3 personality, on February 10th when he will make an appearance at South Philly Bar & Grill.

Guest Post by Talkadelphia’s Gino Barrica

For eight years, Judy Reyes played Nurse Carla Espinosa on Scrubs. Now, two years after she left the show, Reyes is making the film festival rounds in support of her new movie Gun Hill Road. We caught up with the actress and asked her about her new role and her time on the quirky medical sitcom.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Judy. Tell us about your new film!

Gun Hill Road is in essence a family drama. Esai Morales plays a man who’s coming out of prison after 3 years and coming back to his old stomping grounds of the Bronx, Gun Hill Road to be specific. He’s committed to reclaiming and regaining his place in the family with his wife and his son only to find out that everything is completely different.

His wife is estranged, has changed and is struggling to stay loyal to him and to their relationship. His son is estranged as well, and not only that, but is struggling with a sexual identity crisis that is threatening to tear the family apart. The mom is trying to play the peacemaker between father and son while trying to maintain her own relationship with them. And who knows what has gone down while he was away, so even that is being threatened by his resurgence into the family.

I play the mom, Angela. It’s a very powerful story about a family trying to stay together through all of this struggle.

You actually are from the Bronx. How much did having that experience affect your performance in the movie?

You know, I grew up on a street that intersected Gun Hill Road called Bainbridge Ave from the age of 13 to the age of 25 or 26. After that I kind of moved back and forth as a struggling actress. So I’m very familiar with living in the Bronx and knowing what it’s like to come back to a place and wanting it to feel like home. It feels like a comfort blanket and yet it’s a place that completely changes. A place that gets you through and a place that lets you down.

To go back there as a native New Yorker and as a native Bronxite, and to shoot there was a fantastic way to dive into the character and really connect to that part of a grown woman struggling to keep her family together, stay connected to her child and rebound with a life partner that she’s hopelessly outgrowing.

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In case you haven’t noticed, we’re pretty big fans of Battlestar Galactica here at Geekadelphia. That’s why we found ourselves reading Entertainment Weekly’s report that UK actor Luke Pasqualino will play Young William Adama in Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, the forthcoming prequel series from Syfy, set ten years into the First Cylon War. This is between the events chronicled in Caprica and the series proper, as if you didn’t already know that. While they’re busy preparing the series for its as-of-yet undated two-hour pilot, we can look forward to the now-in-beta MMOG Battlestar Galactica Online.

The game is based on the Unity 3D game development engine and is played in your browser using their proprietary embedding technology. The Massively Multiplayer Online Game is in closed beta until February 8th, when it will be wide open for all. We tried LEGO game Clone Wars: Quest for R2D2 and Avert Fate, also Unity-based 3D browser games, and we were impressed. But German game company Bigpoint said in a recent press release that it “aims to set new technical and artistic benchmarks for 3D browser games” with Battlestar Galactica Online.

That implies that we won’t be able to set our graphics mode to “Fantastic”–an actual setting in some Unity games, lest we drop our frames like they’re hot. The trailer below certainly backs up Bigpoint’s confidence, as long as that quality is seen throughout the game in actual gameplay scenarios.

After all, the trailer was most definitely made on the sort of superpowered computer commonly used for gaming or video production and editing. Actual mileage may vary, and that will be the true test. You can be sure we’ll report back to you once we’ve had the chance to dive into the game itself.

This post brought to you by TiVo. All opinions are 100% mine.

Ah, TiVo.

You are, at the same time, a handy device for at home entertainment, and a lifesaving defensive mechanism during the horrors of war… as proven to us all by the Oscar nominated film Tropic Thunder. And might I add I love that I can say ‘Oscar nominated’ about Tropic Thunder, without being sarcastic.

Well, that TiVo we witnessed in Tropic Thunder, so bravely thrown into the air by Matthew McConaughey, probably could have done even more in battle (and in entertaining Ben Stiller) had it been a TiVo Premiere.

Stepping things up from their regular service, TiVo Premiere connects to your existing cable subscription AND your Internet service… which means you can do instant streaming from Netflix, play your Amazon Video-On-Demand downloads, watch YouTube videos, rock out to Pandora… all that good stuff you wish you could do on your television, using a single device that isn’t your laptop haphazardly connected to it.

That’s my usual shtick, awkwardly connecting my MacBook to my television via a series of cords. One box that does everything? Sold.

Currently, TiVo is offering up a special holiday deal, dishing out the TiVo Premiere for only $99, when you sign up for a one-year service plan of $19.99 a month at Best Buy.

Learn more about TiVo Premiere here, and make sure you watch TiVo saving Ben Stiller and company below.

Note: All proceeds from this sponsored post are going towards Philadelphia’s first all-ages, non-profit literacy journal, The Apiary.

Blade Runner. Back To The Future. Indiana Jones. Star Wars.  They all have had the pleasure of being represented by the artwork of Drew Struzan.  Whether you knew it or not, you have seen Drew Struzan’s work for years. Drew has spent decades honing his artistic abilities to the status of legend. He is without a doubt one of the greatest living artists in the world.

