Tired of clicking around YouTube and iTunes for online videos of substance? Search no more! The Observer has your weekly handy guide to what’s worth watching on the Web.
Vintage Mischa on Hulu — Mischa Barton is all grown up now (you know, for a 23 year old) and returning to The Beautiful Life of prime-time television. But most of us will always remember her as wide-eyed, 17-year-old Marissa Cooper on Josh Schwartz’s The O.C. Hulu has the first season. Go ahead, close the office door and sing along to the theme song. We won’t tell.
HBO Hung guy’s The Riches on Hulu — Dmitry Lipkin, one half of the husband-and-wife writing team who created HBO’s comedy Hung, previously made this hour-long drama for FX about Irish con artists who steal the identities of a wealthy, Baton Rouge family to stay under cover. Though he seemed to have a communication failure with FX executives while he made the show, according to his chat with The Observer, The Riches had a small cult following thanks to its Sopranos-like appeal, along with excellent casting (Eddie Izzard!) and thrilling scripts. Enjoy.
Swayze’s Steel Dawn on YouTube — All the Patrick Swayze TV tributes will be showing clips of Dirty Dancing, but how about revisiting a less well-known Swayze classic? Here’s 1987’s Steel Dawn, starring the actor as a warrior in a post-apocalyptic world who fights for a group of settlers in the desert who are being harassed by a gang for their
“The Lost Tribes of New York City” on Vimeo — “Urban anthropologists” Andy and Carolyn London chat with some of the city’s “more overlooked” characters—a woman from the Bronx, foreigners, two drunks at Penn Station, etc.—in this three-minute documentary. The Londons matched their personalities to city objects, like newspaper boxes, telephone poles and fire hydrants, and brought them to life to tell their stories. This sweet, Creature Comforts–with–an–urban–twist documentary is up for PBS’ REEL 13 video short contest, and could be aired live on Channel 13 this Saturday if it gets enough votes. It’s got ours.
Old Jews tell more jokes — Old Jews Telling Jokes, the first season, was just released on DVD. But, as The Observer told you in February, you can watch free videos of, well, old Jews telling jokes every Tuesday and Thursday on the official Web site. Use your headphones, though. Some of these are not very safe for work, although those are the best ones. Here’s a dirty knee slapper from Daniel Okrent, who played A. J. Pickman in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown.
