POP CULTURE.

• Position: Web sites

movies

www.dfilm.com/ index_moviemaker.html

Movie Maker lets you choose your characters and their setting, write some dialogue, pick a musical score, and title your masterpiece. Within minutes, you'll have an animated movie scene that you can e-mail to your friends (or to your nearest film production company).

www.imdb.com

For everyone who's ever watched a movie and wondered, "What else was that guy in?" IMDB is here to help. Search by movie or TV show title and find a list of the cast and crew, with links to their other films. IMDB also answers questions about bios, release dates, movie reviews, on-screen goofs, and everything else that could keep you up at night.

www.skinema.com

Not your usual movie fan site (nor X-rated as the URL implies), Dermatology in the Cinema is dedicated to various skin conditions featured in films, from tattoos to birth marks. There's even a page on acne as a "manifestation of evil," including The Mummy's mummy.

www.moviecritic.com

This site deserves a big thumbs up as one of the few film recommenders that really works. Movie Critic will take your ratings of movies you've seen and tell you what else you'd like (or hate). Get a friend to rate movies, too, and the site will recommend films for the two of you to view.

music

www.mtv.com/mtv/bands_az/

MTV.com has multimedia collections of video, audio, and interview clips on hundreds of artists, listed here alphabetically. You'll also find band-related games, sweepstakes, and yes, photo flipbooks.

www.launch.com/musicvideos

Here's a treat that's rare for most music sites: a wide selection of full-length streaming videos, with more than 7,000 to choose from.

www.pickthehits.com

Rate the songs on Pick the Hits, and your comments will be sent to record labels, producers, management companies, and the bands themselves. Your vote may make the difference in whether artists get signed and in which singles get played on the radio.

www.myplay.com

With the golden age of Napster over, here's one music-sharing alternative. Create a "locker" to listen to your MP3s, and other people's, anywhere you can get online. (For plenty more Napsteresque sites, visit zeropaid.com.)

www.tonos.com

Think it's time for your band to release an album? It's a hard thing to do without access to a full studio. Now you can upload all of your song tracks--vocals, guitar, drums--then mix them together (almost) like the pros do.

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