Movie Mix Tape

Don't just lift a pint (or three) in honor of St. Patrick's Day -- gather your buddies and get them singing a little ditty, like one of these favorite movie drinking songs. Then have that pint.

Sweet, seductive, sappy -- a good movie love song can be any of these things. Some great ones are even all of them at the same time. 

Here are our picks for the 10 best. Prepare to fall in love with them all over again ...

10. 9 1/2 Weeks: "You Can Leave Your Hat On," Joe Cocker
Sizzling scene in a sizzling movie. There are arguably hotter versions of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" than Joe Cocker's, but scoring Kim Bassinger's striptease to it takes the song to a whole nother level. And wow, do you remember what a looker Mickey Rourke used to be? If you don't think this is hot, you don't have a pulse.

That's OK; we don't mind doing so. Here are 10 great ones. Enjoy. And don't feel guilty about it!

10. Shrek: "I'm a Believer," Smash Mouth
What could be better: a classic guilty-pleasure song, written by a guilty-pleasure auteur (Neil Diamond), made famous by a classic guilty-pleasure "band" (the Monkees), and covered by a contemporary guilty-pleasure band? Unless it's another song from the series, Counting Crows' "Accidentally in Love" from Shrek 2.

A truly great opening song can draw you in, pump you up, and build suspense. The best ones can set the tone for an entire movie.

Here's our list of the 10 best movie opening songs.

Fresh off their first-ever Grammy win earlier this month, Australian rock legends AC/DC continue to defy the laws of career longevity with the recent announcement that their greatest hits -- spanning over 30 years -- will appear in this spring's Iron Man 2.

The film continues the story that began in Marvel Studio's 2008 box-office smash, Iron Man, which grossed almost $600 million worldwide. Both films star Robert Downey, Jr. as the playboy/engineer/superhero Tony Stark and were directed by actor Jon Favreau of Swingers fame.

After selecting AC/DC's classic tune "Back in Black" for his first Iron Man film (along with songs by Black Sabbath and Ghostface Killah), Favreau went back to the band's dense catalog of hard rock material and cherry picked their best (dare we say "fist-pumping"?) tracks to add some metal punch to his action-packed sequel.

Filmmaker Spike Jonze has once again tapped an eclectic array of musicians for the soundtrack to his latest project, a 30-minute movie about robots called I'm Here.

Written and directed by Jonze, I'm Here is a futuristic love story set in Los Angeles. Actors Sienna Guillory and Andrew Garfield play the lead roles, although they're hidden behind computer-hardware costumes.

The short, which premiered in January during the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival, was a collaboration between Jonze and Absolut Vodka, a company that's worked with other artists and filmmakers in the past, like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.

Proving that it's still a force to be reckoned with over a year after its theatrical release, Slumdog Millionaire took home both of the two Grammys it was nominated for, edging out another favored contender, Cadillac Records, in both categories (best compilation soundtrack album and best song written for a movie). Up also continued its award run with two wins in the best score soundtrack album and best instrumental composition categories. Beyoncé had a big night, winning six Grammys, including Song of the Year, and edging out more traditional albums to snag Cadillac Records its only win (in the Traditional R&B Vocal category).

Michael J. Fox's inspirational reading of Always Looking Up edged out fellow actors Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, and David Strathairn for best spoken-word album.

The winners in the movie categories were as follows:

Your local movie theater -- it's not just home to narrative films or documentaries anymore. With all the advances in digital projection, digital sound and high definition 3D technology, those silver screens are fast becoming prime real estate to present concerts by some of music's biggest and best acts. And as theater owners look for a way to fill seats in between big blockbuster film events, the idea of "limited engagement" concert screenings is becoming more and more popular.

Yesterday Sony Pictures released Creed Live, featuring the rock band Creed, in 142 theaters across the country for one night only. The concert was taped in September in Houston, shot on 239 high-definition cameras (a Guinness World Record), and then broadcast in HD and 5.1 Surround Sound. Creed Live was the third installment in Sony's "Digital Cinema Music Series," which previously premiered single-night broadcasts of concerts by Third Eye Blind and supergroup Chickenfoot.

Since the early '90's Mary J. Blige has held onto her title as "The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" by writing and performing soul-baring songs culled from her personal battles with abuse, drugs and bad relationships. Blige has since overcome those issues, but she used their lasting imprint on her life as the inspiration for a new song, "I Can See in Color" -- the first single from the soundtrack to the new movie Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire.

Precious tells the story of Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a pregnant Harlem teenager who overcomes illiteracy, sexual abuse and health issues as she learns to discover and love her true self. It's a harrowing on-screen tale that was first published in 1996 as novel by the poet Sapphire. The movie adaptation, directed by Lee Daniels, won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival in addition to audience prizes in three other film festivals. When Precious opened in limited release this past weekend in only eighteen theaters, it averaged an astonishing $104,025 per screen compared to the weekend's top grossing movie -- A Christmas Carol -- which averaged only about $8,100 per screen.

