Substitute The Internet For Your TV
xik...@yahoo.com.tw
softly tiptoeing out to the family room to watch early morning
cartoons when I was in elementary school. Then in high school I became
more interested in the action-oriented TV shows in the evening. A
little while later, I found that I just didn't have the time to
dedicate an hour or so a day to sitting and watching mindless
entertainment at a given time slot, and so I no longer watched TV at
all. Gone are my days of watching those humorous cartoons and
ridiculous heroes every week.
I recently discovered the online film scene, though, and it's
fantastic. Short films, up to about 20mins in length, just posted
online for all to download. Many of them are better than the
professionally produced, high-budget TV shows that stream so liberally
to your TV box. Every one is a labor of love, so even when the
production values aren't high you know that someone has poured
themselves into the product, which brings satisfaction beyond that of
watching some stale TV show now into it's 19th series and just
churning out the money makers.
Cartoons were my first port of call. It's been a long time since I've
been awake and free early enough in the morning to watch some animated
entertainment (and besides that, the cartoons on TV now are largely
trash). A friend introduced me to my first online cartoon, the
enormously popular and hilarious Homestar Runner (http://
www.homestarrunner.com). This site is fantastic. There are longish
cartoons and games, with new ones being added every now and then, but
the main reason to visit and continue to return is a lovably vicious
character named Strong Bad. The creators of the web site answer
roughly one email a week using this character that basically insults
people in the most hilarious ways possible. It's all quite family-
friendly and is more than worth a bookmark.
More animated wonders and filmed entertainment can be found at Atom
Films (http://www.atomfilms.com), which has become a free service
recently. Also worth a look is Ifilm (http://www.ifilm.com) that
offers the lower-bandwidth streams of films for
http://www.dontplayplay.com/html/Entertainment/20060925/13984.html
Anthony Matonak
...
> I recently discovered the online film scene, though, and it's
> fantastic.
All spam aside, there is also the Internet Archive, which includes
various movies, cartoons and videos as well music, the Web Wayback
Machine, old software and books.
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Anthony