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…

Between Dec. 16 and Dec. 25 of this year, the following films went into wide release:

Alvin and the Chipminks: Chipwrecked
Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows
Mission : Impossible – Ghost Protocol
The Adventures of Tintin
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
We Bought a Zoo
War Horse
The Darkest Hour

That’s a total of eight big-budget, high profile offerings. However, in 2010, only four high-profile, big-budget films went into wide release during that same time period:

Tron Legacy
Little Fockers
True Grit
Yogi Bear

In other words, in order to get that 10% bump in sales, Hollywood had to invest in twice the amount of product.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume that after production and marketing costs, a mainstream film averages out to a cost of $100 million. If that’s the case, the industry invested $400 million more than they did last year — twice as much — to make 10% more in gross sales. That doesn’t sound like much of a success to me.

From what I can see, only The Wrap deserves credit for not buying or pushing that spin:

Conversely, distribution executives might think twice about celebrating their Christmas-week performances, given that they’re comparing their 2011 Yule haul to a 2010 holiday period that featured only two new wide releases — “Little Fockers” and “True Grit” — doing any significant business.

In fact, even though nearly twice as many movies were released in the run-up before Christmas this year, the market only grew marginally.

Ho, ho, ho …

You can’t fix a problem until you admit you have a problem. Too many in the entertainment media are too invested in the culture wars to look at the motion picture business as a business. They see a rejection of Hollywood as a rejection of their own personal values; they take it personally and therefore don’t want to believe or report it.

This is why we get spin instead of the kind of analysis that tells the real story.

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.

Revenue, for instance, has been propped up by a glut of 3-D films, which cost $3 to $5 more per ticket. Studios made 40 pictures in 3-D in the last 12 months, up from 24 last year, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, a movie database. Theaters have also continued to increase prices for standard tickets; moviegoers now pay an average of $7.89 each, up 1 percent over last year.

Attendance for 2011 is expected to drop 5.3 percent, to 1.27 billion, continuing a slide. Attendance declined 6 percent in 2010.

And now you know why Hollywood kisses China’s backside.

The Hollywood left may make a lot of noise about human rights and the like, but the reason they offer to participate in Chinese propaganda, make movies about how awesome the Chinese are, refuse to insult the Chinese, and suck up to communist/socialist strong men all over the world is to open the floodgates of their markets.

Forced abortions, slavery, human rights shmooman rights — with a billion-plus paying customers just waiting to be picked up, China means not having to do the hard work of making better movies and it surely means not having to make movies that represent American values.

A win-win for the bad guys.

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.

This year is packed with a record number of sequels, franchises, remakes, and remakes of sequel franchises. We’ll see. A healthy industry is good for everyone, but the industry isn’t looking too healthy right now and we’re already three months in.

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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8.  Avey Tare:  Down There

There’s a specific time and place for Down There, the first solo album from Avey Tare of Animal Collective; you may have lost a loved one or a lover, you may be questioning your place in this world, or you may just be driving alone on a highway at 2 AM.  Whatever it may be, the best way to experience this record is in the dark, in the cold, all alone– hence its release close to Halloween last year.  But don’t pigeonhole it as an intentionally “spooky” album.  Whereas Caribou brings us through a journey of fear and claustrophobia, Avey’s pulling us into wide open spaces, and we’re plagued not by paranoia but ennui, the feeling that you are nothing and you’re going nowhere.  Though it ends on a high note with the single “Lucky 1,” Down There is ultimately a downer album, but it’s a touching work by an artist who finds himself in the odd position of creative and commercial success has been rendered moot by his personal life unraveling.  For him to let us peek into his struggles so intimately is as endearing as it is entertaining, and it’s an experience you can really immerse yourself in.

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7.  Gorillaz:  Plastic Beach

While Kanye West and Big Boi had highly lauded records with quite a few bright spots, ultimately I had to bump them from the list; their excessive obscenity and chauvinism is a dealbreaker for me.  Fortunately, there’s none of that to be found on the Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach.  Some may make hay out of the album’s environmentalist themes, but it’s less a warning of impending doom than a portrait of life after cataclysm.  From microwavable jellyfish breakfasts to giddiness over winning sweepstakes to good old tales of unrequited love, the album creates vignettes that testify to the uncanny ability of the world and the human spirit to adapt to whatever circumstances we may encounter.  Singer Damon Albarn describes his intention with the album this way: “I’ve always felt, I’m trying to get across on this new record, the idea that plastic, we see it as being against nature but it’s come out of nature. We didn’t create plastic, nature created plastic. And just seeing the snakes like living in the warmth of decomposing plastic bags. They like it. It was a strange kind of optimism that I felt.”