Blige immediately connected with the character of Precious when Daniels first showed the film to her at a private screening. At a press conference for Precious at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Blige explained that seeing the movie brought back memories of her own rough childhood, saying, "Some of those situations that happen to Precious happened to me."

Last week Australian rapper N'fa, of hip-hop collective No Fixed Abode, released a music video that was directed by actor Heath Ledger. N'fa and Ledger had been friends since childhood and the clip for N'fa's song "Cause An Effect" is believed to be Ledger's final directorial work.

The three-and-a-half minute music video was shot in 2007 at Ledger's beach house in the Australian town of Bronte, a beachside suburb of Sydney. A few days before the production, Ledger woke N'fa at 5AM with a surprise phone call and an idea for the video. According to the rapper, Ledger wanted to do an "artistic" video that had "a kind of a revelatory kind of feel about it."

Rapper 50 Cent, best-known for chart-topping hits like "In Da Club." "Candy Shop" and "P.I.M.P.," is further laying the groundwork for a career in film with the upcoming release of his directorial debut, Before I Self Destruct.

The 90-minute movie, written, directed and starring 50 Cent (nee Curtis Jackson), is a gritty inner-city tale about a supermarket clerk named Clarence (Jackson) who turns to a life of crime to support his younger brother after their mother is murdered. The story is somewhat similar to Get Rich or Die Tryin' -- the 2005 movie directed by Jim Sheridan loosely based on 50 Cent's life. Get Rich or Die Tryin' (also the name of his 2003 major-label debut album) marked 50 Cent's feature film acting debut alongside Terrence Howard, Viola Davis and Joy Bryant.

Adam Lambert's first post-American Idol single, "Time for Miracles" -- the theme song to Roland Emmerich's upcoming apocalyptic flick 2012 -- has leaked online ahead of its scheduled debut date of Oct. 27.

Last week a snippet of the song, paired with some of the movie's footage, premiered as planned on AOL's Moviefone website. The full version of the song and its music video were then supposed to premiere globally on Oct. 27 as part of a special 2012 promotional trailer tied to screenings of the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It. Instead, the track appeared prematurely over the weekend on the iTunes Store in Italy and, as expected, savvy techies quickly uploaded it to YouTube and other websites.

The Fall movie season is officially in full-swing, and along with it comes a solid set of  soundtrack albums worth checking out. Whether you're into classic rock, punk, hip-hop, indie, or world music...if you're a movie and music buff, there's definitely a soundtrack here for you.

Girrl Power: Whip It
During filming, avid music fan (and first-time director) Drew Barrymore played all kinds of music on the set to keep the mood upbeat for her roller derby coming-of-age movie. Whip It's soundtrack album selects nineteen of the 75 songs heard in the film, culled together with the help of Wes Anderson's music supervisor, Randall Poster. It's an ADD collection of rebellious tracks including cuts from The Ramones, The Breeders, The Ettes, Dolly Parton, The Raveonettes, and .38 Special's classic "Caught Up In You." There's already talk of a second soundtrack album.

Tropical Tunes: Couples Retreat
The cast of this Vince Vaughn-starrer spent three weeks shooting the movie on the French Polynesian island of Bora Bora, so naturally the soundtrack is full of contemporary island-flavored selections. A.R. Rahman, the two-time Academy Award winning composer/songwriter of music for Slumdog Millionaire, composed the score and songs for Couples Retreat. It was Rahman's first time creating music for an American comedy, so he deliberately dialed back the Indian vibe heard in Slumdog.

With the release of the upcoming movie Michael Jackson: This Is It, not to mention a new song, a new album, and a traveling exhibition of memorabilia, October promises to be a lucrative month in the posthumous career of Michael Jackson.

Jackson died of cardiac arrest on Jun. 25 at the age of 50 (it has since been ruled as a homicide). In the months leading up to his death he had been rehearsing in Los Angeles for a string of 50 farewell concerts -- billed This Is It -- that would have started in July at The O2 arena in London.

Footage from those rehearsals and behind-the-scenes clips were quickly culled together for This Is It by the tour's director Kenny Ortega (High School Musical). Ortega had been a longtime friend and collaborator of Jackson's, having directed the singer's Dangerous and History concert tours. "I'm proud of the many years of friendship and creative association I shared with Michael and I'm happy that people will get a chance to see his spirit and drive in action," Ortega said in August. "This Is It may go down as the greatest concert that no one got a chance to see, but with this film, we get a rare portrait of Michael as he prepares for his final curtain call and what I believe was going to be his master work."