MOVIES

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Movies can take several hours (or even days) to download, even over a fast broadband Internet connection. So while full-length movies aren’t traded as easily over file sharing networks, many people are still willing to invest the time to download massive video files legally or illegally. Not surprisingly, movie studios hope to avoid the fate of the music industry by jumping into legal movie downloads before it’s too late.

If you don’t care for the latest Hollywood blockbusters that emphasize special effects over substance, then you might like the movie selection offered at MovieFlix (http://www.movieflix.com). MovieFlix provides old movies, commercials, and television shows from the 1950s to the present, all viewable with the RealPlayer or Windows Media Player program.

Some of the curious offerings available on MovieFlix include the science fiction movie Rocketship X-M, a 1954 commercial starring Betty Crocker, Betty Boop cartoons from 1948, and the 1997 documentary About Tofu. If you’re looking for something obscure that you will probably never find in your local video store, join MovieFlix and watch movies for free or for a small charge.

For more hilariously obscure movies that you can watch for free, visit the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), where you can watch government films such as the Department of Defense’s classic Duck and Cover film that teaches children how to survive a nuclear war by covering their heads with newspapers. Another, In Our Hands, Part 3, dramatizes how a communist-style “master plan” could affect your property and freedom. All About Fallout explains how to recognize and protect yourself against fallout, including life-saving tips like taking a shower after an all-out nuclear war has annihilated your city.

If you think that bizarre and campy movies only belong to the past, then join Kanakaris (http://www.kanakaris.com, shown in Figure 16-2), which offers such modern-day productions as Cyber Sea Kittens, Bikini Beach Bust, and City of the Walking Dead. With titles like these, you can be sure to find high-quality entertainment, and you can wonder at the poor saps who actually had to audition for roles in dead-end films like these.

Figure 16-2: Many legal movie downloading services offer both popular and obscure movies that you may never find at your local video store.

To find more contemporary movies that have just been released to video, visit Flixs.net (http://www.flixs.net) or Download Free Films (http://www.downloadfreefilms.com). Unlike low-quality movies available on underground file sharing networks, these services offer DVD-quality files. If you join one of these services, you may find you no longer need to rent movies from your local video store anymore (which means yet another business is destined to fade into obscurity thanks to file sharing technology).

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