Albarn shares the mic with an eclectic group of vocalists, from Snoop Dogg to Lou Reed, yet the album feels rather cohesive despite cycling through vocalists and styles from song to song.  As mentioned in my write-up of standout track “Empire Ants,” the beats are a perfect fusion of hip hop and trance– fat smacking snares, tight, thick kicks, and a host of electronic blips and beeps give an atmosphere of third-world hustle & bustle, and this energy stretches out each track’s one or two instrumental loops without becoming a snooze-fest.  These are fully realized pop songs, both in their lyrical and musical composition.

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6.  The Innocence Mission:  My Room in the Trees

The Innocence Mission have gone from major-label recording artists to do-it-yourself-ers living in rural Pennsylvania, and it’s one of the best decisions they could have made.  Don and Karen Peris, the husband and wife duo who lead the group, draw inspiration from the minutiae of what seems to be a pastoral life, finding joy and beauty in the intricate details of family, friends, and faith.  They draw out these themes through quietly powerful folk music that’s instantly moving without ever stepping on the path toward kitsch, because they very obviously take their Catholic faith seriously.  It’s this respect toward the name and character of God that gives their music extra resonance; despite the uplifting mood, you won’t find any cheap tricks or a manipulative whitewashing of reality.  For all the hipsters out there searching for “authenticity,” My Room in the Trees is as far as you need to look to find it.

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5.  The National:  High Violet

The most fascinating element of High Violet is its production.  In the past, The National has been rather straightforward with its guitar-drums-bass recordings and has tossed in a piano or string/horn section every once in a while.  High Violet, while still featuring prominent, bassy drums,  heavily filters its guitar parts and supplemental synths and other instruments through haze and fuzz, making indistinct textures out of traditional instrumentation.  It gives the proceedings an air of unintrusive maturity, a satisfying adult drama that doesn’t constantly try to remind you just how mature and subtle it is.  Singer Matt Berninger switches things up a bit, reaching into higher octaves and mumbling less, and drummer Bryan Devendorf pounds away furiously, tying the remaining players’ instruments into the aforementioned amorphous whole.

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4.  Blackbird Blackbird:  Summer Heart

I personally want to thank Bandcamp.com, not only for being an incredible tool for artists’ distribution and sales, but for introducing me to a whole new world of independent music.  Chief among my discoveries at the site has been Blackbird Blackbird, a synthpop outfit from San Francisco that, despite its low profile, produces bright, dense, saturated shoegaze that delivers immediate gratification.  Within seconds of each track’s start, you’re transported exactly where they want you to be, bathed in rays of sunshine or mingling with friends at late-night party, and they don’t linger too long, preventing fatigue that the instruments’ heavy compression could easily cause.  With all the other downers on this list, Summer Heart stands out if only for its perpetual warmth; if I ever needed a pick-me-up or a moment of unadulterated optimism, I had a perfect album to listen to.

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3.  Sleigh Bells:  Treats

Big. Loud. Distorted. Raw. Rock riffs. Club beats. Hot eats. Cool treats?

If you waste time describing the sound of Sleigh Bells, you’re missing the point.  Just turn up your speakers:

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2.  ceo:  White Magic

What Erik Berglund of the Swedish pop duo The Tough Alliance has done is truly a marvel.  In an album where he recounts nothing less than a religious epiphany and conversion, which often invites long-windedness, he trims any and all filler from the material.  With 8 songs clocking in at around 25 minutes, no second of this energetic, organic dance-pop record goes to waste.  In the spirit of his excellent work, I’m trimming the filler from my write-up as well.  Just take a look at the glorious Xtianist symbolism in the video for “Come with Me.”

