My Halloween Playlist

On a recent episode of The Weekly Geek a listener asked about suggestions for a Halloween playlist. While I assume the questioner was asking about one for a party I decided to do a rundown of my own Halloween playlist. Keep in mind that this list was not made with a party in mind, but instead with the idea of it being played in the background on Halloween night while dealing with the trick or treaters in my front yard grave yard, and therefore cannot have cursing in it. If you have any suggested songs for me to add to this list, please let me know.

So without further ado, here is Void Munashii's Halloween playlist presented in more or less alphabetical order:

Theme from “The Addams Family”
“Ain't No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant
Theme from “Angel”
Theme from “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”
Theme from “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”
Opening theme from the “Army of Darkness” soundtrack
“Army of Darkness” techno remix
Theme from “Blade Runner”
Theme from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
“The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati” by Rose & the Arrangement
“Cool” from the “Hellsing” soundtrack
“Core” from the “Paranoia Agent” soundtrack
“Creepy Doll” by Jonathan Coulton
“The Crypt Jam” from “Tales From the Crypt”
“Danse Macabre”
“Dead Man's Party” by Oingo Boingo
“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by “Charlie Daniels Band”
“Destati” from the “Kingdom Hearts” soundtrack
“Don't Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult
Theme from “Doctor Who” circa 1974
Theme from “The Exorcist”
“Eyeball” from the “Cowboy Bebop” soundtrack
“Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr.
“Ghost Riders in the Sky” by The Outlaws
“Grim Grinning Ghosts” by The Barenaked Ladies
“Grim Grinning Ghosts” by The Friendly Indians
“Grim Grinning Ghosts” from “The Haunted Mansion” movie soundtrack
“Grim Grinning Ghosts” techno remix
Theme from “Halloween”
Various pieces of music and dialog from “The Haunted Mansion” ride at Disneyland
“Haunt You Everyday” by Weezer
“Heffalumps and Woozles” from the “Winnie the Pooh” soundtrack
“I Put A Spell On You” by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
“In the Hall of the Mountain King”
“In the Sky (Ghost Riders” by Johnny Cash
“Lil Red Riding Hood” by Bowling for Soup
“Lil Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs
“Love Potion Number 9” by The Searchers
“Man With The Hex” by The Atomic Fireballs
“March of the Dead” from the “Army of Darkness” soundtrack
“Mean Green Mother From Outer Space” from “The Little Shop of Horrors” soundtrack
“The Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt Kickers
“Monster Mash” by Jessie Howard
Theme from “A Nightmare on Elm Street”
“Nightmare on My Street” by Wil Smith
“O Fortuna”
“Object Definition” from the “Paranoia Agent” soundtrack
Theme from “The Omen”
“Pet Sematary” by The Ramones
Theme from “Phantom of the Opera”
“Phantom of the Opera” techno version
Theme from “Psycho”
Theme to “Puppetmaster”
“Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley
“RE: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton
“Requiem - Dies Irae”
“Requiem – Tuba Mirium”
“Shoot the Zombie” by Songs To Wear Pants To
“A Silhouette of Doom” by Ennio Morricone
“Somebody's Watching Me” by Morris Day
“Sorcerer's Apprentice”
“Spooks of Halloweentown” from the “Kingdom Hearts” soundtrack
“Symphonie Fantastique – Dream of the Witches' Sabbath”
“This is Halloween” from the “Kingdom Hearts” soundtrack
“This is Halloween” from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”
“This is Halloween” by Panic at the Disco
“Thriller” by Michael Jackson
“Thunderbird Suite”
“The Timewarp” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (save your Tim Bisley-esque rants, please)
“Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor”
“Tombstone” by Suzannne Vega
“The Twilight of the Gods – The Immolation of the Gods”
Theme from “The Twilight Zone”
“Yo Pumpkin Head” from the “Cowboy Bebop” soundtrack
Theme from “The X-Files”
“Zombie Me” by No More Kings

Note: You will notice that “Rock Lobster” and “Clap for the Wolfman” appear nowhere on this list despite it appearing on pretty much every “Halloween” CD around; this is because there is nothing even remotely Halloween about them. Please keep that in mind when making suggestions. Thanks

VM

Life As We Know It

In 2007 organized, stable, snarky Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl: “Grey's Anatomy”) and laid-back, skirt-chasing, but equally snarky Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel: “When in Rome”) are set up on a blind date by their mutual friends, Peter and Allison. Things do not go well. Three years later when the unthinkable happens to Peter and Allison the pair find themselves left as guardian's of the friends' child. Can they put aside their dislike of each other as well as their plans for their own lives to raise a kid together?

“Life As We Know It” is the new Drama-Rom-Com hitting theaters this Friday from director Greg Berlanti. This looks to only be his second time in the director's chair, he doesn't do a spectacular job of bringing this story to the screen, but then it's not really a spectacular story, so it works out okay. After slapping you upside the head with the tragedy stick about thirty minutes in, the movie becomes a pretty standard rom-com with a large portion of unprepared-parent-comedy thrown in

The whole film is fairly straight forward and predictable. Poop jokes? Check! Fussy baby jokes? Check! Male and female leads clearly being jealous when the other is with someone else even though they claim to still hate each other? Check, check, and double-check! I'm not saying the movie is not funny or entertaining, I'm merely saying that you are not going to have your socks knocked off.

Heigl and Duhamel do a fine job playing their fairly standard issue rom-com characters, but they never really go the extra mile for laughs. For me the characters who stand out the best are the baby, Sophie (played by Alexis, Brynn, and Brooke Clagett) whose expressive face steals more than a few scenes from her adult co-stars, and Sarah Burns (“I Love You, Man”, “Going the Distance”) as CPS investigator Janine Groff. Both characters are underused though, and this seems somewhat worse with Sophie since the movie sort of revolves around her, but she is used more as a prop and plot device than a full fledged character a lot of the time. I would also liked to have seen a lot more of Burns' character in the film as she was a bit more entertaining than the main couple, a fact that I think even the writers realized as she plays a prominent role during the movie's climax despite there being no real stated motivation for her to do so.

This is clearly a film intended for women (I know, a rom-com with a baby in it not being geared towards men, who'da thunk it?), and with that in mind you can expect to see a lot of a sweaty Josh Duhamel without his shirt on. Sorry guys, there is no eye candy for you here; the closest Katherine Hiegl gets to fan service is on brief scene in a bath towel that could easily have been a cheesecake-y, but isn't.

Ultimately, “Life As We Know It” is a funny, sweet film that is not easy to genuinely dislike, but is not easy to recommend either. The movie is a little too paint-by-numbers, and, at times, feels like an idea for a WB sitcom that got salvaged from some recycle bin and re-purposed. If you've seen more than a couple of romantic comedies in your life then you know how this is going to end before the lights even go down. It's not bad, but it's not worth theater-money either. I suggest waiting for it to come out on DVD, and go see something else on the big screen this weekend.



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