We Recommend: Your Friday Freebies

Each Friday, our contributors recommend a bunch of (legally) free stuff they’ve come across during the week, to help you make the most of your weekend. You’re welcome.

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Reruns: Dawson’s Creek Season 1, on Plus7

Recommended by: Eliza Cussen (‘So It Turns Out Political Candidates Are Legally Allowed To Lie To You‘, and you can hear her talking about the article on Radio Adelaide)

I’m writing this from a influenza-induced haze, where all I can process is pastel colours and Nurofen. Perfect timing to discover that you can watch all of Dawson’s Creek Season 1 on Plus7 for free. To journey back to Capeside, Massachusetts circa 1998 is a rewarding experience, and you get to watch Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams run sass-mouth rings around a permanently confused, “16” (21)-year-old James van der Beek.

A word of warning though – after watching too many episodes, you may find you want to talk about feelings. So I would suggest you have some before you sit down to watch them. This will really help foster the atmosphere of teen angst, sexual tension, and a genre of music I can best describe as “power country”.

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Longform: ‘The Innocent Man’, by Pamela Colloff

Recommended by: Caitlin Welsh (‘Grimes Is Small And Has A Vagina And Is Really Sick Of This Shit‘)

Pamela Colloff’s ‘The Innocent Man‘ is an incredibly affecting true-crime epic published in two parts by Texas Monthly, and it’s probably one of the best things you’ll read this year, if you haven’t already. Michael Morton spent two and a half decades in prison, wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder, while his son grew up not wanting to know him. It’s a desperately sad story of official incompetence and interference, and broader problems with the American justice and prison systems. The best bit? The story doesn’t end when Colloff’s stupendous longform piece does; courts are now dealing with the events that led to Christine Morton’s murder and her husband’s imprisonment. Colloff is naturally also reporting on those developments for Texas Monthly as well, and her coverage is collected here.

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Track: ‘Say What’, By So-Called Scumbags

Recommended by: David Wild (‘Have Daft Punk’s Marketing Team Taken Us All In?‘)

Having just paid a quick visit to the other side of the world, it pains me to say that while the nights are drawing in Down Under, over in Europe dance music fans are gearing up for a summer of sunsets and ‘having it’ on the Spanish isle of Ibiza. Who knows — perhaps the struggling Spanish economy may mean you can even buy a bottle of water in a club for less than ten bucks this year? This Donnell Jones-sampling track by London duo So Called Scumbags (DJs James Edwards and David Minns) is ensured some serious airtime out there, so impress your mates by surreptitiously dropping it into an iPod playlist and acting all knowing and nonchalant when it crops up on shuffle. Daft Punk is so two weeks ago.

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Writing: Essays by Rebecca Solnit

Recommended by: Sam Cooney (‘No Easy Answers: On Naming Names And Responsible Reportage‘)

While these 17 free-to-read pieces represent only a fragment of her total writings (get your hands on a copy of A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and also on Wanderlust too), it’s an excellent intro to Solnit if you don’t know of her — whereas if you have read her before then these pieces are a reminder of just how exceptional she is.

Start with ‘Men Explain Things To Me‘, ‘Revolution of the Snails: Encounters with the Zapatistas‘ and ‘The Thoreau Problem‘, and I’ll catch you wide-eyed and hunch-shouldered later, hey.

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Parody: Iron Man 3 Trailer – Thai sweded by FEDFE

Recommended by: Adam Kamien

Iron Man 3 cost somewhere in the order of $200 million to make. As superhero blockbusters go, it’s pretty good, but for $200 million it should alphabetise your DVDs. For the discerning film appreciator, who values bang for  buck, the sweded version is just the ticket — well, the trailer anyway.

Thai boy band FEDFE have produced a shot-for-shot remake of the Iron Man 3 trailer, using toy planes, cardboard costumes and firecrackers to recreate the film’s special effects. Cop that Weta!

And look out for the actor playing Pepper Potts. If Gwynny pulls out of the sequel, this understudy looks ready to go.
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Short: A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie, by IBM

Recommended by: Nathan Jolly

IBM are still apparently a company, and because Apple took over their remit of ‘make every computer that every person uses ever’, they have seemingly refocused their energies into magnifying single atoms over 100 million times, and using them to make stop motion films – such as this one, which is officially the smallest movie ever (assuming ‘Guinness’ are still the official world record people).

In terms of animation and narrative structure, this film makes Steamboat Willie look like Fantasia, but as a scientific and artistic feat, it’s mind-blowing. A little man (or woman) made up of atoms finds a single atom, bounces it a bit, chucks it against a wall, then jumps on a  trampoline made of atoms — or something. As we said, the storyline isn’t the best, but it was made by manipulating single atoms then filming them with a lens that zooms in over 100 million times -– a feature we won’t have on iPhones until at least 2015.

Oh, and while creating this film, the nano–physicists discovered atomic memory, and therefore how to store content onto microscopic devices. So there’s that, too. Gotta figure that’ll come in handy at a later date, assuming time stays linear.

Here’s a ‘how-they-did-it’ film, and a page where Rabiolab‘s Molly Webster gets science-y about it all.

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Event: Free Comic Book Day!

Recommended by: Genevieve Fricker (‘Mike Birbiglia vs Genevieve Fricker‘)

Technically not a Friday Freebie, but tomorrow (Saturday May 4), is Free Comic Book day, which is pretty much what it says it is: comic book stores around the world give out free comics to anyone and everyone. There are 52 titles released specifically for the day, including Superman, The Walking Dead, and Bongo Comics (The Simpsons), and you can find a participating store near you here.

And now, an important message from Wolverine:

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Verse: ‘Enforce Less’, by Mathas

Recommended by: Alex Sol Watts (‘We Need To Talk About Harry Potter‘)

Mathas is one of my favorite Australian MCs, with glorious flow and beats (and the least pretentious, most best stage decorations I’ve ever seen). Gearing up to release his album, Armwrestling Atlas, he’s dropping a series of live verses – the first of which came out last night.

Even if you’re not a huge fan of Aussie hip hop (read: especially if you’re not), you should check this out.

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Film: Buster Keaton’s The General

Recommended by: Stephanie Van Schilt

I could spend hours watching Buster Keaton. And sometimes I do. I absolutely I adore him, and now you can too — because his classic, The General, is available online in full thanks to archive.org.

His deadpan face warms my cold dead heart, and the scale of his slapstick stunts are mind-boggling. It may not be the best quality version of The General out there, but still provides the best quality laughs.

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Supercut: Six Minutes Of Michael Jackson Laughing

Recommended by: Mel Campbell (‘In Game Of Thrones, You Can’t Always Get What You Want‘)

I’ve done a lot of thinking about Michael Jackson’s trademark non-verbal vocalisations, but somehow, his girlish laughter didn’t come into consideration. Well, are you ready for six minutes of Jackson cracking up? Oh, you ARE?

Watching this compilation is both unnerving and cute. You realise how much of a kid Jackson could be, whether he’s having his foot tickled, pie-fighting with the Culkin brothers, or goofing off with Chris Tucker on the set of ‘You Rock My World’. Ow! Hee-hee!
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