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1. Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz

Original, paranoid Xtianist rambling review is here.  I entered into 2010 thinking Sufjan Stevens was washed up, eaten alive by hipster pretentiousness and incapable of anything more than soulless exercises in showing off his considerable technical skills.  By the time I had reached the third, titular track on The Age of Adz, I knew I was dead wrong.  The man had channeled his odd “What is a song now that we have mp3s?” existential crisis into something far more fundamental, a crisis of personal identity in relation to faith.  Unlike many reviewers have said, this sweeping, romantic epic is not just a collection of songs with loose thematic ties.  What we’re hearing is an intensely personal concept album where Sufjan tries to reconcile the disparate elements of his humanity– primarily as artist, as lover, and as Christian– and the results are, in his own words, a mess.  Electronic and analog instruments crash back and forth into each other; Sufjan’s voice gets garbled through all manner of digital processing; the sound creaks and teeters under its own massive weight; but Stevens keeps a steady hand and lifts each song to goosebump-inducing highs.  If this were a list of the top albums of the Aughts, it would be #1 as well.  Putting aside hyperbole and figurative language, it truly is a masterpiece, and if you skip it, you are missing out on what could be the capstone of a prodigy composer’s career.

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If you missed them, also make sure to check out the top 25 individual songs of the year.

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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

BEST ACTRESS
ANNETTE BENING – THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
NICOLE KIDMAN – RABBIT HOLE
JENNIFER LAWRENCE – WINTER’S BONE
NATALIE PORTMAN – BLACK SWAN
MICHELLE WILLIAMS – BLUE VALENTINE

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
CHRISTIAN BALE – THE FIGHTER
JOHN HAWKES – WINTER’S BONE
JEREMY RENNER – THE TOWN
MARK RUFFALO – THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
GEOFFREY RUSH – THE KING’S SPEECH

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
AMY ADAMS – THE FIGHTER
HELENA BONHAM CARTER – THE KING’S SPEECH
MELISSA LEO – THE FIGHTER
HAILEE STEINFELD – TRUE GRIT
JACKI WEAVER – ANIMAL KINGDOM

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
TOY STORY 3
THE ILLUSIONIST

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
ANOTHER YEAR
THE FIGHTER
INCEPTION
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
THE KING’S SPEECH

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
127 HOURS
TOY STORY 3
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
WINTER’S BONE
TRUE GRIT

Full list can be found here.

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Great show tonight:

Lauren Sivan!

Nick Gillespie!

Paul Mercurio!

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. 

And there’s little sign yet of recovery. Grosses have fallen the past eight weekends compared to the same two months in 2010, and Hollywood is entering a traditionally slow season at the box office.

Full story here.

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.

2010 also didn’t signal the end of more failed Iraq War movies, unfortunately. There was box office bomb “Green Zone,” with Matt Damon. This one portrayed the U.S. army as involved in illicit and murderous cover ups, naturally. There was the flop “Fair Game,” with Sean Penn, a film that retold all the lies about the non-outing of Valerie Plame during the Bush administration. We also had the quixotic “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” starring George Clooney, a bomb of a film that made the U.S. look like a ship of fools. They all had two things in common. One, the U.S. was evil/wrong/at fault and two the films failed to make a dime.

We had plenty of lunacy from the Actor’s peanut gallery in 2010, too. Caryn Elaine Johnson, better known as Whoopi Goldberg, regaled us with her uninformed take on recent American history by declaring that all the terrorists from “a few years ago” were white folks and she just couldn’t understand why everyone was always focusing on Muslim-sponsored terror. That same week Angelina Jolie told the media that she wouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving because it is nothing but “happy murder the natives day” as far as she was concerned. Then there is yet another anti-American rant from Roger Ebert who claimed that Americans are racists and far too stupid to understand why the Ground Zero Mosque is a great idea. For good measure Ebert added that Sarah Palin is too stupid to write her own material. And not to be left behind as the crazy train left the station, Sean Penn once again gushed enthusiastic about his buddy, dictator and communist Hugo Chavez saying that he thought reporters that dissed his pal Hugo should be thrown in jail.

As an aside, actress Maria Conchita Alonso had just about enough of idiot Penn’s support of dictator Chavez and wrote an open letter ripping the half-wit actor a new one. Good for her.

Lastly in the movies section, there was movie mogul Aaron Sorkin who had his PC sensibilities so enraged by Sarah Palin’s TV show that he took to the far left-wing site HuffingtonPost.com to call her any number of names. Apparently he was upset that Palin was a hunter. Yes, this is the same Aaron Sorkin that was arrested for cocaine use in 1991. So, Sorkin is all upset that someone would dare shoot a caribou but he doesn’t mind at all that drug dealers are murdering humans everyday so that he can get high. Nice guy.

