The annual White House Correspondents Dinner saw not one, but two mock videos, including a spoof of the popular Netflix online series, “House of Cards,” starring Kevin Spacey.

Or, in this case, “House of Nerds,” with cameos by Sen. John McCain, top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Lincoln” director Steven Spielberg appeared in the other, with a new presidential biopic.

Enjoy:

It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that the HBO series “Game of Thrones” is a big favorite among the geek set — including Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — what with its dungeons-and-dragons tone and fur-and-leather outfits.

Which is why Time Warner’s premium cable network decided to do one of its three red-carpet premieres for the third season of the hit fantasy show with a splashy event on Wednesday in San Francisco that will be teeming with digerati.

“We all thought it would be fun for the creators and the cast to come here and feel the enormous enthusiasm this community and our partners have for ‘Thrones,’” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler.

Eight cast members of “Thrones” will be attending, as will Plepler, HBO COO Eric Kessler, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and … drumroll … author George R.R. Martin.

The show is an adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” Martin’s series of popular fantasy novels, the first of which is titled “A Game of Thrones.”

No surprise — there is much swordplay in the epic. And that’s where AllThingsD comes in, since Walt Mossberg and I will be doing an onstage Q&A with Martin, Benioff and Weiss right after the first show of the new season is aired.

It’s on, or, as Martin wrote: “When you play the game of thrones, it’s either you win or you die.” Or enjoy a lovely party after.

We’ll have video of the interviews later, but here are two trailers for the third season, which begins airing March 31:

Without giving away the tragic end to the third season finale of popular PBS Masterpiece Classics television series “Downton Abbey,” it might be a good idea to take a big dose of Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess to feel better.

Here’s a compilation of some of her most withering asides from the first season — take 10 and see me in the morning — and also an interview of Smith that aired last night on “60 Minutes”:

That said, being in your twenties in Brooklyn as a hipster seems even scarier.

After it set a single-day ticket sales record on Christmas Day, Fandango said that 2012 was the best performing year in its 12-year history for ticket sales, as well as for traffic and app download results.

A press release by the Comcast-owned online movie ticketing and information site said sales were up 57 percent in the year, while monthly visitors rose 34 percent to about 41 million in peak months, and there were 31 million app downloads.

Fandango, which is the online movie ticketing service for Yahoo Movies, AOL Moviefone and MSN Movies, also said that mobile sales rose 171 percent in the year, making up 30 percent of overall ticket sales.

For 2013, the company said it would increase both its reserved-seating options and paperless mobile ticketing, as well as launching two more original video series.

Here’s a Kickstarter project that you don’t see that often — an online video project based on Awesome Asian Bad Guys.

“When we were growing up in the ’80s and ’90’s, we’d always see hard-hitting Asian bad guys in flicks like ‘Die Hard,’ ‘Bloodsport,’ and ‘Karate Kid 2.’ These badasses were often cooler than the heroes they fought, but they’d usually have a two-minute lifespan before they were mortally wounded or beaten to a pulp. It really sucked that you barely saw them on screen and rarely got to know them. That got us thinking,” the creators — who have a YouTube channel called the National Film Society — explain. “How cool would it be to expand upon this largely ignored slice of pop culture history by following several Asian bad guys on their own action-packed adventures?”

The five-episode action comedy Web series will apparently be a “cross between ‘The Expendables’ and ‘Dumb & Dumber.’”

Yay. The movie project is about $20,000 short of budget, with three days to go.

Here’s the video:

According to sources close to the situation, News Corp.’s Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller will soon be leaving the media giant.

It seems to be a cordial, although perhaps inevitable, parting — sources said Miller will remain an adviser to chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, as well as COO Chase Carey and deputy COO James Murdoch, for a year after his departure in late September.

Update: News Corp. confirmed the departure in a press release, which is embedded below.

His leaving brings into focus the fate of News Corp.’s overall digital strategy in an upcoming new structure. Miller was hired in 2009 to turbocharge the company’s long-troubled digital assets.

But I had noted in an article in July that the well-known Internet exec was not likely to continue at News Corp. in the wake of a complex transaction that will ultimately break the company apart into two separate entities — an entertainment company and a publishing one.

That’s a very different situation from when Miller was hired by the media giant to lead its tech and online initiatives and make digital a priority across its many divisions.

Not for lack of trying or access to powerful News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch — it has been a mixed bag for Miller in his tenure.

That’s due in no small part to a problem faced by many execs like Miller: The difficulty of successfully pushing digital initiatives inside a large traditional media organization.

His job has encompassed everything from a failed effort to revive its once mighty Myspace service to selling it and other properties off to working to improve its Hulu partnership, where he serves on the board.

It is not clear who will replace Miller as one of the News Corp. directors at the complexly-owned premium video service, which had been for sale and then not recently.

