You've just laid out the scratch for a new 42" HDTV, hooked up surround sound speakers, and you're ready to tuck into a bowl of popcorn. Now all you need are some movies. Well, you've come to the right place.

Here are five great Web sites where you can legally download free movies and burn them to a DVD to watch with your sweetie, family, and friends this weekend.

The Internet Archive - This is the motherlode for all kinds of free media (it's even got video games). The Archive has loads of old movies, foreign films, documentaries, and more. There's even a couple of movies about ice cream (hey, we just blog about this stuff -- we can't explain it either).

Emol - If comedy and cartoons are what you're after, Emol.org is the place to go. Here's where you'll find Charlie Chaplin, The Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, and Popeye.

AngryAlien - Just because none of these sites are likely to have the latest box office blockbuster available, that doesn't mean you can't still watch Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, or Star Wars. In less than 30 seconds. Acted out by bunnies.

PublicDomainTorrents - Head here for B-movies "Like Attack of the Giant Leeches", "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" (wonder what that love child looks like?), and "Track of the Moon Beast". On the other hand, you'll also find "Night of the Living Dead" on this site -- so it's not all bad.

AtomFilms - There are some very creative films on this site made up of mostly user-created content. AtomFilms is a service of MTV Networks that serves up content to mobile phones and Web sites, but since they're partnered with Comedy Central and Spike TV there are a few gems on here if you poke around a bit.

AOL is offering 30 or so movie titles for free download today only (one per email address). You can get some of your favorites including:

• Nacho Libre
• The Muppets Take Manhattan
• Mission Impossible 3
• Spongebob Squarepants Movie
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
• My Dog Skip
• Failure to Launch
• Jack Frost
• Zoolander
• Patriot Games
• National Lampoon's Christmas
• School of Rock
• Last Holiday
• The Perfect Storm
• Jackass: The Movie
• Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights
• Rugrats Go Wild
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Can't Hardly Wait
• Maid in Manhattan
• Star Trek 1
• Men in Black
• All I Want For Christmas
• The Prince and Me
• Only Natural
• Analyse This
• D.E.B.S.
• Easy Rider
• Flatliners
• White Christmas
• The Golden Child

You won't be charged at checkout, but a credit card is required to verify your U.S. address and you must have a screenname to download a movie. As you might imagine there is a backlog of downloads going on right now, but AOL is saying that everyone will be able to receive their full download in spite of the server load. Enjoy a free movie download from AOL. Here is the official T&C from the download page at AOL Video:

DISCLAIMER: AOL is the parent company of Weblogs, inc. Download Squad is a member of the Weblogs, inc. network.

Got your soda? Maybe some popcorn? Enjoyed the intermission, did you? I can tell, so welcome to the second half of our fine how-to on making your own semi-professional videos. If you missed the first part of this two-parter, you can find it here.

Task Four: Editing and effects
To edit my movie I used Windows XP's built-in Windows Movie Maker (you may need to download the newer version of it included with Windows XP SP2). Sure it has its glitches and problems, but it is A) free, B) available, and C) quick and dirty. If you don't have the latest version, it can be downloaded from Microsoft's website. The current version is 2.1. The interface is fairly simple and intuitive. You import or capture video from your hard drive or video camera, and edit away. Windows Movie Maker will walk you through adding effects, time lines, adding custom audio, transitions, credits, titles, annotations, etc. Since the specifics of using Windows Movie Maker are a bit nitty-gritty to detail in this post, here are some great tips and tricks to help you hot-rod the best performance out of WMM you can get.

• Windows Movie Maker has great clip splitting and joining tools.
• Be sure to have nothing else open when editing video on your PC. Required much memory is, young Skywalker. Sure, you want to have this article open to follow along, so that is okay, but you get the idea.
  
• Windows Movie Maker has an untimely fetish for crashing and making you want to chuck it, so save early, save often, and if it suddenly tanks, don't panic, if you save frequently, you won't have too much trouble. I had this problem with WMM, but I was only running 512MB of RAM at the time, so that could have been the issue. I have now upgraded, shame on me.
  
• When adding titles and other annotations, sometimes the title is too high on the screen, or won't behave and move down where you want it. To fix this little problem, simply hit enter, then space to create an invisible placeholder for the title to shift down. If WMM thinks you have something on each line, though a space doesn't display anything, it will move the text down to accommodate you. Take that you dopey title.
  
• The small preview window does help a lot, but sometimes gives a bad impression that your video isn't looking good, i.e. it will cut out and go black here and there for some reason during playback, but generally this is a glitch in the playback, not actual footage in your project, so don't mind it too much. Just be sure you watch your video before importing it to be sure you have good tape.
  
• As with many other video and audio programs, you can save WMM video project files in mid-edit, so make use of that, however, once you have imported video, you shouldn't move the original clip from its location since WMM will look for it and mess up your editing when it doesn't find that clip in the same spot on its next program startup. File location very important to WhaMMy here.
  
• Despite all the seemingly bad and unusable things I have mentioned about WMM, it really is a decent piece of software as far as features and capabilities go. A slightly better piece of hardware on my part, and better coding on Microsoft's part, and we could have a winner.

Because digital media downloads are skyrocketing, old-skool Blockbuster is merging with music store "Sounds," at least in New Zealand to provide more media than just videos. Is this just the next logical step, or is it because the Internet has opened up a big can of digital whoop-ass on Blockbuster? Blockbuster has been struggling for a while since the likes of Netflix (to which I subscribe) have come to the playground. Blockbuster, Hollywood, and other video stores are clinging to a dying business model in my not-so-humble opinion. Who wants to go get their entertainment anymore? What fun is that? At least Blockbuster realizes that online is the way to go in some way, which is why they have their own Netflix-like online store and why they are merging with Sounds (in New Zealand) to boost sales. How far is far enough to snag the massive amount of business to be had in the online media market? We are only scratching the surface, boys (and girls). Blockbuster plans on launching kiosks to sell DVDs, CDs, ringtones, and games next month in New Zealand. Will this help? If no one is visiting your stores, why would you put in more hardware to sell things to people who will rent online anyway? I predict that unless Blockbuster stops holding on to old ideas and embraces the digital revolution (the Internet, not kiosks in store), it will be a downhill slide to obscurity for them.

Just like iTunes did for file sharing music, Warner Bros. is going to start selling movies and TV online. While this is clearly an effort to legitimize the whole download yer entertainment thing, what's interesting is the use of BitTorrent as the tech behind the downloads. I don't think it's unusual though, as BitTorrent's technological solution to moving packets around is quite clever. It's a perfect tech for moving large files at high speeds, as would be needed. Besides, the prevailing theory has been if you offer a way for people to use BitTorrent (or any download system) legally, they'd use it. I'll admit I just don't bother looking for stuff on torrent sites just for the extra hassle it entails. Now what was that about the next version of OS X using BitTorrent? Hm...

[Via TechMeme]

Another collaborative ratings site, Filmcrowd (beta), is born. Filmcrowd is, as you might guess from the name, focused on movies. Gibbity, which you can't guess from the title, is more of a games site, but uses the same social aspect. The two sites are from the same folks, in fact. Tags and collaboration are the key here. For instance, you can create a focus group of sorts, with users who find certain movies in common as their likes or dislikes. Keep tabs on the group, and what they're reviewing, and get suggestions. Filmcrowd is young, so there aren't as many reviews as say, Amazon (that's a joke really, Amazon has a wee bit of a head start). My favorite tag has to be crap, which contains such winners as Alone in the Dark and The Postman.