Over and over and over we keep reading about how Hollywood’s holiday box office was some sort of silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. But once again, the context-challenged entertainment media only tells us half the story. Here’s a sampling:

Box Office Mojo:

Based on studio estimates, the four-day weekend will end up at over $201 million, or up around 10 percent from the same four-day period last year.

DHD:

Let’s party hearty with the end-of-holiday box office for end-of-year 2011. Or let’s not (and say we did.)… [S]ources tell me this final weekend will definitely be up over last year.

Los Angeles Times:

Most films sold more tickets over the New Year’s holiday than the Christmas holiday, with family films benefiting from the biggest bumps. Overall, the weekend was up 10% compared with the same period in 2010.

Cinema Blend:

Sales were up considerably from last weekend’s Christmas holiday and the new year is off to a solid start.

Except…

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According to the New York Times, even with upwards of 40 blockbusters released in 3D (meaning much higher ticket prices), box office revenues in North America dropped 4.5% this year. In worse news, overall attendance dropped 5.3%, which means that over the last two years attendance has dropped a whopping 11%. When you lose over 10% of your customers in just two years, something is horribly wrong. When you combine that with plummeting DVD sales, you have an existential problem.

Director Roland Emmerich at his London home

The Times blames much of the problem on the economy, but as anemic as it’s been, the economy has improved some since 2008 and 2009, while attendance and revenues have not. In other words, that’s a stupid excuse. But at least it’s a new excuse. After years of blaming Redbox and piracy, you have to give Hollywood’s media friends credit for coming up with a new way to avoid admitting the obvious: People don’t like Hollywood or their product very much.

Movies are a cyclical business and analysts say that 2010 benefited mightily from holdover sales for “Avatar,” which was released late in 2009 and became one of the most popular movies of all time. A decline of hundreds of millions of dollars is not catastrophic when weighed against the size of the industry. Over all, North American ticket revenue for 2011 is projected to be about $10.1 billion, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data.

That is only a 4.5 percent falloff from 2010. But studio executives are alarmed by the downturn nonetheless, in part because the real picture is worse than the raw revenue numbers suggest.

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IMDB News:

While [Hop's] gross was slightly below the $38.1 million recorded for Rango last month, making it the second-highest-grossing film of the year, it was far overshadowed by last year’s Clash of the Titans, which opened during the same weekend (Easter weekend) with $61.2 million.

Indeed, the total domestic box office this weekend came in at 29.6 percent below the same weekend a year ago. For the year, total box-office revenue is down 20.3 percent, while attendance is down 21.5 percent.

Anyone see anything on the horizon that might turn this around? Arthur? Scream 4? Hoodwinked 2? Thor? Priest?

One of the dirty little secrets behind the box office revenues of the last few years is that the year was saved by one humongous and somewhat unexpected hit: “Alice in Wonderland,” “Avatar,” “The Dark Knight.” One stumble, and instead of flatlining attendance, you have a calamitous year.

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With 2010 now behind us, I’m rounding out the retrospective of my personal favorites from that year with a look at the top 10 full albums of that rather impressive spin of the earth.  This particular list is a little belated due to recommendations that I purchased and listened to pretty heavily around the new year, and the list reflects some changes because of that.  Now, when I say “full albums,” that eliminates a lot of otherwise great options, because I’m going simply by records with absolutely zero skipworthy tracks.

10.  Seth Swirsky:  Watercolor Day

Seth Swirsky is, to make the understatement of all time, an acolyte of the Beatles, but what he creates on his sprawling pop record Watercolor Day isn’t a mere imitation of the Fab Four (though his voice, at times, sounds almost exactly like George Harrison in his youth) but a fitting homage to the pop rock genre they kickstarted.  Watercolor Day plays like an album of Britpop covers written from distant but deep-seated memories, filtered through Swirsky’s decades of pop songwriting to form an engaging, novel creation. 

Watercolor Day is that perfect kind of album that doesn’t require much involvement to enjoy (though there’s plenty of subtext to dissect) and fits into your day at any time (clocking in at a comfortable 43 minutes) no matter what mood you’re in (enjoying the simple pleasure of the warmth of the sun or wallowing in malaise).  Oh, and Seth Swirsky is one of the only open conservatives in the music industry who isn’t a parody-peddling hack, and you should support him forever.

