My First Halloween Mood Table!

Although a fairly recent tradition at 10 years old, Halloween Mood Tables have captured the imagination of monster kids everywhere. Created by Madd Matt back in 2007, the concept is simple: designate a spot in your home and make it Halloween Headquarters. It can be an end table, a dining room table, a coffee table, or even a folding chair. Some people have utilized setups as primitive as a two-by-four over cinder blocks. Whatever the base, it just needs to be a spot that makes you happy and screams "HALLOWEEN" to all who see it. Basically, it's a Christmas tree for October 31st.

There's no right or wrong way to put one of these together. Every Halloween Mood Table is personal and made for and by its owner. Mine includes Ghostbusters Funko Pops, LEGO minifigures, and activity books from when I was a kid. Others might have a place for candy, a pumpkin, or more elaborate dioramas illustrating horror movie scenes. Madd Matt has offered some basic tips, if you're interested in crafting one yourself: Illumination is effective, choose things that matter to you and say "this is Halloween" and of course, enjoy yourself. You can theme it, or let it be a (monster) mash of different things. Go wild and get creative!

While always an avid celebrator of Halloween, I had never done an HMT. Over the last few years, it's really taken off, with hundreds of people putting together their own ghastly shrines. Even a couple celebrities have gotten in on the creepy fun. So, what with this being the 10th year since its inception and having a nice large dining table I never use, now seemed like the perfect time to join in.

Here's a look at my Halloween Mood Table for this year. Some of the best bits: 

1. The one-eyed skeleton candle holder with the color-changing eye.

2. The Pennywhistle Halloween Book. The bible of Halloween celebrations and required reading every year.

3. LEGO trick-or-treaters with their own pumpkin pails.

Here's another peek at it in this quick video (warning and apologies, the quality is non-existent. My computer lied to me):

Again, all credit goes to Madd Matt for his brilliant idea and for sharing it with the world. Find more great stuff at his website by clicking here. and from there, you can find his excellent Youtube and Facebook pages too! In the meantime, if you've got a Halloween Mood Table, we wanna see it! Post pics in the comments or tweet them at us!

Review: Ghostbusters (2016)

Yates, Holtzman, Gilbert, and Tolan.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first: nothing was going to live up to people's expectations set by the first Ghostbusters film. That movie was magic, the kind of lightning in a bottle that happens maybe once a decade. The 1989 sequel couldn't recapture it, the director never recaptured it with his similar film Evolution, and despite having the original writers, every member of the cast save Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver, and a truly wonderful plot involving Stay-puft, Slimer, a terrifying spider-woman prostitute, and even a hidden island full of dead cultists, the 2009 video game didn't get it exactly right either. Ghostbusters 1984 is one of those high-concept gifts that no sequel, remake, reboot, or spin-off could ever hope to eclipse.

Thankfully, Paul Feig and the women he directed in Ghostbusters 2016 know that. Rather than slavishly recreate the original story, or go wildly off-book to the point that it doesn't recall a shred of what it's supposed to be inspired by, the new film artfully balances between the two options. All of the folks online who ranted and raved at their computer screens are thankfully given very little ammo by the movie itself. It won't win them over -right or wrong, they made up their minds long ago- but for genuine fans who love the GB franchise as well as the average moviegoer, this one's a lot of fun.

The basics: Dr. Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) and Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) are old friends who had a falling out years ago over a book they co-wrote about the plausibility of ghosts. When Gilbert goes to see to it that the book is taken down from Amazon and Google searches so as not to ruin her shot at getting tenure, she is roped into accompanying Yates and oddball engineer Gillian Holtzman (Kate McKinnon) on a trip to a local historic mansion where a ghost sighting was recently reported. One slimy encounter later, the three women decide to go into business hunting and trapping every full-bodied repeating phantasm they can find. After her own disturbing experience in a subway tunnel, MTA employee Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) joins the team, offering her knowledge of the city as well as her uncle's car. It's not long before the ghostbusters find that someone is actually trying to summon ghosts by building and planting electrical devices that enhance paranormal activity. It all leads to some violent possessions, nuclear explosions, and cartoon characters from hell.

Making A Spiritual Connection

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The Ghost with the Most

Everyone praises Ghostbusters as THE paranormal comedy of the last thirty years. It's the best of the best and nobody can top it. It's got the best jokes, the spookiest looking monsters, the most likeable characters. Everyone talks about it all the time. And I agree, it's a perfect example of a paranormal comedy. But, I will also admit, it's not my absolute favorite freaky funny movie. There was one movie that I watched practically daily as a kid. A movie that my grandmother thought would shatter my poor young mind because I watched it so much. A movie about ghosts, exorcisms, a giant mutant snake monster, and Harry Belafonte. I'm sure you all remember Beetlejuice.

The Pros And Cons of Horror-Comedy

In the past decade, most horror films released were... legitimately terrible. Gore-hungry filmgoers usually had the unsavory choice of either seeing a poor remake -excuse me, "re-imagining"- of a classic, or an American redo of a film that was far better in its native tongue. There was also a glut of vampire romances which I do not need to name here, suffice it to say that I'm looking forward to the next Garlic Years period. The one ray of light in this sea of sewage was a handful of horror-comedies, notably Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, I Sell the Dead, and, to a lesser extent, Dead Snow. (I've just realized that all the films mentioned feature zombies. Cannibalism guarantees big laughs, kids.)

As I've said before, horror and comedy go down real smooth. They both rely on well-timed shocks and outrageous predicaments, so it's not hard to see how they flow into each other. But is mixing funny and frightening the best thing for the genre? Let's draw up the list.