One of the brighter Miller accomplishments for News Corp. has been forging decidedly better relationships with key Internet companies, both large and small, as well as with venture investors in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

That was most pronounced and visible between Apple and News Corp., which struck a number of deals to work together, some of which worked and some that had much less success.

Miller has also been active in China, working on several digital investment opportunities for News Corp. there. That included a recent $70 million investment in Bona Film Group.

He was key to a recent $45 million investment by the company and others in the company that sells the Roku video streaming device.

He also worked on various New Corp. efforts on creating channels on Google’s YouTube, including WIGS, a drama series. The jury is still out on these kinds of creative endeavors, of course, especially to a company with much more lucrative traditional film and television assets.

There was a possibility that, in his leaving, Miller might form a separate investment fund to focus on digital publishing and media, funded by News Corp. or even by the Murdoch family, who control the company.

But that has appeared not to have worked out, said sources.

Before he came to News Corp., Miller ran an investment fund with former Yahoo exec Ross Levinsohn called Fuse Capital. He also was chairman and CEO of AOL under its Time Warner ownership and was a top exec at IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Miller has remained an active angel investor, funding a range of start-ups such as Maker Studios, Voxer, Science, Solavei, Personal.com, as well many as others.

He is also chairman of OpenX and serves on the boards of Shutterstock and TripAdvisor.

Clearly, this is a world Miller will return to easily and it’s likely he’ll be starting something sooner than later. (Maybe bringing the band back together with Levinsohn?)

JonathanMillerAug23.2012

(Full disclosure: This Web site is owned by Dow Jones, which is owned — in turn — by News Corp.)

In early May, my longtime All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg and I traveled to New York University to be the first pair of victims — oops, honored interviewees — for Aaron Cohen’s new “Inside the Internet Garage” series.

During the session, we talked about our past, present and future — including how we started the feisty little nation-state of AllThingsD (on a wing and a prayer, mostly).

Our interview is the first of a series that explores the history of the Internet with the people who helped build it, write it and conceive of it.

It’s a long video, so please feel free to skip through it as you like (and yes, I do have a p-to-p ratio chart):

Here’s a new trailer for HBO’s upcoming series “The Newsroom,” by famed Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The series — by the man behind the hit television show “The West Wing” and the Facebook movie “The Social Network” — is set at a cable news channel under siege in the new-media age.

In other words, lots of hand-wringing over blogs and tweeting, along with the drama.

It looks tasty, and Walt Mossberg and I will be asking Sorkin about it at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference at the end of this month, where he will be appearing as a speaker.

Enjoy (I also included another trailer, that starts off the “Newsroom” series):

The kings are at it again in the second season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — the hit cable show based on the famous series of books by George R.R. Martin.

Also, one queen, who has herself some dragons.

Someone’s definitely going to lose an eye. Also a limb, a head, a heart and, well, you get the idea of this fantastically gory television series.

Enjoy:

Here’s the trailer for Hulu’s latest original content offering about a very unusual matchmaker.

That’s irksome “Paul, the Male Matchmaker,” a 10-episode spoof series from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Studio 2.0, which will debut on the premium video service on Feb. 13.

Get it? The day before Valentine’s Day.

It’s got the same tone as Lisa Kudrow’s successful (and now on cable television’s Showtime) “Web Therapy,” with lots of well-known guest stars.

I kind of like it from the teaser here, but we’ll see:

We are thrilled to welcome another strong reporter to the AllThingsD team: Lauren Goode, who will cover consumer tech products and issues. She’ll be based in New York.

Lauren comes to us from the digital arm of our sister news organization, The Wall Street Journal, where she was a video producer and reporter, from 2008 to 2011. She helped launch the Journal’s live-streaming video programming and produced and co-hosted the daily “Digits” technology show, which regularly features our ATD staff along with Journal reporters and editors. (We hope to see her there from time to time as a guest herself now.) She was also a contributing writer to the Digits blog on WSJ.com, and wrote posts on consumer technology products.

Prior to joining the Journal, Lauren worked in cable television from 2003 to 2008, producing and writing shows for A&E Television Networks’ award-winning “Biography” series, after having started her career as a production assistant at ESPN in New York.

The addition of Lauren to AllThingsD is just the latest move in an expansion that has seen our staff more than double in the past year, including adding new reporters, editors and developers. This has allowed us to broaden and deepen our coverage, to break more news and also to begin doing different types of stories than many other blogs offer, such as our recent series on Facebook’s smartphone effort.

We have more new coverage and staff expansions planned, so stay tuned. And, as always, thanks for your readership, which has been increasing strongly quarter after quarter. We aim to keep earning your loyalty and trust.

Going forward, Lauren can be reached at lauren@allthingsd.com, and you can read more about her bio and ethics statement here.