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9.  Caribou:  Swim

The pitfalls of electronic music are mind-numbing repetition and predictable soundscapes that grew stale in the mid-90s; however, the democratization of music production technology has fueled a veritable renaissance within the genre.  Whereas the ’90s saw masterful work from artists such as Daft Punk and Aphex Twin, there were way too many dance/techno albums I had to bump from this list merely due to the limit of ten entries [and with Greg Gutfeld introducing me to Tobacco, I'm already kinda regretting not bumping this one].  Caribou’s Swim is an experience like being dropped in a tight, dank underground maze where you’re being followed, catching only brief glimpses of sunlight.  The understated, chilling synths are anchored by intriguing variations on the ol’ bass-snare-bass-snare, and composer Daniel Victor Snaith’s falsetto vocals bring an element of humanity– isolated and fearful as it may be– that cement the music’s connection to your psyche.  It’s a dark, harrowing trip that leaves you exhausted but satisfied.

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BEST PICTURE
127 HOURS
BLACK SWAN
INCEPTION
THE FIGHTER
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
THE KING’S SPEECH
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
TOY STORY 3
TRUE GRIT
WINTER’S BONE

BEST DIRECTOR
DARREN ARONOFSKY – BLACK SWAN
DAVID FINCHER – THE SOCIAL NETWORK
TOM HOOPER – THE KING’S SPEECH
JOEL AND ETHAN COEN – TRUE GRIT
DAVID O. RUSSELL – THE FIGHTER

BEST ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES – TRUE GRIT
JAVIER BARDEM – BIUTIFUL
JESSE EISENBERG – THE SOCIAL NETWORK
COLIN FIRTH – THE KING’S SPEECH
JAMES FRANCO – 127 HOURS

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Great show tonight:

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USA Today:

Hollywood coasted through the final weekend of the year, concluding the second-worst year since 1996.Studios sold 1.35 billion movie tickets in 2010, according to a study by Hollywood.com released Sunday. 

While inflation and pricey 3-D tickets drove revenues above $10 billion for only the second time, the number of tickets sold was the lowest since 1996, when 1.33 billion moviegoers clicked through turnstiles. 

Back then, a movie cost $4.42 a ticket.

That cost leaped from an average of $7.46 a ticket in 2009 to $7.85 last year, the largest single-year spike on record. 

Attendance saw a drop of 5.4% last year compared with 2009, the largest drop since attendance fell 8.1% in 2005, according to Hollywood.com.  (more…)

For the entertainment industry’s practitioners of political correctness, 2010 was another banner year. Even as conservatives have made deserved headway in La La Land and other areas of the industry, there still aren’t enough conservatives to bring much needed patriotism, logic, and common sense to the scene. Sadly, the industry is still filled with those slavishly dedicated to anti-American tropes, left-wing blather, and self-hatred. From comic books, to music, to radio, TV and movies, PCism still runs rampant.

Without further ado, here are (in no particular order) just a few examples of PCism from 2010 in music, TV, movies, and publishing. Certainly there are many more and these are not necessarily a “top ten,” but these examples do serve to show that PCism is not dead despite the Tea Party uprising, the growth of the conservative new media, and the resulting Republican tsunami from the midterm elections.

Movies and Actors

Who could forget the film Machete, starring Danny Trejo and directed by Robert Rodriguez? This one was a sort of pastiche of 1970s exploitation movies with a Mexican twist. The film was replete with White sheriff’s ruthlessly murdering pregnant Mexican immigrants, American businessmen working to keep Mexicans down, overpowering racism against Mexicans by white Americans and it all seemed intended to inflame militant Mexican nationalism and to goad illegal immigrants in America to put all the blame on white America. The creators claimed it was supposed to be just good, over-the-top fun but in the climate of racial tensions in America today it was as funny as a militant Mexican flavored attempt to start a race war. (more…)

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After you’re done watching….

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“We’ve got to put some lipstick on this pig.”

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Tonight:

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July is probably a little early to declare any year the worst movie year ever, but I haven’t had the opportunity to see enough films these past few months to mount any kind of argument either way with the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Queenan’s belief that Hollywood hit the bottom of the bottom in 2010. I would most certainly argue, however, that this decade has far and away been the worst ever — a perfect storm of soulless, bloated blockbusters, 140-minute “comedies,” self-consciously indie indies, and the last dying gasp of anything resembling the charismatic movie star. Two words Queenan and I would surely bond forever as blood brothers over: Shia and LaBeouf.