Television

As always there is plenty of PC nonsense to choose from on Television but a few instances stand out.

An episode of the now canceled CBS series “Medium,” starring Patricia Arquette, gave us a Sheriff Joe Arpaio-like character that was not anything like the real Sheriff Joe. Instead of a tough-as-nails, patriotic crime fighter like the real sheriff in Arizona, “Medium” made its Arizona sheriff a child rapist and murderer. Nice, eh?

Not to be outdone, the normally patriotic series “NCIS,” starring Mark Harmon, also a CBS series, portrayed a group of terrorists trying to set off a dirty bomb. Were these terrorists an al Qaeda cell, a radical Islamic sect, or even a Pakistani or Somali immigrant? Nope. The episode titled “Dead Air,” features a cabal of white suburbanites sick of the U.S. government and trying to explode a dirty bomb to bring the government down. This episode also featured the characters intimating that radio talk shows are all run by “smart-aleck” hosts that are not big on “intelligent conversation.” The white suburbanites called themselves an army of “MAH,” or Military At Home. In an era when Islamic terror is killing people all across the world, “NCIS” gave us American, white, suburbanite terrorists. One wonders if Whoopi Goldberg wrote this episode for them?

Of course, this is not to mention all the nonsense that goes on over at ABCs The View (like when the girls childishly walked off the set over an appearance of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly), or more Rosie O’Donnell blather, or the foolishness that infects MSNBC on a daily basis — does MSNBC even qualify as TV? If I were to focus on those venues we’d not have room for anything else.

Comic Books

Let’s start with the PC move to add a gay character to the venerable Archie Comics series. This is certainly the ultimate in political correctness. After generations of fantasy teen love now we have an Archie Comics that sees the need to lower the whole series to prurient interests.

Marvel Comics took at least one turn towards PCism in 2010, too. In Captain America issue #602 we met a new super villain. What powered this new villain that was about to destroy America? Tea, it seems. That’s right in issue #602 Captain America proclaimed the Tea Party an enemy to America. Imagine, Captain America afraid of Americans!

DC Comics also got into the PC game this year when on a trip to Europe, Batman helped sponsor a Muslim superhero in France. With all the troubles that radical Islam is causing Europe — but most especially France — DC Comics thought it was a great idea to create a Muslim superhero by glossing over all the reality of the clash of cultures and making a Muslim the “French savior.” PCism big time that.

Music

What could be a better example of PCism run amok than the recent campaign of “Lady Gaga” to turn the armed forces pink? Gaga… I hesitate to even write the absurd moniker… was a vocal opponent of the Clinton era policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and spent a lot of energy and wind working to get the U.S. Senate to repeal the policy. As it happens, during the lame duck session, DADT was indeed repealed. Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid was so excited he took to Twitter to give the thumbs up to Lady Ga… ugh, I mean Miss. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

In a sort of case of anti-PCism we turn to long-time practitioner of PCism, Madonna. After spending an entire career selling sex to teens and claiming that her fans have a right to express their sexuality especially if that expression mimics Madonna’s lascivious wardrobe, Madonna found that her own daughter’s wardrobe should be less revealing. In fact, Madonna insisted that her own daughter’s wardrobe be downright conservative.

Finally, MTV went for PC gold with its choice of Man of the Year for 2010 and so MTV incongruously picked Kanye West as man of the year. Kanye didn’t do much music this year but he did make an ass out of himself half a dozen times. After his mistreatment of singer Taylor Swift at an awards show in 2009, Kanye gave a long-in-coming but half-hearted apology in 2010. Then he immediately attacked her for not coming to his support. Even President Obama called West a “jackass” for his behavior. He also absurdly accused Matt Lauer of “Today” for an ambush interview that never really happened. And he topped off his jackassery by practically getting booed off a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float he was singing from because of his behavior. This kind of man deserves a man of the year award? The big question that dogged him all year was whether or not he was drunk his behavior was so idiotic.

Well, there were certainly many hundreds of other examples, but these examples certainly show that the entertainment industry’s PCism is still in full bloom. Makes you wince thinking that they have a whole new year to fill up with such nonsense, doesn’t it?

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After you’re done watching….

In the comments, rate 2010 for movies overall. Good year, lousy year, average?

Which films did you like the most and least?

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