Unfortunately for those of us who appreciate a well designed movie poster, or good art for that matter, we are given an ungodly amount of terrible “floating heads” or “photoshop lineup” posters that make me just as excited to watch a movie as I’m excited to watch paint dry. Uninspired, no emotion, lifeless. The exact opposite of everything that Drew brings to his work.

Luckily this year we not only get a documentary on his work, but Titan Books has published The Art Of Drew Struzan, which collects many of his classic works and includes many never before seen comps and finished pieces that were rejected or canceled for different reasons.

The Art Of Drew Struzan is comprised mostly of images. Those images pretty much speak for themselves.  From thumbnails to tight comps, and eventually finished paintings.  The text contains maybe a paragraph or two per film. A few more paragraphs if the story to complete an image it is a long one.

Drew, and accompanying writer David J. Schow, make those few sentences and paragraphs feel intimate. While reading through the book a second time, it feels like this book shouldn’t exist. Getting a peek into the process behind all those famous images feels like a huge privilege. It is both exciting and many times infuriating.

More after the jump!

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We here at Geekadelphia are equal-opportunity fans of almost anything with the word “star” in it, with maybe one exception. So you can imagine our joy when geek destination of choice BoingBoing.net reported that on September 25th and 26th you can head to StargateArtifacts.com and bid in a live prop auction.

Well-heeled geeks can rub digital elbows with one another while vying for such things as production art, ring transport platforms, and, of course, the ultimate prize: the gate itself. What, you ask, will it cost in US Greenbacks to win such a thing? Only $80,000 to $100,000. Don’t be cheap. This is your child’s future we’re talking about.

Some people have swimming pools. Others have tennis courts. Still more wealthy folks park their Lamborghinis beneath their living room floor. The Stargate Auction Action Catalog is 300+ pages of excuses to drop a hefty percentage of your paycheck on some geek bling. Don’t let your kid grow up like we know you did: without a friggin’ Stargate.

Picture it: a Stargate in the yard, next to the grill. No big deal. Just dial up a wormhole and see what you find. There’s bound to be a destination world where it’s *cool* to know the unique characteristics of major planets in the Pegasus galaxy and people who talk about sports at the water cooler get weird looks from everyone else.

Right?

Stargate Auctions [ via BoingBoing ]

Guest Post by MA

Season six of Grey’s Anatomy starts with a crash, and ends with a bang.  What comes in between is the continuation of the story twitter user Shonda Rhimes (@shondarhimes ) created seven years ago about a resident and attending surgeon at Seattle Grace Hospital who fall in love.  Or really, how Patrick Dempsey went from uber geek to one of the hottest actors out there.  This season sees Seattle Grace merge with a competing hospital, and of course, drama ensues.  Of note, former Journeyman Kevin McKidd joins the cast as Seattle Grace’s troubled trauma surgeon.

The DVD set as in previous seasons, provides the viewer with some extended episodes of scenes that were not seen in the original broadcast.  Unlike the rest of the DVD offerings from ABC TV this year, Grey’s Anatomy is a full size box set.  It’s obvious that an effort was made not to cram as many episodes on a disk as possible.  This in my opinion, is a good thing.  It makes for a better picture, better authoring, and a better watching experience.

While I watched the extended episodes, I wasn’t able to recognize any of the scenes that were added in.  Another feature worth mentioning of the set was the feature on Chandra Wilson, who won an Emmy in the last season, and who also spent some time on the other side of the camera in the director’s chair.  She plays Miranda Bailey, Seattle Grace’s  resident geek and lover of science fiction – who will throw out a geek reference when you least expect it.

Season Six of Grey’s Anatomy is released on DVD in most stores on September 14, and season seven starts on ABC on September 23.  If you are a fan, this is an excellent addition to your Grey’s Anatomy collection.  If you haven’t seen the show, it’s worth checking out to see how Shonda Rhimes managed to create one of the most popular shows on television.

Guest Post by MA

One of the perks of the being married to an editor of Geekadelphia, is that he gets all sorts of things sent to him… like screeners. One that made it’s way into our house lately was the fourth and last season of Ugly Betty. I used to watch this series every week, until the change to FIOS rendered the series unable to make it to our DVR. So I was finally able to check it out.

Ugly Betty is a series based on a Columbian telenovela called Yo Soy Betty La Fea. It tells the story of a Betty, a less-than attractive girl (played by the beautiful America Ferrera) that was hired as the assistant of a womanizing editor-in-chief of a high fashion magazine called Mode. Being fashion-challenged in the midst of the skinny, pretty people is the classic fish out of water story.

But Ugly Betty was always more than that. As the show developed – so did the relationships and the characters. The season’s 20 episodes are well paced and while there were a couple of story lines that were overtired and repetitive, on the whole it was an enjoyable watch. And the final episode – was the send off that the series deserved.

More After the Jump!  

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