Though he’s a little hard on “Grown Ups” and awkwardly avoids rendering a judgment of any kind on Christopher Nolan’s much-debated “Inception,” give Queenan credit for at least managing to avoid the self-referential while creating a somewhat hyperbolic frame that’s obviously meant to draw attention to Hollywood’s bigger problems (which essentially boils down to the fact that those who make the movies are completely out of touch with these who watch the movies). Because if 2010 was the worst year ever for anything, it was the oh-so precious and nearly-extinct Critical Community’s masturbatory need to write about themselves. Honestly guys and gals, if entertainment is the least necessary industry in the history of the world, what does that make those of you who spend your lives intellectualizing over why it isn’t?

My personal realization that everything that could possibly go wrong with Hollywood has, occurred about halfway through a matinee of “Predators” I ducked into earlier this week. No offense to Adrien Brody who’s a fine actor and probably a very nice guy, but after he won an Oscar in 2002 for “The Pianist,” do you really think he saw himself  just a few years later spending an inordinate amount of time under the leadership of a personal trainer in order to get properly ripped because his next gig was stepping into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shoes?

Brody deserves better and so do we. (more…)

Country music star Toby Keith, long known for his active support of American troops serving overseas, was the musical guest of honor in Boston, Massachusetts this July 4th.

Joining the Boston Pops on stage at the city’s famous Hatch Shell, Keith played his hit song “How Do You Like Me Now?” and his famous homage to the military, “American Soldier.”

The host of the event was late night TV personality Craig Ferguson, a native of Scotland, who’s such a fan of America that he became a United States citizen in 2008.

After Ferguson introduced Toby Keith, large screens on each side of the stage displayed footage of Keith’s work with the troops overseas. The video below shows the intro segment and Keith’s live performance of “American Soldier.” (more…)

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So the 2010 Time Magazine 100 Poll is out, and all of you Conservatives out there should be paying attention. Take a gander at the top 25. Notice anything in particular? Where are the local district representatives? Where are the long-standing politicians and Republican strategists that we see time and time again on our cable news networks? SPOILER ALERT: Nowhere.

I’ll bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you GOP’ers?

In response to my recent column on James Cameron, somebody wrote me:

Who cares about James Cameron? … If people spent half the time reading about their local politicians and congressional reps as they do about the Hollywood elite, this country would be a thousand times better off.

Both unfortunately and importantly, the man speaks the truth. Even more sadly however, is the response that he would receive from most of mainstream America; “So what?”

Would the world be better off if Americans cared more about their local government? Probably? Do they? No. (more…)

Here it is 2010 and I still don’t have a jet-pack or flying car. Those were the kind of things that I was led to believe would be here by now when I was a little kid. The real problem is that there isn’t one on the horizon either. You know what is in the near future for us? A remake of the Yugo or some other Euro-crap car that doesn’t burn up much dinosaur remains and tops out at a heart stopping 50 or 60 miles per hour.

It is that time of year for me to let my psychic self loose and gaze into the future. Yeah, I know I’m a little late but I promise not to predict anything that has already happened like a lot of your mainstream psychics tend to do. Last year Kevin Costner didn’t even have the decency to make a bad film, so I was o-fer-09. The only way for my psychic score to go is up! (more…)

It has been amusing to watch the speculation of the Alaska Governor’s motivations and future aspirations after announcing her resignation last Friday. Senate bid? “No, Alaskans would never forgive her for leaving them” said the Sunday shows. Presidential bid? “Not possible now,” say the smartest strategists and campaigners. Host a talk show? Sell books? Go on the lecture circuit? All possible, though not all probable. But the one thing most of the pundits on both the left and the right in Washington D.C. have declared certain – Palin’s political career is D.O.A.

Not so fast, my friends. Since we’re all engaged in wild speculation, allow the reading of one more set of tea leaves, if you please.
 
You can roll your eyes and tease Palin’s supposed lightweight intellectual status. You can bury your head in shame when Charlie Gibson peers down his nose through his reading glasses and stumps her with international policy questions. You may say she had no business on the national stage from the get-go last fall when John McCain announced her as his vice presidential pick. But what you cannot ignore, nor take from her is what she is about to seize on in a big way. (more…)

“And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” — Mark 3:25

It is both reasonable and fair to ask reformers of the Republican Party – those suggesting that we jettison the right wing and seek the gooey center of American politics — exactly how many of their convictions they are willing to compromise in pursuit of electoral success. It is also fair and reasonable to ask whether the people can truly admire or trust any public servant that is willing to sacrifice their convictions upon the altar of political power.

Party reformers are quick to point to the Democratic Party model that has proved successful, to whit: silencing the far left of their party and supporting centrist or blue dog candidates. Or so they say. The list of pro-life, pro-family, pro-second amendment, Global warming skeptic democrats in party leadership positions is very short indeed. (more…)