The NEWVIDEO® Download

Felicia Day’s THE GUILD outpaced shows like Glee, Weeds, Caprica, Madmen and Lost during it’s launch this week. If you haven’t heard of this award-winning web series, Felicia Day of “Dr. Horrible” brilliance is part of an online gaming guild called “The Knights of Good.”

And, you can enter to win Season 3 of The Guild.*  New Video is offering two free iTunes downloads of Season 3. Enter on Twitter by tweeting us @NewVideoDigital your reason for loving ‘The Guild’ along with the hash tag #TheGuild.

The season pass on iTunes includes a free bonus episode, “Tips on Making a Web Series.”

Felicia fans in Canada (or who toggle the Canada store in the lower right corner of iTunes) can check out her awesome celebrity playlist.

* This contest is only open to U.S. residents with iTunes (U.S.) accounts. Your tweet must be received by Friday, 2/5/2010, at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Apple presented the iPad moments ago in San Francisco – much described as a merging of devices, and a rebuttal to e-readers at a very compelling price point. Starting at $499 for 16GBs, the first iPads will ship in 60 days (90 for 3G network compatibility). With a nifty and slick stand and folder, some are wondering if this could replace a laptop for certain users and create a whole new product category. Designed with “the intersection of technology and liberal arts” in mind, it will offer a new category of apps, the iWork suite and iBooks store, and a highly responsive (A4 chip) 9.7” screen, allowing improved media viewing. Media will be accessible in the same way as on an iPhone, allowing for better sized enjoyment of HD movies and TV.

Repeatedly called a “lifestyle device” that “comes alive in your hand” Apple’s newest product certainly is leading the charge in bringing the human and the technology closer than ever, or making the interface between the two less visible than before.  Skiffy dream come true.

Reknowned art collectors Dorothy and Herb Vogel amassed one of the most important collections of contemporary art on a librarian and postal clerk’s salary, and then donated the entirety to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and to museums in 50 states. We spoke with Dorothy Vogel, who has been buying art with husband Herb since the early 60s, about her experiences, detailed in the recent documentary “Herb & Dorothy.”

Q:  How did the many artists whose works you collected react to the donation of the artwork to the National Gallery and the Vogel 50/50?
Dorothy Vogel:  Everyone was excited about the National Gallery but some were skeptical about the 50/50 project.  Now that the project turned out to be successful everyone is pleased.

Q:  How did you react to director Megumi Sasaki approaching you to film this project? Did you have any indication of the scale of the film over so many years?
DV:  We didn’t think she could do it – didn’t think she could raise the money, didn’t know how long it would take. She didn’t either.

Q:  Did you expect that the rest of the world would catch on to the minimalist and conceptual art movement when you first began collecting?
DV:  Had no idea.

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New Video Digital would like to add something other than coal to your stocking with some fun giveaways.

Fans of Highlander know There Can Be Only One. Our friends at Davis-Panzer Productions are now offering more than one way to win awesome things. Bullz-Eye, Geeks of Doom, and IESB are each featuring the chance to win a Connor or Duncan MacLeod katana, while Teen Hollywood, Slice of Sci-Fi, eFilm Critic, and Video Detective are bringing you the chance to win the six-volume DVD set, “Highlander – Ultimate Collection (Best of the Best).”

To help you catch up on your independent and documentary movie viewing, we’re giving away iTunes downloads of some favorite releases, including Herb & Dorothy, Objectified, Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth, loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies, and many more. Visit our Facebook fan page for a complete list, and plan to gather round the screen.

If you want a break from Frosty and Heat and Snow Miser, may we suggest:  Christmas In Wonderland // The Christmas Toy // The Santa Trap // Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas // The Christmas Clause // Happy Holidays // Santa and Pete 

Here’s wishing you and yours an entertaining holiday season.

Director and producer Jon Reiss (Bomb It!) talks to Millimeter about the ideas in his new book on distributing and marketing film in today’s marketplace. His thoughts on free content and the challenges of piracy to independent producers, in particular, are worth a read.  The book, “Think Outside the Box Office” is a guide to distributing and marketing your film, phase by phase.

Director Kate Churchill and Nick Rosen talk about their collaboration in a grand yoga experiment captured in the documentary, “Enlighten Up!”

Q: How did the two of you come in contact with one another?  Kate, where did you locate subjects for the film?

Director Kate Churchill: Nick and I met each other at a think tank conference.  We were seated on the same panel and afterwards starting chatting about the work we were each doing. Nick was working as a journalist at the time and interested in documentary films so he sent me some of his articles to read for a possible future project. About 4 months later when the producers and I were debating how to tell this story, he became a potential subject for the film. I liked that he was a journalist, had a good sense of humor and that he was skeptical.

Nick Rosen: Yeah it was funny because it was a conference panel I was totally unprepared for and I didn’t even know I was on, and I totally faked and joked my way through it, trying to make people laugh to mask my total and utter cluelessness. And then Kate fell for it! I often wonder if I had prepared for that panel, and nobody much noticed me, whether Kate would have ever introduced herself, and later pick me for the movie. Lesson for the kids: always be unprepared.

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Believe it or not,
it’s 1980s TV,
You can watch it on your PC…
Believe it or not, Hulu’s free.

And while we stroll down memory lane: Co-Stan-Za.

 In 1993 Marion Cajori had just won the prestigious Pratt-Whitney Grand Prize at the International Film Festival for Films on Art in Montreal. The filmmaker had plans for a documentary about painter Alice Neel, but it was her Chuck Close project that occupied her mind for the next decade – along with her children, and the cancer she’d been diagnosed with. In 1998, PBS broadcast her Emmy-nominated special “Chuck Close: Portrait in Progress.” Just before her untimely death in August 2006, Cajoli completed a full-length documentary about Close – one of the world’s leading contemporary painters. A culmination of her years capturing the artist, ”Chuck Close” examines the artist with a focus worthy of his own intensive work. It is a final testament to Cajoli’s passion for studying artists with an intensive gaze, for moving towards the essence of her subjects and what motivates them.

New Video Digital is launching a Twitter retweet contest to promote the documentary “2012: Science or Superstition”, now available on iTunes.

Here are the contest details to enter:

Prize: $300 iTunes gift card (open to US residents only)
Duration: Ends on Sunday, 11/22, 11:59PM EST
Entry: Simply retweet the following link and hash tag on Twitter along with a witty 2012 prediction -  http://bit.ly/2NHaur #2012BadPrediction

As we honor those who fought in wars past and those who now serve in the armed forces, we remember the awesome impact that these fine men and women in uniform have had upon the world and not solely on the battlefields. At home last week, we witnessed admirable acts of heroism confront violence at a moment’s notice, such as the assault at Fort Hood. It should become paramount to our national duty that veterans are not only be met with our gratitude, but also with solutions to the threat of homelessness and the inequality of education that have mired countless others before. This Veteran’s Day we are reminded that their service and sacrifice should be a fixture in our civic conscientiousness year round.

Titles now on iTunes: Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived // The War Tapes // Body of War // Saints and Soldiers // Uncovered: The War on Iraq // The Top Secret Trial of the Third Reich // Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories // Operation Homecoming