What in the world could be better than classic free movies?

I suppose I'll be a Luddite for the rest of my life, because I just assumed there were copyright laws and such that would keep certain things off of YouTube. Blissfully, I'm once again wrong.

While for sheer fun, there really is nothing better than the Muppets channel, for movie lovers, there's at least one that's better: crazeclassics.

I stumbled across it after one of the two movies below was in a recent edition of the Ebert Club newsletter (a must-read for me), and had to check out the source. It turns out that whoever is putting this channel together has already put up 116 movies, all of which can be considered classics of some degree.

There's "M," "The Man With the Golden Arm" and many more, so it's well worth subscribing to the channel you can find here, and for your viewing pleasure (and mine, during my next several lunch breaks), I've included today the two best he had there.

I'm rather ashamed to say that until it was playing last year at the Film Forum in NYC, I had never seen Carol Reed's great "The Third Man," but now that I have, I can make this completely ridiculous statement: It's better than "Casablanca." Yes, really. With a screenplay from novelist Graham Greene, the tale of what unfolds when American pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) turns up in post-World War II Vienna in search of his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) is film noir at its very best. Enjoy.



Now, I don't believe, as some Southerners actually do, that you can learn everything you need to know about life from "To Kill a Mockingbird," but that doesn't stop it from being just one damn fine film. And in fact, when pressed to name one favorite movie, I often fluctuate back and forth between this and Fernando Meirelles' "City of God." Enjoy the movie in its entirety, and stick around at the end for something completely wild.



I have to take the word of whoever posted it that this is indeed Guillermo del Toro getting all wolfy in a Mexican Alka Seltzer, and you can decide for yourself. If so, it's very funny, and really needs no more words from me, so if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to the job that still somehow pays my bills. Peace out.

If you have Netflix, Party Down!

You know, I really don't take proper care of my Netflix queue.

I visited it the other day to add the first season of "Burn Notice" and found it to be empty except for three movies and TV stuff in the "saved" category that have yet to come out: "Homicide: The Movie," "Margaret's Museum" and "Party Down: Season One."

Now, it looks like the first two will never come out, so I just kinda keep them there to keep hope alive. It was with the third, however, that I found a pleasant surprise.

I know you can watch movies instantly at Netflix, but have only done that so far with "Superbad" (still, except for maybe "O Brother Where Art Thou," the best way to kill a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon, and "To Kill a Mockingbird," just because.) When I visited the queue the other day to replenish it (any suggestions are welcome), I found you can also watch the entire first season of the extremely funny show "Party Down," even though the show doesn't come out on DVD for who knows how long (and, I checked, you can't do that at either the Starz site or Hulu.) Amazingly, however, you can apparently watch the great Angola Prison documentary "The Farm" at Hulu if you so choose.

But back to the matter at hand. I know I'll always sound like a rube until I die, and believe me, by now I'm just fine with that, but the Internets just continue to amaze me, and this is no exception.

"Party Down," given its pedigree ("Veronica Mars" creator Rob Thomas and veryfunnyguy Paul Rudd are among its creators) and cast (Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Lizzy Caplan, Ryan Hansen, the great Martin Starr and Jane Lynch, who I think has departed for "Glee," are all very funny in it), this show should be extremely funny, and it doesn't disappoint. But the show about a catering company full of former or extremely underemployed actors features a dark, very bitter kind of funny, so be warned.

The funniest thing to me in the first eight episodes (which is how far I've made it, out of 10) was Marino's character, the caterer who just wants to open a Soup R Crackers franchise, discussing with rapper Dro Grizzle (guest star Kevin Hart, remember him from "Undeclared"?) whether or not black people eat soup. You'll have to believe me that it's a whole lot funnier on screen than on paper, and the first season is riddled with very funny celebrity cameos, including in one of the episodes I haven't seen yet, a visit from "Veronica Mars" herself, Kristen Bell.

And OK, that's a long enough plug for a lazy Sunday morning. Peace out.