Thanks to Harry Knowles at "Aint It Cool News" for originally pointing this out...

International readers, are you familiar yet with the out-of-control fiasco here in the US this summer known as "On The Lot" (OTL)? It's a new reality show about aspiring film directors from the Fox television network, a network which is not exactly running out of polishing cream for all those Peabody awards they own, if you get my drift. This was supposed to be different, though, because one of the producers happened to be Steven Spielberg; and Spielberg not only has a reputation for sincerely wanting to help out small smart basement filmmakers whenever possible, he even made a video for the OTL website assuring everyone who entered that this wasn't going to be the typical Fox reality meatsack screamfest.

Ah, but then...then it turned out to be exactly that, unfortunately, which not only made Spielberg look like a fool (and consequently has had him trying to disassociate himself from the show in public as much as possible these days), but also made the ratings sink down into basement levels; this was a show based on an intelligent premise, after all (underground filmmaking, that is), and therefore needs at least a semi-intelligent execution in order to be popular, unlike the typical summer reality-show fare (i.e. national bingo contests and adults winning money if they turn out to be stupider than 10-year-old children; no, international readers, sadly enough, I'm not making those shows up).

But then even more damning, all kinds of accusations started appearing online regarding show-rigging with OTL -- how it turns out that most of the finalists had been picked before the contest was actually over, how almost half of the finalists from this supposed "worldwide search" turned out to actually live in Los Angeles already, how Fox has been doing things like editing its own Wikipedia entry and banning the IP addresses of anyone critical of the show from its official website. And even more damning than all this, it turns out that the latest two rounds of short films shown on OTL (yes, the show is still running, believe it or not) were actually made by the contestants long before the show started, not within the last couple of weeks as claimed on the show itself. (See that Aint It Cool article for more on all these accusations.)

So, sick of all the lies and manipulation, a huge chunk of former OTL contestants and fans decided to completely break off from the show and start their own community; the result is known as KarmaCritic, and works much like many of those great user-submitted artistic video sites out there (such as Atom, GoFish, VEOH...oh, there's just dozens of them out there these days). And even better, they've even now decided to hold a contest themselves, with among their judges being producer Tova Laiter and agent Jon Brown. The prize? You become friends with Tova Laiter and Jon Brown!

It's refreshing to see KarmaCritic offer a prize like this, after watching OTL promise just about everything to their finalists besides an actual relationship with a Hollywood insider, which as we all know is a much more important thing for an aspiring filmmaker than cash or corporate-sponsored prizes. And it's refreshing as well to see KarmaCritic take a much more community-focused attitude towards its site and projects, and put so much more of an emphasis on the quality of the actual films, instead of an obsession with nutjobs and the easily excitable like what OTL has turned out to be (and which of course is what made so many of us so profoundly disappointed with last year's "American Inventor" too). I encourage you to check it all out yourself when you get a chance; although don't forget that all manner of film can be found there, including ones undoubtedly unsafe for work environments.