I want to be able to string .avi movies together from my digital camera, cut them, reverse them, some basic effects, add music, and overall I want it to be easy and work. And preferably it should be in the debian repos because I'm using Linux Mint. What do you suggest?

It's time for you to embark on an important journey, xvedejas. One that will tell you which of the following is right for you: http://www.kinodv.org/ http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3 http://kdenlive.org/ http://lives.sourceforge.net/ Kino is in the Debian repository. But the others should have binaries for Debian that you can use. Cheers!