– Walt & Kara

HBO has put out a new trailer for the second season of the cable series, “Game of Thrones,” which is based on the fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin that are a geek favorite.

It’s clearly packed full of the medieval conniving we all know and love.

Enjoy:

The Swisher boys and I are giant fans of “Annoying Orange,” the YouTube video sensation that stars a very irksome citrus fruit (not to be confused with a bitter, teensy one).

That’s why I was thrilled that the meme finally penned a long-expected deal with the Cartoon Network to produce a regular animated 30-minute cable television series for 2012.

Apparently, the toothy Orange and his long-suffering fruit and vegetable friends will travel through time in a “magical fruit car” and have adventures.

I am in — and, presumably, Apple, even after the knife incident.

You can see that below, along with my favorite Webisode, “Sandy Claus”:

Of all the fantastic characters on the brilliant HBO comedy series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the one I can never get enough of is JB Smoove, the innovative comic who plays Larry David’s best sidekick, Leon Black.

Here is an insidery, slightly tasteless, but decidedly funny spoof video of Smoove taking over Hollywood’s William Morris Endeavor talent agency on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday.

In it, Smoove decides to “run sh*t!“

And so he does:

I am not one for celebrity roasts, but I am looking forward to this Comedy Central skewering of Charlie Sheen.

Since his character was killed off on the hit television series “Two and a Half Men,” Sheen has been making himself roastworthy.

Enjoy this clip of the Sept. 19 show, featuring “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane:

It seems the computer-generated imagery in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” convinced critics and audiences that the well-worn movie series prequel is a winner.

It grabbed $54 million at the box office over its opening weekend.

Its producer, Peter Chernin, told me that a lot more of the film than it seems — including the stunning opening scenes in the wild that look like a real-life nature special — were mostly CGI, used to prep audiences for extended scenes of the apes morphing into believable rebels.

Here is the last trailer for the movie:

In honor of Comic-Con International, the huge and nerd-tastic comic book convention, opening tonight, here’s the new teaser trailer for the third of Hollywood director Chris Nolan’s elegant Batman movie series, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The movie debuts next year and will be the final installment for this franchise. The previous film starred the late Heath Ledger as the Joker.

And, this latest effort already looks creepier and darker than ever, featuring a leather-clad Catwoman (played by Anne Hathaway) and a whole lot of special effects:

This is a very funny CollegeHumor video series, called
“Always Open With Dave Koechner,” a great if unsung comic. It is set at a Denny’s restaurant. Really.

This perfectly awkward episode features another comedy gem, Amy Poehler.

Maybe it is just me, but a lot of these small Web-only videos are really starting to get interesting.

This last installment in the excellent “Harry Potter” movie series looks like it is going to be the best–at least from the special effects bursting out of this new trailer.

It seems that no innovative digital wizardry was left on the drawing board, from giant flame monsters to sparkly explosions to a lovely delicate floating flower.

Ah, magic.

Enjoy:

And I thought I was the only one who was incredibly irritated by the latest YouTube sensation, Rebecca Black, and her profoundly grating “Friday” music video.

Not so!

So are a bunch of kids interviewed by the Fine Brothers for their “Kids React to Viral Videos” series.

The young folks pretty much say it all:

BoomTown is a major fan of the entire “Planet of the Apes” Hollywood movie franchise and will not apologize for one single second about this freakish apocalyptic series.

Except the bad one done most recently by director Tim Burton, which was really bad, but not in a good way.

In any case, this one, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”–starring the ubiquitous James Franco and one scary-looking dude playing an ape–looks dang good.

It comes out in August:

The hit YouTube video series “The Annoying Orange” is apparently going to become an animated television series.

According to a report in Deadline Hollywood:

“Management/production company The Collective has teamed with Dane Boedigheimer, creator of the popular YouTube series The Annoying Orange, to produce The Annoying Orange animated TV comedy series.”

The Orange in question essentially heckles other fruits and veggies, using a freaky human mouth. After only a half-dozen episodes, the series has garnered tens of millions of views each.

Here’s two of them, which are pretty funny:

The deal is worth between $75 million and $100 million, people close to the situation said. That means Netflix is paying close to $1 million per episode of the series, which “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner said last week would run seven seasons. Each season has 13 episodes, which Lions Gate licenses to cable network AMC.

The new agreement marks the latest deal that Netflix has struck with a film and television studio. The company has recently inked a slew of deals to add new content to its streaming site, including one with Miramax, which includes “Pulp Fiction” and other iconic independent movies.

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This new television series from TNT about aliens invading Earth, titled “Falling Skies,” is exec-produced by Steven Spielberg. It premieres in June.

As you might recall, the Hollywood legend knows a thing or two about space creatures, including making the hit movies “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

But these new aliens, as it turns out, aren’t quite so benevolent or cuddly: